The nature of the Book of Destiny in Judgment Day

My friend Jason worked through some interesting theories about the Book of Destiny and how it works. 

 

He was nice enough to let me post them here (with my thoughts noted):

The Mercury Book

 

Some facts, observations, and theories …

 

FACT: The book contains all the story of humanity from the beginning to the end of time, such that a person can open up the book and read the past, read the present and read the future.

 

FACT: The book as drawn cannot possibly fit that much story in it literally.

 

THEORY: The book is partly telepathic, so that a person can open it to what they want to start reading about (say, five years into their own future), and they can find it somewhat easily. The book almost acts like an electronic document, with the human mind opening up different menu tabs: Doing a “Search” for a specific person or era.

 

FACT: It is somewhat overwhelming when someone first opens the book and tries to do this, as shown when Toby first opens the book and tries to find what happened to Leanna Creel on the night of her murder. But he does eventually find it.

 

FACT: It is possible for someone to cross out what is written in the book and write something else, and reality will change based on what has been newly written.

 

THEORY: The book’s telepathy must have to come into play for this to work as well. When Kid Thunder crosses out Drue’s name in order to make him cease to exist, that wouldn’t literally work … crossing out a character’s name just one time in a book doesn’t remove that character from the story. And yet …

 

FACT: … when Kid Thunder crossed out the name, Deliverance Drue exploded.

 

THEORY: The book can read intent. (“Delete all instances of Deliverance Drue from this point onward.”)

 

Me: Yes, this became problematic for me on the read through. A strikethrough shouldn't result in a man exploding to death. It might also have something to do with your suggestion that Kid Thunder is illiterate. Back in the west, people could just do an "x" to signify their name. The small amounts of writing they could do represented so much more. Maybe there's some of that in play?

That would fit right in. Yeah, it's interesting to wonder how much specificity is required in the writing of the people who make changes. When Sentinel wanted super-powered allies, did he have to specify, "An archer named Shaft, a rocky giant teenager called Badrock, a purple gymnast called Vogue ..."?  Or did he say that Sentinel eventually founded a team of superheroes called "Youngblood," and the book improvised from there?

 

OBSERVATION: We are never shown anyone changing the past when acquiring the book. Instead they rewrite the present and/or future. However …

 

THEORY: … in theory, changes to the present would most likely change the past too. We were told that Sentinel wanted to have a team, and so he wrote in the creation of Youngblood. That means that Youngblood members would have to have been born, grown up into the kind of people who would become superheroes and then eventually join the Youngblood team that Sentinel writes into existence. He writes Youngblood into the present, but this would have to cause the book to revise the past to accommodate that. And of course it would have to revise the future as well to accommodate the change. Otherwise things would snap back right away and Youngblood would cease to exist one second after they popped into existence. Again, not something a real book can do, but one can picture it more easily if one thinks of electronic documents, which can change formatting of an entire section of a document based on a single deletion or addition.

 

At one point, Toby says that the entire world “changed and darkened” because Sentinel wanted to live in a world that was more intense, violent and extreme. For that to happen in the present, the book would have to reach back in time and recreate the socio-economic realities of the last couple decades (at the least) in order to create a present with more violent crime, etc. 

 

Me: Yes, this one struck me as odd when we started talking about it. Why can't you change the past? It seems like some of the past is automatically getting changed, anyway. I think it's the one rule Moore set up, that you cannot change your own past, because then things would get too out of control.

I imagine that there are feelings that wash over a person upon even opening the book, and further feelings, instincts, emotions, etc. upon trying to rewrite it.  I liken it to telepathy as far as comic-book terminology, but it could be something more primal than that. It might be that someone is simply overwhelmed by primal terror if it even occurs to them to try to rewrite their own past.  Something akin to the self-preservation instinct. (What if I write something wrong and cause myself to cease to exist?)

