SONS OF LILITH: THE PORTRAYAL AND CHARACTERIZATION OF WOMEN IN THE APOCRYPHAL COMICS OF NEIL GAIMAN, ALAN MOORE, AND GRANT MORRISON

Theis paper examines the treatment and characterization of women, sex, identity, and gender in the lesser known or studied comics of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison in order to discern what such an analysis tells us about each author's engagement with the issues and debates surrounding these sociopolitical and cultural phenomena. Thee purpose of this study is to discern how three of the most infliuential writers of contemporary comics books engage with themes of gender, identity, sexuality, and trauma and, in this way, set precedents that have come to be debated and critiqued in contemporary comics scholarship and fandom. It reveals that all three writers ostensibly engage with progressive imaginings of the self, sexuality, identity, and gender as mercurial, de-centred, and subject to play and change in each of the chosen case study characters. It ficnds that while ostensibly progressive, all three writers simultaneously recirculate certain conceptualizations of the relationships between identity, trauma, and sexuality by taking the histories in which they emerged as assumed.

Thee broader scholarly context for this paper is extensive. Without being exhaustive, a few orienting pieces should be mentioned, as well as their relation to the specificc areas of analysis being brought into view Corpus Mundi. 2020. Том 1. No 2 | ISSN: 2686-9055 Представляя тело | htteps://doi.org/10. >653 39/cmj.v1i2.1> here -on the British Invasion / chosen writers and the 'British turn' in comics:Chris Murray's "Signals from Airstrip One: Thee British Invasion of American Mainstream Comics" (2010) in Thee Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts, edited by Paul Williams and James Lyons. Murray has also writteen separately on Moore and Morrison elsewhere; on Alan Moore:Annalisa Di Liddo's Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (2009); University Press of Mississippi's Studies in Comicsspecial issue on Alan Moore (2010); on Morrison: Will Brooker's "Hero of the beach: Flex Mentallo at the End of the Worlds" (2011); Steven Shaviro's "If I Only Had a Brain" in ImageText's special issue "Thee Worlds of Grant Morrison" (1993); on sexual violence in comics: Tammy S. Garland, Kathryn A. Branch and Mackenzie Grimes' "Blurring the Lines: Reinforcing Rape Myths in Comic Books" (2016); Christine Ferguson's "Victoria-Arcana and the Misogynistic Poetics of Resistance in Iain Sinclair's White Chappell Scarlet Tracings and Alan Moore's From Hell" (2009); on representation gender, sex, sexuality in U.S. comics and Comics Studies: Lillian S. Robinson's Wonder Women Feminism and Superheroes (200>); Carolyn Cocca's Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation (2017); on gender and queer studies: Kane Anderson's "Gender Studies and Quieer Studies" in Thee Secret Origins of Comics Studies (2017).
Thee methodological approach to the study of comics being adopted here pursues a theoretical comparative reading over a focus on the visual elements of the case studies chosen. Theis, however, does not endorse a model of authorship in comics that prioritizes the scriptwriter over the draftesperson. Thee work of Richard Case, Dave McKean, and Kevin O'Neil is equally vital in the expression of the theoretical themes they pictorialize. Thee same is true of the work of many diverse voices in the contemporary comics industries, mainstream and not, that engage with the topics under analysis here -Pia Guerra and Fiona Staples being but two examples of many 1 . Thee close readings here emerge from a narratological perspective and as such, visual form, style and media are discussed as ancillaries thereof 2 . Due to the constraints of the approach here, this paper cannot perform a comprehensive analysis of existing debates about the representation of gender violence in US comics, for instance, Gail Simone's work on 'Women in Refrigerators' and its subsequent discussion and elaboration in both fan and academic contexts 1 . However, in mentioning it, this paper acknowledges its indebtedness to this body of scholarship and, in some small way, seeks here to contribute to it. As grounding for the comparative analysis of the comics, this paper is also indebted to not only Kristeva's ideas concerning the Chora as I apply them to Morrison, but other post-structuralist approaches to the self as mutable, fragmented, fliuid, and de-centred, specificcally the machinic and rhizometric analyses of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatteari 2 . My critical methodology here has also been infliuenced by Donna Harraway and Susan Bordo's respective discussions of the social construction or performance of gender, and particularly the way this relates to embodiment and representation 3 . I will also briefliy note that due to the widespread engagement of various critical voices, academic and not, with the chosen authors and, to a lesser degree, the chosen case studies, the methodology of this paper has tried to represent and acknowledge this variety of analysis and commentary by referring to sources that blur the lines between various forms of academic scholarship and more generalaudience and fan-based comics criticism. Theese include fan annotations, undergraduate essays, blog posts and peer-reviewed chapters in academic collections being listed together. In performing critical close readings of these seemingly 'outside' case studies, this paper seeks to reexamine how each author rejects or reenforces gender and identarian centers in terms of the onto-existential issues and debates surrounding the self and the body. As such, this analysis is also not intended to read as an encomium of the 'patriarchs' of modern comics in a way that exonerates their respectively numerous and problematic examples of gender insensitivity. Instead, it is intended to expose work that readers and scholars alike might categorize as marginal to erasure, and in so doing, add such work to the assemblage of criticism of their respective oeuvres as valuable content that further informs, alters, or problematizes perceptions of both the works and their authors.
