Friday, December 17, 2021

I must have noticed the Joan of Arc influence in the Goddess before, right? I'm not seeing it just now after almost 30 years, am I?

We saw the last issue of this series years ago, but I was surprised this issue from six months before that appeared to still be the same plotline! I also wasn't expecting Deathlok to debase himself for the Goddess, or get stone cold rejected, either. From 1993, Deathlok #28, "The Visitation" Written by Gregory Wright, pencils by Kevin Nobasic, inks by Greg Adams.
Deathlok and Siege are about to fight Timestream in Australia, but Timestream scheduled his activities to when he knew Deathlok would be busy, during the Infinity Crusade! (I know the tags says Infinity War; which I like better, but it's all Infinity!) The Goddess makes a brief appearance, about to bring Deathlok into the fold (second bananas need not apply, Siege) but then abruptly rejects him as "no longer the man of virtue once beheld in my vision." Deathlok, Michael Collins, is badly shaken by this and gets really mopey. Siege is not particularly comforting.
After a couple subplot pages--Michael's family was having financial trouble, and young soldier Luther Manning seems to be having flashes of memories from the old future version of Deathlok, but the Goddess seems willing to take him. After some cyberspace hacking, Deathlok and Siege manage to drive off Timestream (and possibly prevent him from flooding the world, starting with Australia?) just in time for the sun to explode! Thankfully, apparently at that link I noticed the Goddess's Joan of Arc look before. 

The next issue teased a "metaphysical quest" for a destroyed Deathlok, as well as the return of the Demolisher: the returns may have been diminishing at this point in the series, but I do kind of like that cover.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

I mean now that you mention it, I can definitely see the resemblance now. Makes sense doesn't it? I wonder of Starlin was also influenced by her or not.

That being said I definitely preferred the Infinity War event over this one by a HUGE margin. I mean not much of consequence really happened other than a certain characters having their faith tested, but even then that was only worth a single tie-in issue more than the entire "event" itself.
I'm also more biased towards the IW because of the aspect of the doppelgängers and how much they stimulated my imagination. Something just cool on a very basic level about a dark copy of yourself, especially superheroes, you know?

I'll say this, it really is fucked up that she passed on the pacifist but was more than cool with taking the original host, Luther Manning.