This is going to get into dark -- maybe unnecessarily dark -- territory, but it is still about Alan Moore, so it's still germaine. Did you ever read that really long interview between Alan Moore and Dave Sim?  It was when From Hell was finished, and he talked about some of the oddities of trying to get into the minds of serial killers. And the conversation goes into esoteric territory about how committing something as taboo as murder can do strange things to consciousness. The average person's mind doesn't even contemplate it, and most who seriously contemplate it don't actually *do* it.  And even the ones who do it probably encounter a kind of fear or hesitation, and who knows what strange things happen to their minds when they actually go through with it. And fortunately it's only a relative few whose minds are willing to take them all the way that far. But Moore speculates that some killers might actually feel like they are tearing free of the pre-destined "plot" of their lives when they actually breach the rules of morality to such a supreme (as it were) degree.

Anyway, I think it's conceivable that the book could project a kind of living aura -- as you say, the Book is most likely a living thing -- such that certain "rules" wash over you: Rules that you perhaps shouldn't read it at all, or perhaps shouldn't spend too much time reading it, shouldn't rewrite your own past, shouldn't cross things out, shouldn't rewrite it at all. But just as there are some unusual minds in the real world that do horrible things that most of us wouldn't contemplate ... within the world of the Awesomevere there are certain "extreme" personalities (appropriately enough) who are willing to break the taboo, to take a pen or pencil and actually dare to alter the sacred text. And in so doing, they "break free" of the story of their own lives, probably experience some degree of both terror and exhilaration as they see/feel it happen, reality changing all around them. But, like Jack the Ripper only killing five prostitutes and then deciding his work was done, the rewriters aren't constantly altering the book at every opportunity. Their minds wouldn't be able to handle that: just doing it once can be an overwhelming experience. So they do it when they feel it's necessary (even though technically it's never *necessary* -- just as it's never necessary to commit a murder -- notwithstanding cases of self-defense or self-preservation, a la Kid Thunder). But they also don't spend too much time with the book, not to rewrite it or even to read it, because the human psyche can only take so much.

 

WILDER THEORY: Revisions in the Mercury Book are what cause the “Reality Revisions” that create new Supremes.  The timeline for when Leanna Creel stole the Mercury Book matches up to when Supreme 41 took place. Perhaps Leanna decided the world was too “extreme” so she slightly rewrote it when she reacquired the book, resulting in the Alan Moore revision of the Liefeldverse.  As noted above, a revision of the present of necessity has to reach into the past. This is why the old Supremes tell the Moore version of Supreme that he is just popping into existence now, in 1996, but his memories and his history stretch back to the 1920s. Any change to the book has to ripple both backwards and forwards into earlier pages and later pages.  (i.e., for the world to suddenly become a less violent place as of 1996 per someone’s revision, the book has to – to be simplistic about it – reach back in time and change things so that less people grow up in poverty and turn to lives of crime, etc. In other words, just changing one single sentence in middle of the book could conceivably require a full-scale “reality revision” i.e. the book rewriting itself starting decades earlier, and also into the far future as well.

 

FACT: Every character who has attempted to use the Mercury Book to change life in their favor has succeeded at first, but ultimately lost the book.

 

OBSERVATION: Theoretically that shouldn’t be possible, because a person should be able to read their own future, see the moment at which they lose the book, and rewrite that moment so it doesn’t happen.  If that causes reality to change so that they instead lose the book five years later … well, again, they should be able to read five years forward, see it about to happen again, and rewrite it again. And so on to infinity. But this doesn’t happen.  Which suggests …

 

THEORY: …. The Book does not allow that to happen. It’s built in that no one person can control or hold the book forever, so the book is able to selectively blind people to the future. As noted above, if the book has the telepathic ability to let a person see exactly the parts of reality they want to see, then the book could also possess the ability to block certain moments in time. It might even be able to exert  a telepathic influence on readers, such that it doesn’t even occur to them to look for certain moments, or to rewrite certain things.  This could be why it never occurs to anyone to try to rewrite the past, but instead only to start rewriting from the present forward.  Or why sometimes it doesn’t occur to someone to keep on checking their own fate to make sure they’re not going to get screwed at some point, out of things.

 

Me: My theory is that the book is a living thing, so like most living things, they continue to move and change when you're not watching them. So even after Sentinel writes his changes, the book starts to evolve from there, changing the story as Sentinel isn't watching.