In view of the focus of the article as a whole, it would be helpful in this opening section to establish the ways each writer approaches and represents gender, sex, sexuality and gender violence in their work as a whole, and how this has been debated in the existing critical literature. When looking at the commentary and work of these three authors and their representation of sex, sexuality, gender and violence, a consensus can be assumed concerning a latent hierarchy of off ense. Theis position would lead one to assume, in view of Morrison's critique of Moore for instance, that Moore's comments about his depiction and characterization of women are problematic, reductive, short sighted, or willfully ignorant. Worse, that they can even be read as instances of rape apologism. Thee counterargument could also be assumed; namely, that Morrison's critique in this regard is as problematic, reductive, short sighted, and willfully ignorant as Moore's. One could claim that a refusal to present the scale of sexual violence in contemporary comics similarly makes one a rape apologist. Theis could be said to be hypocritical. Similarly, due to Gaiman's more ostensible participation in projects, across a variety of media including comics, ficlm, and television, that seemingly more openly engage with and pursue sociopolitical and cultural concerns of justice, particularly in terms of the contemporary issues and debates concerning race and gender, one could assume that Gaiman is somehow not as liable to criticism in the same way as either Morrison or Moore.
Commenting on Jacques Derrida's marginal approach to philosophy (and its margins) in Margins of Philosophy (1972), Maira-Daniella Dick notes in Thee Derrida Wordbook (2013) how there is a "complication qua revelation or unveiling, that takes place through the marginal of framing agency of parenthesis, which not only marks but enacts framing; and in doing so, illustrates in its performance, at the margins of commentary, so to speak, the margins, the frames by which commentary, complicating itself unveils in itself the truth in framing" (Dick, 2013, p. 112). Theis insight has infliuenced this paper's approach in that, instead of acquiescing to the consensus view of the characterization and representation of women in the mainstream or rather well known comics of Moore, Morrison, and Gaiman, this paper seeks to analyze the comparatively marginal work of these authors to see what characterization and representation (really) looks like in the umbra of critical and consumer spotlights, and what typically unnoticed or non-discussed insights can be gleaned therefrom in terms of the issues and debates between sex, identity, gender, and violence and how each author engages with them.
As noted in Laura Hudson's "Grant Morrison Talks Straight About Superhero Sexism and the 'Death Spiral' of Comic Books" (2011) for Comicsalliance, Morrison has expressed numerous views concerning sexism in superhero comics, the disturbing recurrence of rape in the work of his idol/rival Moore, and its problematic occurrence as a central device in numerous seminal texts of the typically accepted 'cannon' of great modern Western superhero comics and graphic novels. Regarding the retroactive addition of a rape scene in Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis (200>) run for example, Morrison comments on comics and misogyny stating that [i]t's hard to tell because most men try to avoid misogyny, really they do, in this world we live in today. It's hard for me to believe that a shy bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who's a novelist and a father is a really setteing out to be weirdly misogynistic. But unfortunately when you're looking at this beloved character who's obviously been ass-raped on the Justice League satellite, even saying it kind of takes you to that dot dot dot where you don't know what else to say.  Moreover, Morrison specificcally isolates the work of Moore as a key example stating: I pick [an issue of Marvelman] up and there are f*** two rapes in it and I suddenly think how many times has somebody been raped in an Alan Moore story? And I couldn't ficnd a single one where someone wasn't raped except for Tom Strong, which I believe was a pastiche. We know Alan Moore isn't a misogynist but f***, he's obsessed with rape. I managed to do thirty years in comics without any rape!  However, Jaynova's post for Thereatqualitypress titled "I love Grant Morrison but…" (2012) correctly draws atteention to the latent hypocrisy of Morrison's critique of Moore and rape by highlighting the author's problematic relationship with gender and identity issues in his own work: So that wasn't an implied rape scene in Hellblazer when the father and his friends invade the daughter's room? And I supposed Lord Fanny's rape, shown twice in the Invisibles, doesn't count? You could make the case that Ragged Robbin's rape doesn't count because it was a false memory. However, you can't write off the Crazy Jane was raped by her father off panel, and then by a stranger in a church on-panel. Maybe I'm being nit-picky because I've read a lot of Morrison in the past year, so it's all fresh, but still…that's a lot of rape for someone who doesn't put rape in comics.  Being ostensibly more intermedial that either Moore or Morrison, Gaiman's work has received far more academic atteention than Morrison's corpus. Moreover, Gaiman's ostensibly more progressive ouvre, specificcally his Sandman series, has been discussed by numerous scholars . Thee author's views on gender, sexuality, and identity emerged recently in an interview for Liter-aryHub titled "On Writing the Comics -And Quieer Characters -We Need: Neil Gaiman and N.K. Jemisin in Conversation" (2018). In an exchange concerning representation, transgenderism, and the changing sociopolitical and cultural mores over acceptable and indeed necessary content of contemporary comics, Gaiman, unlike Morrison, off ers an ostensibly progressive view: NG: I was asked yesterday, somebody said "Sandman was the ficrst place they ever encountered gay characters, lesbian characters, or trans characters. Would you write them like that now?" Well, no.
