A week since we last saw Fräulein Haas and Dr. Driesch, in the prologue. The same day as episode 1.

Currently at #1 in the UK: ‘La Isla Bonita’ – Madonna.

Dr. Driesch was having qualms earlier. But his doubts have little to do with his sense of propriety. It’s more a matter of self-preservation.

The Mastermind body is referred to as a ‘twin’. The bodies were presumably chemically or biologically altered rather than created from scratch. They were identical twin brothers, rather than clones.

This is the first reference to Overspace. Implying that the dark gods come from a higher mathematical dimension than us. This is a common explanation for Lovecraftian deities, and provides a convenient explanation for their ability to bypass physical barriers, and have bizarre ways of travelling through space and time. One need only look to H.P. Lovecraft’s own ‘The Dunwich Horror’, ‘The Dreams in the Witch-House’, and the like.

It also implies that the Cult of the Black Sun have some measure of established lore about their masters, whether accurate or not.

Higher dimensionality is a common enough trope in comics and occult thinking. We need only look at Mr Mxyzptlk, the trickster from the Fifth Dimension, who harasses Superman once a month.

The idea of higher-dimensioned entities might interact with lower-dimensioned ones is older yet; dating back at least to Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott.

Vibrations so often seem to be at the heart of universes or dimensions intersecting. One need only think back to The Flash of Two Earths, when Barry Allen’s vibrations carried him from Earth-One to Earth-Two; or Crisis on Infinite Earths, and how the Monitor used giant ‘tuning fork’ mechanisms to save Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S, and Earth-X from the Anti-Monitor.

The use (and indeed name) of a ‘crystal tetrahedron’ invites obvious comparisons to the Shining Trapezohedron used to contact Nyarlathotep, in H.P. Lovecraft’s last story, ‘The Haunter of the Dark’.

A tetrahedron is a four-faced solid: a triangle-based pyramid. This tetrahedron appears to be square-based, however; which means it’s more properly a pentahedron.

We see that Fräulein Haas has changed into a Tau robe for the ritual to come. Typically named after the Greek letter they resemble, Tau robes are a floor-length hemline, bell sleeves whose arms extend from fingertip to fingertip. Wearing the robe demonstrates that you are of spiritual intent, ready to partake of ritual magic, and are thus no longer in daily dress.

If you have read Zenith before, the tetrahedron Haas is studying should look disconcertingly familiar.

The Order of the Nine Angles is an occult movement, in its most infamous form combining left-hand Hermetic mysticism with Nazi trappings. The Nine Angles to which they refer have had various definitions at time, sometimes referring to the planets of their cosmology, the system itself, and the mystic themselves, or dark gods that exist in an acausal realm, often including Baphomet and figures influenced by classical sources. Morrison is obviously looting quite freely from them.

The design reminds me of the Circle of Solomon, although in the conventional circle, the triangle lies to the east of the circle. The demon to be contacted is called into the triangle; while the celebrants remain in the circle.

The masks appear quite bland, with openings for the eyes and mouth. They serve to dehumanise and deindividualise the wearer, minimising empathy and maximising conformity. ONA-affiliated extremist groups favour skull masks, just to reinforce their Nazi viewpoint. The Order of the Black Sun, predating Nazism, has no such pretension, apparently.

One of the difficulties with ritual magick is getting the celebrants to buy in, to willingly suspend their disbelief. By saying all this out loud, Greta Haas is encouraging herself and Driesch to visualise, to will the contact into occurring.

Another neat trick in evidence here: Haas is in a panel with a circular border, just as she is within the chalk circle.

It’s easier to imagine an entity can appear within incense smoke, which makes a variety of shapes and forms as it coils through the air, rather than out of thin air itself.

Haas appeals to all the senses now: our sense of hearing in the last panel, our sense of touch here; there is a censer to draw the senses of sight and smell and taste. Continuing to guide the narration.

Haas is experienced with this game. She has already contacted one of the dark gods on at least one occasion.

The traditional Lovecraftian cliché for a creature is for it to be amorphous, tentacled, and with too many eyes and mouths. This particular image is entirely in keeping with that tradition. Depictions of shoggoths or Shub-Niggurath or formless spawn of Tsathoggua could all have the sort of appearance we seein this panel.

Since this entity is multi-dimensional, it could well be that it has several faces, and we are witnessing several of these faces superimposed over each other in accordance the kind of ‘alien geometry’ to which HPL loved to allude.

I think we can all understand why Fräulein Haas seems a little hesitant, stumbling over her ritual welcome for her master.

The dark god is based on Brian Ward’s illustration for the chapter ‘Animism and Shamanism’ of Peter Carroll’s Liber Null and Psychonaut: The Practice of Chaos Magic

Ward’s illustrations for Psychonaut were to form the basis of the appearance of the Many-Angled Ones that we encounter throughout Zenith. I think this was something Grant Morrison explicitly specified.

