FINAL CRISIS NOTES:
THE ANTI-LIFE EQUATION

BY "LEAPING" LINT HTCHER

     Ideas have consequences. Like the steps on a staircase, they take you somewhere. 
On the flip side, the lack of an idea, the absence of a step or two in the staircase, can stop you in your tracks.
A case in point: the scientific revolution took hold in the West rather than the East. In the West, Christianity firmly established the idea that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was a God of reason and order. This was a step in the staircase. The next step was scientific method: repeat an experiment, get the same results, and you've got yourself a universal law. Step number one, the God of reason and order, lends the West a basic assumption: in this universe, you can expect the same action to yeild the same results again and again — a basis for building technology. In the East, that first step was missing. There the basic assumption stated that all was illusion. There was no reason to expect an experiment to produce the same result time after time. No reason to experiment. No confidence that reality was dependable.

     Jack Kirby wrote his Fourth World series for DC Comics as though ideas have consequences. The whole freaking multi-layered epic – originally explored in New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen — is about worlds built upon ideas, worlds lead by titanic personalities which are the posturing, pontificating incarnation of an idea. Two planets are at war:  New Genesis and Apocalypse. The former is built upon freedom within the context of family. Their leader? Highfather. The latter is about control within the context of totalitarian dictatorship. Their leader? Darkseid. (Pronounced "dark side" — although I still lean toward my youthful mispronunciation "dark seed".)

     A truce is reached when Darkseid and Highfather exchange sons. Scott Free, child of New Genesis, must live out his days on savage, cruel Apocalypse. A vision of freedom drives him to seek new avenues of escape from the twisted orphanage of the so-called Granny Goodness. His skills as an escape artist eventually earn him the name Mister Miracle. Meanwhile, Orion, the child of Apocalypse, must somehow find his way on peaceful New Genesis. Born a warrior tyrant king, Orion must harness the violence within him.

     Superman and his pal, Jimmy Olsen, first encounter these New Gods when Darkseid extends his influence to our planet. The master of Apocalypse is in search of something called the Anti-Life Equation. Fractions of the Equation, Darkseid has discovered, exist in the minds of various Earthlings. His efforts to dredge up these fragments always involve bizarre super-scientific sadism — like an amusement park that is secretly torturing Darkseid's captives. These efforts are spearheaded by cronies like the perverse Desaad or the Elmer Gantry style religious manipulator Glorious Godfrey. When the gods of New Genesis get wind of Darkseid's machinations, they begin to show up on our shores to mount a counter-attack. Earth begins to look like a third world country caught in cold war conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

     Kirby's Fourth World series appeared in the early Seventies. A young kid just getting my feet wet in the world of comics, I was put off by Kirby's bold, distorted drawing, preferring the stylized realism of Neal Adams. I specifically recall staring, perplexed, at Kirby's first issue of Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth (1972). I passed it over, probably in favor of Bob Haney's and Jim Aparo's latest issue of Brave and the Bold. Kamandi was set in a Planet of the Apes style post-apocalyptic future in which a young boy, venturing from the safety of a military bunker called Command D, searches for other human survivors. He discovers a world full of talking, humanoid animals and every freakish mutation Kirby's imagination could unleash. Something told me, even as a kid, that this future Earth, the result of something called the Great Disaster, was somehow tied to those other bizarre Kirby books. The Great Disaster that shook the foundations of the planet was the fulfillment of a persistent threat — New Genesis and Apocalypse would finally end their conflict using Earth as their battleground.

     Over the years, DC has managed to get a LOT of mileage out of Kirby's Fourth World characters — for a while there, it seemed as though Darkseid was behind every major event. With their new maxi-series, Final Crisis, DC comics brings these multiple New Gods conspiracy theories to a head, finally fleshing out the details of the Great Disaster. If this event followed the same pattern as previous Crises, practically every title in DC's superheroic lineup would eventually feature Kamandi's post-apocalyptic landscape. For a few issues anyhow. This time, however, the events of Final Crisis are contained within the main series and spill out only into a handful of sideline mini-series. Final Crisis doesn't put a dent into the current issues of Superman or Justice League or Detective Comics. This is a little strange — almost as though the entire Crisis is an Elseworlds tale. I find this unfortunate, although it is certainly easier on my budget.

     Once again, ideas play a key role. The central concept is that Darkseid has come into possession of the aforementioned Anti-Life Equation, a set of ideas which mathematically extinguishes free will in the mind of anyone who hears it. Since the Seventies, creators like Jim Starlin and Walter Simonson have used the Anti-Life Equation in various post-Kirby tales. Starlin even went so far as to make the Equation a living being, but thankfully this has been retconned out of continuity. No one tinkering with Kirby's original concepts ever actually spelled out the equation algebra style. Although it was occasionally shown as fragments of strange luminous symbols. Leave it to Grant Morrison, the writer at the helm of Final Crisis, to be ballsy (or perhaps foolish) enough to give us the full equation, lock, stock and barrel. Here is what he came up with:
loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x shame x failure x judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side

     Darkseid unleashes the above over every form of electronic communication on earth. According to the wikipedia entry on the Anti-Life Equation: "By speaking said equation, Darkseid can insert the full formula into people's minds, giving them the mathematical certainty that life, hope and freedom are all pointless. According to Oracle, who barely escaped the 'full' effects of the Equation by shutting down the entire Internet just in time, the Anti-Life Equation further states that the only point in anything is to conform to Darkseid's will[3]. Shilo Norman (the current Mister Miracle) is able to break free from this with the help of Metron, gaining immunity from the Equation in the process."