NG: Theings have changed. And because now there are lots of fantastic trans people making comics and telling their own stories. And I no longer would go, "hang on, I have trans friends. I am not seeing people like my trans friends in the comics that I am reading. So I am going to put people like my friends in my comics, because that's refliecting my world. " By the way, if you are a 15-year-old boy in Middle America reading my comic, I want you to meet people that you aren't otherwise going to meet. (Gaiman 2018) However, like Rodney Sharkey's "Being' Decentered in Sandman: History, Dreams, Gender, and the 'Prince of Metaphor and Allusion" (2008), Brisbin and Booth's "Thee Sand/wo/man: Thee Unstable Worlds of Gender in Neil Gaiman's Sandman Series" (2013) draws atteention to some problematic gender and identity instances in Gaiman's most lauded work. Theis criticism redounds to the claim that Sandman is, on close inspection, transphobic. Simon Domoney-Lyttele and Guillaume Lecomte of University of Glasgow's Comics Reading Group (2017) atteempt to unpack and investigate the allegation by taking into account historical, artistic, and cultural context asking: given that Sandman was published about 25 years ago, do the creators lack the current terminology to talk about the trans experience? Conversely, are they trying to publicly open up the discussion of gender identity? And where we can see it being transphobic, are there obvious occurrences of transphobic writing and/or illustration?  Thee entirety of Brisbin and Booth's article, and various analyses of it, have focussed on Gaiman's treatment of a trans character, Wanda, and onto-existential questions regarding the levels of inextricability in the relationship between gender, identity, and embodiedness. While the character's considerations, fears, deliberations, and pressures regarding sexual augmentation surgery, access (in this case denied) to psycho-spiritual trials (the Moon Trial), Domoney-Lyttele and Lecomte suggest that a debate over whether Wanda's storyline is transphobic misses the point in terms of the broader discussion of gender-based issues and debates in the comic and the industry (including the issues and debates surrounding other characters such as Lord Fanny in Thee Invisibles by Morrison, and Bill/ Promethea in Promethea by Moore). Theey conclude the Brisbin and Booth's argument "doesn't take into account is the lack of understanding of the idea of gender fliuidity" and, further, "suggest that it is probably fair to surmise that Sandman is trying to start a conversation about gender fliuidity, identity and representation" while conceding that "some aspects of the conversation do not fall in line with how we see gender today (the proverbial liberal we'), but [in the narrative] the ideas are being challenged" (Domoney-Lyttele and Lecomte, 2017; emphasis mine).
Here, it would seem that Morrison and Gaiman's approach to gender-based issues in the medium and genre is polarized. On the one hand, we have Morrison off ering hypocritical critiques and commentaries against other archons of the industry, regardless of how factually sound. On the other, we have Gaiman who critics convincingly argue has ostensibly atteempted to use his work to consciously and conscientiously draw atteention to these very same issues and debates, thereby using the privilage of his cis white heterosexual male voice to create dialogue, as well as open both he and his work up to criticism along these lines. "It is clear " argue Domoney-Lyttele and Lecomte "that Sandman was atteempting to subvert fairy tale expectations, so it is fair to say that gender and sexuality expectations are also being subverted. But does this absolve the focus on the gendered body?" (Domoney-Lyttele and Lecomte, 2017). While seemingly apologetic, the authors raise an interesting and important point central to this analysis: how does each author approach the myriad philosophical, sociopolitical, and cultural problems associated with the diff erence or inextricability between body and identity, self and sex?
Theere is much scholarly and non-academic commentary on the controversial history of gender-based violence, especially rape, in Moore's work. Joe Linton and Robert Deries note in "Thee Horror of Rape: Alan Moore, Lovecrafte, and Neonomicon" (2015) for Facts in the Case of Alan Moore's Providence, there are "notable instances" of sexual violence that "include the rape of [...] Abby in Swamp Theing" [and that] sexual violence against women is one of the key themes of several of Moore's works" . Well, quite obviously, the safest and most comfortable option would have been to go along with a censorious status quo and simply not refer to sexual matteers, even obliquely. Indeed, as I remember, this is exactly the option that most of my contemporaries in the ficeld back then tended to make their default position, since they were understandably reluctant to displease their editors and thus to jeopardize their chances of future employment. It seemed to me, however, that if comics could not address adult matteers -by which I meant a great deal more than simply sexual issues -then they could never progress to become a serious and accepted artistic medium, and would never amount to anything much more than a nostalgic hobby for ageing teenagers. To my mind [...] it seemed that such a potentially astonishing medium deserved more than this. Along with political and social issues, I elected to make sexual issues a part of my work.
