Donny Cates's original comic is based on a well-known superhero theme. A weapon falling from the sky, like Thor's hammer, gives the main character incredible strength. But could anything else be squeezed out of this starting point ? Something more valuable?
It won’t come as a surprise to say that the writer God Country is a gifted writer. And his ideas are often based on his experiences, which makes them much more convincing and personal. This is also what happened in this case. Having had acute pancreatitis, he expected death, and at some point he lost his sobriety and some memories. Of course, he recovered (it’s hard to write comics posthumously), but that experience changed him and pushed him to write the story of a man in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.
The spell of memories
The main protagonist, Emmett Quinlan, as I mentioned above – losing independence and losing all memories due to illness – one day receives supernatural, even divine power. But it is not everything. Thanks to the magic sword – Valofax – he regains something much more valuable, namely his consciousness, his long lost self. However, this is only the start of the action, because the creator of the weapon, a god from another reality, wants to regain it at all costs and Emmett does not intend to give it up easily. When he holds a sword in his hand, he is himself again, he remembers his deceased wife, recognizes his son, and his granddaughter ceases to fear him. The alternative is to doom again.
A matter of scale
What distinguishes this comic from other similarly beginning superhero stories? This is the perspective. On the one hand, the fate of the world is at stake; omnipotent deities can easily sweep people off the face of the earth. God will not hesitate to engage his sons in the struggle to get back what he cares about. On the other hand, we observe the breakdown of the family: a sick father, whom his own son no longer recognizes, but still looks after him. This leads to deepening conflicts between the son and his wife, who loses her patience and wants to leave. The scale is therefore both cosmic and extremely intimate at the same time.
An additional advantage of God Country is the way of narration. Evidently it is conducted from the perspective of Emmett’s descendant. Texas becomes a strange land in which an ordinary and insignificant person is drawn into a whirlwind of (literally!) Fantastic events. It is also highly symbolic, because this is how myths are born: stories of ancestors embroiled in a fight with a much stronger opponent, but also with their own weaknesses and handicaps, passed down through generations from mouth to mouth.
Mash-up
The mythology of the universe could be more elaborate because the gods do not sin with originality. They are a pop-culture cluster of digestible Greek myths, with the clichéd god of death and his omnipotent father sitting on the throne and giving orders from a distance. The history could also be written more precisely. The sword appears as an excuse, it gives rise to an action that is not really specifically explained – we do not know exactly why Valofax runs away and ends up in the hands of a sick old man. However, it is not that important. In a comic, the most important role is played by emotions and relations between the characters, not the exact sequence of cause and effect.
Divine line
Geoff Shaw and Jason Wordie, responsible for the drawings and color distribution, did a great job. The line adapts to the changing pace of the comic book – it is at the same time spectacular in scenes of fights and tearing buildings apart, and balanced when you need a moment to reflect. The black of the ink contrasts here with the range of pastel colors. This is reflected quite well both by the Texas atmosphere and the rich imagery of the cosmos. The Polish collective edition is also enriched with beautiful covers from individual issues.
Is it worthy?
The work by Donny Cates is definitely worth paying attention to. The story, banal at first glance, is actually a subversion of the typical “Marvel” theme. It is a story about facing and coming to terms with death. Importantly: on your own terms. It is rare for a comic to move me. God Country made it.