I think that totally fits. And it makes me think back to our conversation about how Mercury might be the one who was making those comics come to life and talk to their readers in the first two issues of Glory. Living books are Mercury's whole deal!

 

FURTHER SPECULATION: Very little about how the book works is established, so there are a lot of possibilities. The book could have all sorts of mechanisms to protect itself: It’s possible that a person experiences physical or mental pain upon rewriting reality (“Mercury” poisoning), such that it takes tremendous force of will to continually rewrite it. It may get more and more difficult the more rewrites someone does, such that they eventually are too exhausted to keep making more rewrites. 

WILDEST THEORY OF ALL: The Mercury Book we read about in Judgment Day is a facsimile, and the real one is still in the realm of Gods, at Mercury's nightstand. He gave the mortal world a fake one to play with that can still affect their reality, but ultimately if Mercury wanted to, he could rewrite the entire mortal universe, even going so far as to create new versions of reality wherein the book that some mortals THINK is the Mercury book no longer even exists. Perhaps he even already did this more than once, leading to worlds such as the one seen in "Blue Rose" or the one(s) seen in the 2012 relaunches.

Me: That is crazy, but I don't dismiss it. Why wouldn't the Blue Rose or 2012 revision happen from whatever the book was doing in the Awesome world at the time?

 I don't know, it kinda came to me as I was writing, and I was thinking through some of the book's implications. At the end of Judgment Day, Sentinel threatens to write a line saying that the Citadel Supreme exploded, and only Sentinel survived. But Glory was on the Citadel at that time. Would she have died because of what Sentinel wrote in the book?  If so, that means the book can kill someone who is from the realm of the gods.  Which would mean the book could kill Mercury, theoretically. Would Mercury create a book that mortals could use to kill him?  

And it would just make a sort of meta-textual sense if there was a "larger" book that is GREATER than Judgment Day's Mercury Book, and which *contains* that book.  Because it would kind of be the book that we readers are reading. And that's a book that cannot be rewritten by the mortals within the Awesomeverse, even though it *can* be rewritten by gods outside of that world. For example, [a certain fan editor] -- in a mad, arrogant fit of self-appointed godhood -- could rewrite the contents of Supreme 64 ... but Sentinel couldn't.

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 7: The dark age

When we last saw the book of destiny, it had been stolen from Storybook Smith. So what became of it?

We find out that it was stolen by the man who would become Sentinel:

In the ensuing fight, the book gets thrown over the edge of Supreme's Citadel and lands among a homeless girl:

The book of fate was a great device for telling this story of heroes and adventurers throughout history. But it also allowed Moore to play with time travel, the inability to escape the hands of fate, and the power of language. 

Before I end this, let me throw out one more random theory. What if the difference between our universe and the Awesome one was the changes Troll, Magnar, Merlin and the others made to the book? What if the book of fate foretold our ordinary destiny but with those small changes, time changed and changed until superheroes started showing up?

It's just a silly thought, but I enjoyed Judgment Day's exploration of comics' history and wish more had been done to interact with the various heroes and genres.

What'd you think?

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 6: WWII and the superheroes

When last we saw the book of fate, WWI flying ace the Phantom Aviator had taken possession of the book. He took it with him to WWII, where he met up with Blake Baron, who was based on a Sgt. Nick Fury war comic. 

 Baron testified at the Youngblood murder trial about what happened next.

With the book in Storybook Smith's hands, he became a superhero for the original Allied Supermen of America. His wife testified next.

 

 

As for Smith's daughter, we get a glimpse of what happened to her:

She ultimately became the superhero Riptide and the victim in the Youngblood murder case.

Moore has finally linked up the Extreme universe's history with what he had made up for Supreme. But more than that, he created a history rich in genres to explore, from cowboys to Conan-style berserkers. In Youngblood and other places, Moore would start to draw on this history, but it had so much more potential.

Anyway, with the book now missing, we'll find out its location and how it was wrapped up in the murder trial next.