[…] So perhaps it is the next decision that I made wherein I am at fault: my thinking was that sexual violence, including rape and domestic abuse, should also feature in Here, a critic of Moore could claim that the he is being reductive and short sighted. Consider this statement following Ó Méalóid's questioning of his depictions of rape: "Why should sexual violence be ring-fenced when forms of violence every bit as devastating are treated as entertainment? If I may venture an answer to my own question, might it be because the term 'sexual violence' contains the word 'sexual', a word relating to matteers traditionally not discussed in polite society?" (Moore, 201>). Theat same critic could also argue that Moore is both confusing and confliating the issue of his problematic depictions of sex and sexual violence with the broader issues and debates surrounding moral and legal censorship. In view of Gaiman's seemingly conscious and conscientious exploration and inclusion of sexual violence and broader gender-based discourses in his work intimated above, the underlying question here is the extent to which Moore does the same. Does Moore include sexual violence in his work in a way that ultimately presents its associated acts and their psychological and emotional consequences as exploitable, titillating spectacle at the expense of serious critique and commentary that a voice as respected as his could instantiate?
Kevin's article titled "Alan Moore, What's With All Thee Rapes?" (2013) for Contrarian Fanboy off ers a vociferous argument against any progressive interpretation of the relationship between sexual violence and the author's work. Thee article's statistical approach to Moore's corpus and instances of rape and/or other forms of sexual violence within it off er damning and ostensibly insuperable evidence against Moore in this regard. According to Kevin, there's been an instance of sexual violence (much of it shockingly offhaand and quickly dismissed or forgotteen) in every major work Moore has writteen and in many of his minor works. Every volume of Thee League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contains one instance of sexual violence (almost all aimed at Mina Murray). Lost Girls, his long germinating erotic adventure, veers between joyful sex and sexual violence so rapidly that I found myself wondering (however momentarily) if Moore even remembers the diff erence between the two. Neonomicon, his ode to Lovecrafteian horror, features a grizzly rape. Tom Strong, his atteempt to write an old-fashioned superhero comic has a rape (which is actually played as a punchline) [...] Even his earlier works (which in my opinion tend to be betteer than his off erings from the last ten years) have a disturbing patteern of sexual violence. Watchmen, V For Vendettaa, Killing Joke, Miracle Man each features a scene of sexual violence. And while many of these were treated with seriousness and humanity, still others were, in my opinion, both unnecessary and ultimately insulting. Obviously the problem is bigger than Alan Moore, but Moore is ofteen held up as the God of comic book writing and, just as ofteen, as the conscience of comics. Theis loftey status means that what he does, like featuring so much rape, deserves some added refliection.  At best, Moore could be seen here as willfully ignorant, in view of Kevin's critique. At worst, he could be seen as an apologist for sexual violence. Thee point here is that while the seemingly perennial presence of rape casts a long shadow over his work, I argue (and in view of the above perhaps even controversially) that Moore has, in the same corpus, done some interesting things with gender, the most interesting being through the character Orlando, as I will discuss later.
Thee above excursus has tried to show that there is a notable body of academic, industry, and consumer debates concerning the representation of gender and identity issues, rape and sexual violence in all three authors' work, but particularly in the work of Moore. In view of the ostensible atteitude many of said commentators, scholars and consumers off er when confronted by rape and sexual violence in comics in general, in Moore's work in particular, one might be inclined to believe that not only said representations, but the recursiveness of said representations, is abjectly 'disturbing', 'troubling', 'objectionable'. It is also true that a not insignificcant industrial perspective that adheres to this appraisal of the situation is the product of author-to-author rivalries, and issues and debates surrounding (dis)taste, particularly between Moore and Morrison. Thee strange refracting/refliexive rivalry between the two authors, one whose publicity and legend within the comics industry has the air of a confliict between master and apprentice or, more accurately for the two authors, mystagogue and adept, ofteentimes takes primacy over the content of the criticisms each author launches against the other. While Moore accuses Morrison of being parasitically derivative of everything Moore pioneered, invented, atteempted, and failed at ficrst, Morrison counters by labeling the former a serial contrarion who is increasingly out of touch with the zeitgeist, the readership, and the sensitivities and changing tastes and critical standards concerning not only sex and sexuality, but violence as well Representing Body | htteps://doi.org/10.>653 39/cmj.v1i2.1> . It would seem that in this quietly fraught milieu, Gaiman somehow gets a pass and is somehow immune to criticism in terms of his depiction of sex, sexuality, gender, and the female body in his comics, mainstream and marginal alike. I would counter that this middling and, compared to Moore and even Morrison, negligent critical analysis thereof is perhaps the most disturbing, troubling, or objectionable aspect of the representation of sex, sexuality, gender, female bodies, and violence among the three authors.