     Frankly, the equation Morrison came up with is nothing special. It's something he might have written on a napkin between beers, rather than a nuanced bit of anti-wisdom. However, victims of the Equation are forever mouthing slogans as they serve Darkseid and it's these brief bits of propaganda that actually prove interesting. One slogan goes "Anti-Life takes away the fear. Life is a question! Anti-Life is the answer." Another is "I live for Anti-Life. I die for Anti-Life. Freedom is surrender to Darkseid!" followed by "All is one in Darkseid."
The equation convinces you of despair, then provides a way out: submission to Darkseid's will is preferable to the noise of one's own misery. Thus, most of the people affected by the Equation are mindless zombies. Stronger willed humans, superheroes like Black Lightning and Green Arrow, for example, are put under an extra layer of control when they are forced to wear one of Glorious Godfrey's "Justifier" helmets.

Is there a way to combat the Anti-Life Equation?

Is there, perhaps, a Pro-Life Equation?

     So far in Final Crisis, there is no indication of a Pro-Life Equation. And, in fact, we can't realistically expect one to turn up — not if the whole point of the series is to show us the Great Disaster, followed by the post-apocalyptic world of Kamandi. "The Day Evil Won" is, after all, the slogan for the series.
Still, it seems logical that there would be a Pro-Life Equation. One could simply take Morrisons algebra and enter the opposite of each item in the equation. Something like this results:
friendship + acceptance + courage + hope + dignity ÷ praise ÷ deliverance ÷ truth x forgiveness x innocence x success x mercy n=y where y=despair and n=purpose, love=truth, life=eternity, self=new creation

     There is, however, something tacky about that approach. A simple either-or, black or white, optimism over pessimism doesn't work. Broadcasting "Hello Kitty" over all forms of terrestrial communications isn't going to stop the Anti-Life Equation in its tracks. The existence of the Equation points to a certain gravity in despair, an irresistable pull that makes bad news a crushing blow from which simplistic good news can't quite lift us.
Perhaps, as Dante discovered, saying "Yes" to life and freedom involves a trip through despair. Perhaps this produces a peculiar, unique strength — one which is gained only in struggle against darkness — which is an essential part of the engine of hope.  In the Divine Comedy, Dante enters a place of which it was said "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Yet with the help of his guides, Virgil and then Beatrice, Dante passes from Hell, through Purgatory, and into Heaven. Perhaps, then, the Pro-Life Equation passes through the Anti-Life Equation. The dark math of the Anti-Life Equation is subsumed within a larger, brighter equation.

     In other words, the cross is the engine of hope, eventually giving rise to the resurrection. Do I expect that sort of pattern to appear in Grant Morrison's take on the Great Disaster and in whatever he has in mind for bailing out the DC Universe and somehow returning her to normal?
Well, yes, in a way.

     We certainly won't see an answer that involves individual will further disappearing. "All is one in Darkseid" won't switch to "All is one in Highfather," for example. It's not as odd an apocalyptic option as it might sound. In the original ending to the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example, the conflict of men and angels is manipulated to bring mankind back to some primordial state before individuality took hold. In an Eastern religion like Buddhism, individuality is a mistake, a burden, an error to erase by returning to a state of oneness with Nirvana. We definitely won't be seeing something along those lines:  trading in "all is one in Darkseid" for a different flavor of total self-forgetfulness.

     No, the West draws on Christian concepts no matter how much we may try to forget them. In Christian theology, the existence of each individual is a specific, deliberate act of God. As Pope Benedict has put it, "Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." We may inherit a struggle against self-centeredness (to put it mildly), but individuality itself is a gift from God, a gift which the sin of Adam made burdensome, but did not utterly ruin. God is love and the existence of love is predicated on relationships between real, freely acting individuals. We may lose ourselves in wonder when we finally see God, but we remain ourselves.

     Someone will have to absorb the Anti-Life Equation and "give birth" to the Pro-Life Equation. Individual freedom and dignity will be reasserted, reborn. Mister Miracle has already overcome the Anti-Life Equation. Maybe he can somehow spread his survival skills around to the rest of the terrestrial population.

    On the other hand, the Inferior Five did reappear in Morrison's Final Crisis spinoff Superman Beyond 3D. I kind of wish Merryman would set everyone free by putting massive diapers on all the Darkseid statues. But we'll see.

This essay is also available in podcast form at http://linthatcher.podbean.com.