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 5: Tarzan, Doc Savage, a noir hero and a WWI flying ace

When last we saw the book of destiny, it had been buried in the American west of the mid-1800s. But it couldn't stay buried. Edward Conqueror, a British explorer most likely based on Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World, discovered the book when excavating a Native American burial ground, as his descendant testified about at the Youngblood murder trial.

Edward Challenger and family went missing and nothing was heard of them for years.

Ten years later Prophet would bring the book with him on a Doc Savage-inspired adventure where he passed on the book to the WWI flying ace, the Phantom Aviator:

It's starting to become clear how Moore is creating a shared universe of almost every kind of boys adventure genres in comics, from lost worlds with dinosaurs to Tarzan-inspired jungles to WWI flying pilots and 1930s noir heroes, such as The Fog. Moore would go on to repeat this trick in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but this is a fascinating warm up.

Anyway, the Phantom Aviator would fly again in WWII, where we'll see the book next.

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 4: Pirates, Puritans and cowboys

When last we saw the book of fate, it was being guarded by the Winter Knight, from King Arthur's Camelot, and taken into his order the Knights Templar. The book would remain there until the Knights Templar started to dissolve. 

Toby, a lawyer in the Youngblood murder trial, would explain what happened next.

It's kind of surprising that Moore didn't show any adventures of the pirate Captain Compass, but I guess he may have thought his pirate comic in Watchmen was enough.

NightEagle, the Native American magus, testifies in the Youngblood murder trial about the Puritan who would obtain it next. It's clear that Deliverance Drue is based on Solomon Kane.

 

 

In a classic Alan Moore time-traveling twist, it's only after these events that NightEagle is called upon to testify in the trial itself.

 

 

 

He continued his testimony:

 

In a small postscript to the cowboys, it turns out Kid Thunder was black and there was a curse on him that his seed are going to hell. 

 

 

 Moore gets cute and has "hell" mean that Sentinel ends up in Supreme's Hell of Mirrors. {groan}

 

And so the book remained hidden, waiting to be unearthed again, not by a troll, but by an archeologist.

 

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 3: The age of wizards, berserkers, trolls and knights

When last we saw it, the book of fate was thrown down into the chasm where it remained for ages until about 500 B.C. 

(Moore returned to this story at three different points over the course of Judgment Day, so I've spliced them together as best I can.)

  

The book was unearthed by trolls serving the wizard Magnar Teufelsun, who used it as his grimoire. Eventually, along came Bram, a Conan-like berserker.

 

 

 

 

Bram held onto the book through his own rule, but ultimately gave it away to Troll.

 

 

 

It's interesting that even though Troll hinted at doing his own bit of rewriting earlier, it's Merlin who first rewrites large portions of the book of fate to change it, in this case to make Arthur king. It also suggests why Merlin would know so much about the future.

 

 

And so the book was locked away and protected by the Knights Templar as the dark ages fell over Europe.

The question that arises is, what was fated originally if Merlin (or more likely Troll before him) hadn't rewritten the book, defeating the wizard Magnar? Was Magnar fated to rule forever? Or had he done his own rewriting to put himself in charge and Troll and Bram were the timeline's way of correcting his changes?

Moore never really answers this, but I think it's a question he meant for us to wonder about.

Next time we'll see how the book first comes to America.

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 2: The birth of mankind

We're now millions of years since Demeter put the book in the cave at the start of time. Life has developed on the planet and even the beginning of human life. 

 

Giganthro, the cave man member of the League of Infinity, is testifying about his experience with the book of fate in two pages drawn by Steve Skroce.

 

It's interesting to me that the book of fate seems to radiate power in a way that gives enhanced abilities to people near it. Partly that's a very comic sort of idea, like a radioactive spider. 

 

But also, it suggests story and language as an evolutionary step, enhancing those who come into contact with it, from the dinosaur who grows a man's head, to Giganthro, who has developed superior cunning. It's also interesting that Giganthro's cunning suggests the influence of Hermes, as well.

 

The book has tremendous powers but also holds great sway over those it ensnares, like Dino-Man. Obviously, we'll see more of that as we go.