It is this paper's contention that while all three authors present innovative ways of re-reading the most misogynistic, racist, and otherwise prejudicial tropes of the medium, in a host of varied ways for diff erent readerships, markets, and epochs, they are not exempt from also subtly and overtly re-inscribing these same prejudices into the medium they are said to have collectively so revolutionized. Thee implication of this analysis, in the last instance, is to compel the reader to look beyond the spectacular talents of each author and, following this critical comparative reading, consider just how much or how littele each authors' representations and engagements with the issues and debates of sex, sexuality, gender, identity, and sexual violence really are. Beyond these contrasts and confliicts, diff erent critical opinions within this body of scholarship, such as the 'Contrarian Fanboy' (whom I quote earlier), suggest that the fact Moore's comics ofteen represent rape is not in itself problematic. Instead, the commentator suggests that ofteentimes, the debate redounds to questions of how rape can and should be visually and narratively represented. According 'Contrarian Fanboy' and others, the more substantive problem is when rape is used as a lazy paraphrase for visceral realism, emotional resonance, and character development. Thee question this begs, then, is how do said authors treat these themes in their more marginal works and what can we learn from it? (1988) is a three part miniseries published by DC comics. Comparatively recondite against Sandman, Gaiman's early foray into superheroic ficction is still a robust example of the author's poetic, elegiac, and oneiric style. Thee narrative follows two May Quieen-Human hybrid females, one an adult, the other a child. Being facsimiles (known as 'blossoms') of an original character named Susan Linden, the pair undertake a journey of self discovery during which they encounter notable ficgures of the DC Universe including Batman, Swamp Theing, Lex Luthor, and Poison Ivy. Thee miniseries lays out the following genealogy of Susan: Original Susan, followed by Sue 1 (the ficrst copy created from Original Susan's DNA/RNA by her friend/admirer/handler named Dr. Phillip Sylvian). Upon her (re)birth/manufacture, she becomes a costumed crime ficghter operating under the nom de guerre 'Black Orchid'. Her abilities include superhuman strength, speed, agility, fliight, durability, and a mystical connection to the plant realm governing all botanical life on earth known as the Green 1 . More important in terms of the identarian questions Gaiman's miniseries asks, Linden's blossoms are able to reincarnate through an undeficned process in which the consciousness of the most recent incarnation is transferred to a new host body following the death of the previous blossom. She is later burned to death by the Chairman, one of Lex Luthor's henchmen. Theis gives rise to a second blossom who is the focus of the narrative, Sue 2 and her immature sisterclone self Sue Jnr. Thee latent implication of the sempervivum of hybridity here is that Linden is immortal. In being multiform -that is onto-existentially (physically, psychologically, and emotionally) rhizometric -the character is in a very real sense everywhere and nowhere at once. Theere is no central self that persists through each new germination of self following the simultaneous destruction of the previous incarnation thereof. Theerefore, Linden's blossoms remember her/their old lives, their/her memories, their/her death, and other fragments of their/her experiences. Theis is highlighted in issue No. 1 "One Theing Is Certain" (1988) where the new incarnation of the Orchid persona is told by Dr. Sylvian, that "the OTHER one knew IMMEDIATELY", which is to say that knowledge of self in the Orchid diegesis is machinic . It is an assemblage of onto-existential fragments and impressions imperfectly recalled and subsequently inscribed on the latest or newest Orchid body, thereby producing an experience of fractured being for that body. Conversely, the character's auto-generative immortality points to some interesting considerations concerning primogeniture, legacy, and womanhood. If Orchid is seen as a collection of imperfect recall of previous incarnations of the persona superimposed, albeit incompletely, over, onto, or within an identical body, then Orchid's selfhoood is matrilineal where she/they is/are both daughter and mother to themselves/herself. Thee character's congenital loss of memory or imperfect recall raises agential questions in identarian terms. If an individual is (re)born fully grown but unable to recall the ontological and existential experiences that constituted said development to the terminus of maturity, one is in a position of not knowing who one is, where one came from, in Linden's case what one is, and why one came to be in this way. Theere are also some other seemingly latently gender-coded associations between the character, her powers/skill-set, ethic, teloi, and the actions required to bring them to fruition. For example, the obvious and reductively quintessential associations between women, fecundity, rebirth, growth and germination remain central to the character despite Gaiman's seemingly radical poststructural approach to gender, embodiedness, and identity in later works. Moreover, immediately within the ficrst few pages of Black Orchid, and for much of the later narrative, Linden's blossom is portrayed as naked, ethereal, and powerful in their/her immortality. However, they are also submissive, naive, manipulable, docile, and in their/her case, literally "born sexy yesterday". Thee phrase refers to "a trope that's particular to science ficction and fantasy, in which -thanks to the power of science or magica woman has the mind of a naive yet highly skilled child, but in the body of a mature, sexualized woman. Thee woman is fully grown physically, and is ofteen skilled at something male-coded like combat or coding, but she has littele experience of sexuality or social norms" .