Part of that may be due to Dr. Driesch’s age and self-professed ill health impairing his ability to handle stress, but as Haas said in the prologue, bearing witness to the manifestation of one of the Many-Angled Ones is physically taxing as well as psychologically.

Haas has abandoned any pretence of patience for Dr. Driesch, whether because of his weakness, or his qualms, or the fact that, having revived the Masterman twin, he has outlived his usefulness. Note that she is masked, while he is not.

So there are levels of power among the Dark Gods as there are among superhumans.

Note that this god has not passed into the chalk circle.

Sacrifice has been a part of religion for millennia. The Book of Leviticus describes burnt offerings. Traditionally a sacrifice must represent great expenditure or loss on behalf of the worshipper. Abraham, after all, was called upon to offer Isaac but at the last moment God accepted a ram in his stead. A human holds greater value than a beast, which holds greater value than a bird. And the farther we go into the dark waters of human sacrifice, we can presume that the greater the treachery or transgression involved in the sacrifice, the greater it is appreciated.

Technically, I think Driesch is at the bargaining stage there.

We’ll ignore the double entendre about the dark god being ‘inside’ him. Driesch is being violated in ways that make any that notion seem gentle and circumspect by comparison.

If Driesch couldn’t feel the pressure to which Greta Haas alluded earlier then he can now.

To destroy a human body from the inside using internal pressure, it requires approximately 20 to 30 pounds per square inch to cause fatal internal ruptures, though critical organ failure begins at much lower levels.

A bit more than 30psi there, I think. Hundreds, or maybe thousands of pounds per square inch.

I’m not sure what I like best about this explosion. The way Yeowell shows so much with just splashes of black ink against white; the lack of a sound effect… or the teeth.

A human body is too fragile to contain a dark god’s essence, or rather as much of its essence as it projects into our dimension.

Whatever Fräulein Haas was expecting, presumably it wasn’t quite so messy or violent. Was that her first murder? Did she think Driesch’s heart would just give out?

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something in smoky or vaporous form move to inhabit a vacant body or a cadaver in the pages of 2000 AD. Judge Death and the other Dark Judges have spirit forms that resemble faces in smoke, and they inhabit specially prepared cadavers, although they can also possess the living and perform mind control. Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Master of Termight, was reduced to an insubstantial form in his teleporter accident in ‘Killer Watts’, and from Nemesis the Warlock books 1 to 4 Torquemada’s spirit inhabited cadavers, or recently vacated bodies of his Terminators too.

Masterman and his Many-Angled Mates are part of a long tradition of evil body-pilots.

Masterman’s awakening is a strangely bland event in itself. But what did we expect? This isn’t the first time the procedure to provide a Many-Angled One with a body has been undertaken.

That talk about augmenting his capabilities might mean something if we knew what they were before. Last time, presumably, he had strength and durability. For the time being, it means he kicked the only other superhuman’s arse during the War, and now he’s even worse.

Masterman has more interest in his muscles than anything Haas might have to say. Even when dressed in (super)human flesh, the Many-Angled Ones have no regard for human life. The only interest we hold for them is what we can do for them at that time; beyond that we are of no more importance than ants.

Not “this was”, or “this belonged to”, or “this is all that remains of”. This is. Driesch is much the same to Masterman, whether a scared old Nazi bastard who helped make him a suitable transport in the mortal sphere and revive said body for deployment, a fragile body into which he’s projected there merest fragment of his essence past the limit of the frail body’s tolerances, or a bloody smear on the wall.

Cruelty comes easily to the dark gods. Does having a (super)human body make it any different? Possibly. It makes the act more fun.

The name Iok Sotot, and the epithet ‘eater of souls’ comes from the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The name is derived from Yog-Sothoth, created by H.P. Lovecraft.

We will encounter the term ‘lloigor’ in due course.

Masterman suggests the Many-Angled Ones had contacted humanity during the Upper Paleolithic. This predates any known literate civilisations and any recorded histories. Lovecraft’s stories, and those of his peers, often included civilisations so ancient that little remains of them; one need only consider R.E. Howard’s Hyborian age. A good chunk of this conceit of prehistoric civilisation derives from theosophical writers such as Churchward, Blavatsky et al.

And whatever plans Masterman has for those superhumans, they aren’t nice. This won’t be the first photograph to be ripped n this story. It’s one of the motifs for this phase.

‘City of Tiny Lites’ is a Frank Zappa song, on the album Sheikh Yerbouti album; the basic track for which was recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon, in London. An animated promo for this song appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

If one were flying high above London at night, it would appear to be a city of tiny lights.