 

Dino-Man returns later and becomes part of the group of arch enemies of the League of Infinity (and we see a statue of him in their headquarters in the pages of Supreme).

 

Next up we'll see who finds the book and draws it out of the depths of the chasm.

The chronological Judgment Day, Part 1: Before Time

Judgment Day is a fun miniseries and I love the way Moore was integrating all the different eras of comics heroes. But it's also a bit confusing the way it all fits together. So I thought it'd be fun to look at Judgment Day from a chronological point of view. 

 

The story really begins outside of time, for in Idea Space or the realm of the gods (to Moore, they're the same), there is no time. Or there is all time. But for the purposes of Judgment Day, this occurs before human time begins.

 

It really starts with Hermes, in his royal chamber, talking about story (which is the same as magic) and the consequences it can have (the first page is spliced together to avoid the other eras we'll see in a bit):

 

Hermes leaves and then goes to see Demeter, who has just created the material world (that she's the goddess of):

And thus the book of fate, which foretells everything that will happen in the material world until the end of time was introduced into the material world at the very beginning of it.

 

Here's a question for those of you interested in Moore's metaphysical magical thoughts. Did time as we know it exist in the world of matter until Hermes created this book that had past and future or did the invention of story create it?

 

My friend Jason Powell, who is also a lot smarter about some of the metaphysical implications, brings up the following in a conversation about how the book of fate is such an interesting McGuffin for this story:

 

[That third] page is definitely plugged in to the core of Moore's magical thinking, for sure. He has likened existence to a book before: the idea that past, present and future all exists, and the illusion of linear time is created by us moving through the book a page at a time ("a most timely gift!"). Due to our perceptions, we think the book is being written as we go, when in fact the entire book exists. And in Moore's Jerusalem, we see how some people's consciousness is able to move forward or backward in order to relive different parts of the "book" after their mortal existence ends.

Moore has also talked about the idea that while this notions suggests a deterministic outlook wherein we can't control what happens, our consciousness is completely free to *interpret* these happenings, in the same way that one can't change what one reads in a book, but one can interpret the content of the book in a million different ways ("it shall have meaning!")

For the potboiler purposes of Judgment Day, Moore creates an iteration of this book of existence where people can cross things out and rewrite them, and that of course goes against Moore's worldview ... but apart from that, this whole idea is really core to Moore's thinking. And that's not even getting into Mercury's "like me, it's made of language." Which gets back into what you and others have mentioned before, Moore's notion that the gods only exist in our minds, and our minds create thoughts in language. Therefore, the gods are "made of language," and books are also made of language, ergo ... books are like gods. Which also speaks to what Moore has said before about the idea that mortal existence (or the book of mortal existence, as the case may be) IS god, experienced at a different level of perception. (In qabbalistic terms, mortal existence being at level 10, and god being at level 1.)

Also, what you say about the macguffin being a book instead of a weapon is a fascinating point, and reminds me of an observation in Geoff Klock's book, "How to Read Superhero Comics and Why." In contrasting Moore with the other great comic-book maestro of the '80s, Frank Miller, Klock notes that Miller's metaphors and imagery are always violent, while Moore's are literary. Even a shockingly violent moment like the Joker shooting Barbara Gordon in the stomach and crippling her is described in literary terms, the Joker speaking of her as though she were a book. ("There's a hole in the jacket and the spine appears to be damaged ... but then, that's always a problem with softbacks. God, these literary discussions are so dry!")

That last page shows Moore's magic trick. Hermes gave Demeter the book and asked her to put it in the material world, but there's no way to force Demeter to do it. She's a god in her own right. But she reads the book and now she's trapped by it. Because the book says that she does put it in the material world. And it's the book of fate, so now she has to. She's been trapped by the magic spell, bound by the story she now realizes she's in.

For me, this section gets at the heart of what Moore was doing with Judgment Day and with his concepts of magic. It would come back in a big way in Promethea, but it’s impossible to say that the seeds weren’t planted starting in Judgment Day and Glory.

 

Anyway, Demeter leaves the book in the cave and we'll see what happens next...