Gaiman and McKean's Black Orchid
Sue is also shown to occupy an liminal space between being born sexy yesterday and not being born sexy yesterday enough. At the end of the series, afteer the remaining Susans arrive at a hidden grove in the Amazon valley to replant themselves in the relative seclusion and sanctuary of the deep jungle, Sue 2 declares: "I have too many of Susan's memories to be truly happy here" (Gaiman, 1989). Here, Sue 2's experience, however fragmentary, de-centred, or displaced, is still subtended by those same fragments she inherited. In this sense, she is plagued by a void significed by incomplete memories. As a result, she is subject to memories both beyond and within her, paradoxically binding her self to herselves with inconsistencies and incomplete narratives, and is thus unable to experience or enjoy the bliss of ignorance. In view of this use of de-centred selfhoood as a narrative frame, what can the individual whose being represents but a fragment of that selfhoood have in terms of agency? Sue 2 puts this paradox across rather poetically in issue No. 2 "Going Down" (1989): "In dreams we ficnd only contradictions. I tumble into the past, awash in another's memories. I dream my sister [...] further down. Further back. Thee dreams are Susan…Mother" (Gaiman, 1989). In the last instance, having Sue 2 simultaneously be her own child and mother both afficrms and trou- bles the quintessentially reductive construction of a woman's narrative value that limits her agential possibilities to the status of either dependent or caregiver. her experiences resulted in what psychiatrists call DISSOCIATION. Basically,that means she developed multiple personalities to cope with the trauma. Her therapists tell me that so far they've identificed SIXTY-FOUR separate personalities, each with its own name and function. And following the eff ects of the 'gene bomb'...each one with its own distinct meta-human ability. (Morrison, 1989) Not only does this imply that Jane is latently omnisex, but also here, the notion of de-centred or fragmentary self resembles that explored by Gaiman, albeit limited to psychic, aff ective, and emotional phenomena. Unlike Gaiman's botanical frame for Linden's blossoms' plurality of self, the provenance of Jane's multiple personalities is trauma. Like Gaiman's revelations about the back-story of the original Susan Linden, Morrisons' Jane is the victim and survivor of severe psycho-sexual childhood abuse perpetrated against her by her father (Morrison, 1989). In the ficrst two volumes of Doom Patrol, Morrison explores the eff ects of this initial trauma in numerous ways that ultimately redound to an overarching albeit unoriginal construct. Morrison portrays both Jane's powers and trauma as a psycho-emotional map that simultaneously charts as well as acts as a repository for her unconscious network of selves called Thee Underground. Here, it could be argued that while Morrison ostensibly situates Jane within quintessential tropes subtending persistent associations of women, mental disorders, abuse, and trauma in contemporary superhero comics, holdovers from the pervasive permutations of the psychoanalytical trope of the 'hysterical woman' derived, for example, from Sig-Corpus Mundi. 2020. Том 1. No 2 | ISSN: 2686-9055 Представляя тело | htteps://doi.org/10.>653 39/cmj.v1i2.1> mund Freud 1 . However, it can be equally argued that in doing so, Morrison's presentation of Jane represents a simultaneous exacerbation thereof as well as a reclamation of agency within the otherwise prohibitive and repressive frames of psycho-sexual disorder in women. Such a conclusion is derived from the fact that Jane's dissociative disorder is her superpower, one that grants her numerous types of supra-human agencies. At the same time, this power and agency is problematized by being inextricably linked to her continued suff ering and the cyclicality of her trauma. In this way, the themes, issues and debates surrounding agency, dis-empowerment, and re-empowerment both orbit and emanate form the Gordian core of her character.
All of Jane's personae are born of the same childhood trauma. Morrison here characterizes the Underground as a psycho-emotional network of repression: an Underground sub(conscious)way system expressed most clearly in Vol. 1, No. 28. In the story titled "Going Underground" (1990), Cliff Steel's (also known as Robotman, an ally and teammate of Jane's) psyche enters Jane's "psychescape" as Jane lays trapped within herself in a deep cataleptic state. Jane's complete psychic withdrawal is a result of the Patrol's battele with an apocalyptic entity called the 5th Horseman which lefte her psychic hierarchy of self damaged by the strain she/they endured. Driver 8, one of Jane's main personalities responsible for conducting the literal and ficgurative 'Train of her Theought', says to Cliff : "that's why the WOMAN is cataleptic. No one down here wants to take control any more in case they get hurt" (Morrison, 1990). Aboard Jane's Underground Train, Cliff catches indistinct fliashes of both Jane's selves and their personal histories in her mind. Driver 8 tells him they are "psychic fallout from K-5", the ficrst of Jane's personae, the very same one "who endured the ficrst ABUSE. Theose tremors are still resonating" (Morrison, 1990). She continues, adding that "Crazy Jane's only ONE of the selves who keep the woman functioning. As for Kay, SHE hasn't really existed since she was ficve years old. She's ASLEEP in one of the deep stations" (Morrison, 1990). Driver 8 further clarifices the nature of the deep structures of the Underground when she says to Cliff that "a lot of [Jane's personae] won't come out, even for me. Some refuse to say their names. Theose are the badly traumatized ones, in the deep stations of the Underground" (Morrison, 1990). It is also revealed that following her encounter with the 5th Horseman, Jane is suicidal. Driver 8 describes the situation as follows: "I think she intends to DESTROY herself and leave the rest of us trapped in a useless body. I think she's going to the WELL" (Morrison, 1990 son, 1990). Fig. 2. From Doom Patrol Vol. 2, No. 30 "Going Underground" (1990)

written by Grant Morrison, Illustrated by Richard Case
From a psychoanalytically theoretical vantage, the personae that form Jane's Underground are products of raw psychic forces in which reside Jane's life and death drives. Theere are two main implications here. First, the dissolution of self or essential self-fragmentation is a prerequisite to entry into the Well and the Underground in principium. Second, the network circumscribing and also bound to Thee Well is Choraic in a specificcally Kristevan way. Unlike Jacques Lacan's phallogocentric discourse concerning the androcentric prohibition of the power of the unconscious through the symbolic order reificed by institutions including the law, politics, and language, Julia Kristeva's notion of "the semiotic Chora ordering the drives" calls for a shifte in focus from the prohibitive symbolic order or phenotext to the primordial conditions and closeness associated with the genotext (Kristeva, 1980). According to Kristeva, society is subject to multitudinous sociopolitical constraints which "stop the signifying process… [and] knot it and lock it into a given surface or structure; they discard practice under ficxed, fragmentary, symbolic matrices" (Kristeva, 1980). Theis notion is described by Kristeva as the phenotext. Kristeva describes the genotext however as an inficnite space (that can be lent a topography, but never be given an axiomatic form) which includes within it "drives, their disposition, and their division of the body, plus the ecological and social system surrounding the body such as objects and pre-Oedipal relations with parents" much in the same way Jane-to-Jane interfacing through a more primary connection between her personae, the Well, and the Underground facilitate and engender similar genotextual relations (Kristeva, 1980). In this way, albeit by varying degrees of de-centredness, both the Well and the Underground cause Jane's ego or self-formulation to be decoupled from her/their aff ective experiences of egolessness.  Black Dossier (1999) follows the secret history of the League's oldest member Orlando. Born Bio of Theebes in 1260 BCE, Orlando can best be described as a sexually protean adventurer, warrior, and scholar who has lived for over 3000 years. Moore portrays Orlando as both witness to and participant in numerous important events of ficctional and non-ficctional world histories. Interestingly, Moore uses the character's 3000 year life to equate knowledge, experience, and history with gender, thereby drawing parallels between omni-sexuality and omni-historicity. Unlike his more controversial explorations of gender, power, identity, and violence in such texts as Watchmen and Neonomicon, through Orlando, Moore suggests that multiplicity of self or self-splitteing does not lead to any sort of onto-existential diminishment. Rather, it permits an onto-existential and epistemic holism. Theis is directly in contrast to Gaiman's exploration of the same dialectical thematization of self splinting as reductive, which concludes that self-splitteing and self-fragmentation result in an insoluble ennui that immortality, through re-incarnation, cannot salve. For Moore however, the epistemic and experiential knowledge garnered from onto-existential immortality and psycho-sexual fliuidity does not prevent the experiencer, as woman, man, both, and neither, from being exposed to danger. Orlando's omnisex state also puts her/him in a position to receive boons and favors. For example, when Orlando arrives in Egypt in 1250 BCE, his/her fundamental androgyny results in her/ him becoming a favorite of Pharaoh Usarmartteim (Ozymandias). In this instance, identarian instability is construed as a boon as opposed to a malady as it is with Jane, or an agential or memorial impasse as it is with Linden. Moore's explorations of the interconnectedness between gender, identity, and history really become the main thrust of "Thee Life of Orlando" afteer Orlando becomes immortal. It is at this point that s/he becomes, the perfect metaphor for civilization, that is, human history is an omnisex embodiment of experiences, including pleasure, pain, knowledge, mysticism, fear, war, love, heartache -the so-called thousand natural shocks that fliesh, regardless of sex, identity, and other permutations of embodiedness, is heir to.
In Metahistory (1973), the narratologist Hayden White notes that the construction of a history involves certain key elements. First, the chronological ordering of events within a historical ficeld. Second, the events that constitute this chronicle are further arranged and adapted into a narrative. Thee nature of this narrative is 'spectacular' while also being designed to be logically coherent in terms of narrative structure; that is, it must typically have a beginning, middle, and end (White, 1973). In Black Dossier, Orlando's alternate history undoes both the process of manufacturing history and history itself as a product of this process. It then subsequently remakes or reproduces history, through an interweaving of multitudinous extradiegetic and diegetic histories in a closed, interstitial circuit of historically-minded play. Theis play not only is (re)produced in and through Orlando, but specificcally their psycho-sexual mercurial-ness. In this way, Orlando's account ruptures the notion that the received grand narrative(s) of history are either 'natural' or originate from the self-presence of man and/or God. Here, the phallogocentric 'centre' from which history emanates is displaced by having Orlando be a specificcally transgender witness, participant, and narrator of these omnistories.
By displacing the centre of history by consistently substituting the ontological and existential foundations of its witness/participant and, in this way dividing the centre within itself, Moore equates history with Orlando's antipodal and unstable fliuctuations between woman, man, and inbetween. Here, Moore suggests that it is precisely through this play of presences that Orlando's gender oscillations provide an opportunity for the hidden, apocryphal, absent, or marginal histories of civilization to emerge from the interstices between fact and ficction, diegetic and extradiegetic, male and female . Thee latent implication here is that the intra-subjectivity of Jane, Susan, and Orlando allows for the reader's perceptions, barriers, and understandings circumscribing the modes of representation of gender and identity can be at least temporarily transgressed. What are we to make of these atteempts at expressing a post-structuralist approach to sex, sexuality, gender, and identity in these texts? What does Moore, Morrison, and Gaiman's work in Black Dossier, Doom Patrol, and Black Orchid reveal about each author's atteempt at engaging in the issues and debates thereof? One way of off ering a summary comment concerning the above analysis is to ficrst consider what these deconstructive examples are predicated on, that which each text takes as assumed. While ostensibly a motley trinity of three radically diff erent types of stories, wildly diff erent characters under varyingly disparate circumstances, there is a through-line in terms of the aff ective condition of Orlando, Jane, and Sue that actively undiff erentiates them. It would appear that the agential beneficts and power (literal and ficgurative) that comes with a decentred sense of self is a secondary, and in certain ways compensatory, allotment. It so happens that the primary, unifying psycho-emotional experience each character expresses, despite their power set, epoch, and the permutations of their embodiedness is a pervasive sense of isolation and/ trauma. While each author does much to suggest that a radical cutteing-off of self from self and/or of self from body is not a diminishment, much of the repressive, exploitative, and traumatic (pre)conditions which necessitate this reclamation of self-splitteing as a type of agency remain assumed. All three authors do much to try and bend the psycho-emotional, sexual, and embodied results and outcomes of these conditions. However, they seemingly cannot disentangle them from their assumed conditions. One could argue that this was impossible for Morrison and Gaiman to do, in that Doom Patrol and Black Orchid are part of broader comics universes, themselves under the aegis of broader DC Comics continuities. Under these constraints it would be fair to suggest that there is only so much each could do in terms of bending, distorting, reassembling, and revising the powers, experiences, inner worlds, and embodiedness of Jane and Sue. Moore, on the other hand, presents a character of his own design in a broader diegetic universe, also of his own creation. And while Moore, perhaps more so than either Morrison or Gaiman, reformulates entire traditions, chronicles, and histories, a revisionist's work needs to assume certain preconditions in order to revise them. Moore certainly does make a concerted eff ort to decentralize history, as a grand narrative with a distinct, discrete source, either purely masculine or feminine, Western or non-Western. An equally inextricable conclusion that redounds is the fact that Moore still presents his new omnistories through the auspices of received history. Indeed, this historiographical revisionism is an essential narrative and aesthetic design mandate of the entire series. Theis paper holds that it would do well to be conscious of that which deconstructive/ revisionist narratology and aesthetics actually ends up reifying, reproducing, and reinforcing.

CONCLUSION
Thee above analysis has atteempted to draw critical atteention to comics that are more academically disregarded in the oeuvres of their respective writers, all of whom are considered revolutionaries of the medium, and which have interesting connections in terms of how identity, the body, gender, sex and sexuality are represented.In so doing, this paper attempted to provide insightful comparative close readings of these works in terms of how the representation of an unstable, mutable self relates to questions of gender, sex, identity and embodiedness, with a focus on character and narrative themes related to three specificcally chosen case studies. It has endeavored to unfold this analysis using dynamic albeit cogent connections drawn between the aforesaid texts and the pertinent theoretical framework of post-structuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis, postmodern historiography and literary criticism. In conclusion, aside from off ering an interesting take on how comics can be used to disseminate dense and ofteentimes widely regarded 'difficcult' post-structuralist theory, this analysis has highlighted the key component in each text's aesthetic and narrative achievement: the paradoxical centrality of de-centredness. Theey are disordered, de-centrilized specificcally through their sex, genders, and identities, thereby challenging the limits and prohibitions of gender-based authority be it violence, trauma, memory, or history, but also more latent metaphysical problems regarding identity and embodiedness. It has also shown that there is a shadow to this enterprise, one predicated on assumed histories and stereotypes that ofteentimes circumscribe women in ficction to narrative and aesthetic zero-sum constructions and doublebinds.