#**Enigma

[aburdthatdraws]

Was working on concepts for my version of the Batman characters. This is the Year One/Zero Year arc (yes both exist in my version; I worked it out, it can work, trust.) I wanted to draw out the main characters of this arc, basically who would be the biggest players. I hope you enjoy my concepts.

[rei-ismyname]

Resurrection of Magneto Highlights 1

RoM is a book that loses something in the highlight format as the big moments are truly earned and impactful. There's an ongoing narration, dialogue or soliloquy running through each issue tying everything together and to truly give context I'd have to annotate it. Lucky for us, Al Ewing and Luciano Vecchio are masters and every panel serves as a coda for Storm or Magneto from SWORD and X-Men Red. This is easily my longest Highlights yet, there's just so much to say.

I wish I dreamt about Magneto

Ororo has a dream of a full page splash - Magneto, Max, saying 'I was wrong' surrounded by five of his iconic helmets. 3 red ones, bloody and facing towards the world. 1 black, 1 white upright behind his back. It's been quite a while since Uranos the Undying tore his heart out on Judgement Day but it's good to see Ororo has some measure of peace and love on Arakko with Craig of NASA.

She's the deuteragonist of RoM so she chooses to follow her dream and seek Max in the afterlife. Ororo shows up at Adam Brashear/The Blue Marvel's underwater base and asks for help with exactly that. He lampshades how bozos like Reed would deem it impossible and leads her to a portal. He's in the middle of explaining how dangerous it is and requires... we don't hear because Storm takes a running leap and YOLOs into it. Tarn the Uncaring and a who's who of Marvel cosmology are there to greet her. Tarn is insulted that Ororo has come for the guy who exploded his head, but as above, so below - he loves to talk and she outwits him.

Ashake is often obliquely referred to but very rarely directly, so it's lovely to see her magical ancestor here to help. As Ororo pets her black cat, Ashake confirms this is a place of magic. Symbols and metaphors are powerful here - something Mags could use help with in his current state. It's also connected to the Kabbalistic tree of life, but I'm not very knowledgeable about that.

Two redrawn and recoloured keystone moments of Max and Ororo's relationship down the bottom.

She resolved to see this through and her thought carries her towards the Sphere of Judgement. Unexpectedly a bunch of Dominions bar her path, though luckily the two mutants are too small to truly be of interest to them. Still, a single mortal arriving in Overspace is significant and they prompt her to ask questions. The face of Dominions are shown but it's still fairy tale rules. The most important thing she learns is about Enigma, though she doesn't know it at the time.

The Sphere of Judgement is hostile, everything is inverted. Lightning is red, the river is lava, clouds are black, everything is broken. She notices this spot from her dream and the charred frames of Max's five helmets still sit in blood. Magneto has been here for months by choice, bypassing the Waiting Room Wanda built but refusing to move on. He believes he deserves this.

Finally she reaches Magneto weeping blood in front of a wall of names. Everyone he ever killed and he's counting every one, remembering their name. He's judging himself, punishing, and doesn't think he deserves to leave.

He shares his greatest shames, his most recent cruelties. Worst, the ones he convinced himself was necessary. He's overwhelmed by the red in his ledger and in this place of judgement lashes out, flinging names off the wall at Ororo while naming the person. What snaps him out of it is the mention that something happened to Charles, heh.

'The no-place of his heart' 👌

Max turns the judgement on Ororo but she rejects it, calling him out for extending Charles the grace he won't extend to himself plus a little hypocrisy. Magneto has always been prone to drama and that tendency can hurt as much as it heals.

That really gets him going, but he's judging himself more constructively now. Love, friendship, accountability. The things that are keeping some part of tethered to the living world. He pulls one more name down to say the name aloud before he sends it at Ororo - it's his - Max Eisenhardt. Still, he cries 'it's out of our hands.' He truly wants to give up but I think a part of him knows his story isn't done.

Ororo disagrees. Displaying why she's the only person who could assist in the resurrection of Magneto, she covers his eyes and remembers the rules of this place. The wall of the dead becomes its opposite - the wall of the living. Not those he killed but those he saved. It's enough to pull him out of punishing himself. Neither group should be forgotten but he can choose to save life rather than take it - to change.

Torturing yourself in a personal hell might appease some of those dead, but accepting responsibility to the living should be what comes after judgement. Suffering helps no one, and as he says to Logan as he's about to kill Charles much later - 'no more martyrs.' Part of why I enjoyed Magneto identifying Logan Behavior is because he himself is the king of it. Charles too. All three are prone to martyrdom but dying is easy. It's living that's difficult and worthwhile. Secluding yourself from the world, whether it's in the Sphere of Judgement, a mega prison, or with a pack of wolves - is senseless and selfish. Living is better.

Next time - what does that actually mean for both of them and how do they get out of this place? It's not as simple as turning a key. Choosing to live is hard work. Metatextually, change and rebirth requires a tour of all that he is, all that he's done. What's the point of killing a character and then bringing them back the same as they were? Comic books do it all the time, but Magneto's long history is a study of opposites and extremes. He, the writer and the reader all need to deconstruct Magneto so he can be reconstructed as a better person. With the benefit of hindsight we know he succeeds, but what does that actually look like for him? 60 years of his oversized influence on the world is a lot and it only gets better from here.

[fanpageofthedead]

laplace, everyone

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Enigma - Return to Innocence 1994

"Return to Innocence" is a song by German new-age worldbeat musical experiment project Enigma, released in 1994 as the lead single from their second studio album, The Cross of Changes (1993). It reached number one in over 10 countries, peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart, and entered the top five in several other countries. "Return to Innocence" was the project's biggest hit in the US, reaching number two on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number four on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video, which depicts a man's life in reverse, received heavy rotation on European music channels. The song was used to promote several types of media in the mid-1990s, including film and TV commercials. In autumn 1994, the song was featured in an episode of the TV show My So-Called Life. In 1996, the song was further popularised when it was used in a television advertisement to promote the 1996 Summer Olympics.

The song's melodic and talking vocals in English are provided by Angel X (Andreas Harde), and a short talking vocal by German pop singer Sandra, while an Amis chant ("Weeding and Paddyfield Song No. 1") is repeated, which opens the song. Difang and Igay Duana, from the Amis (an indigenous Austronesian ethnic group native to Taiwan), were in a cultural exchange program in Paris in 1988 when their performance of the song was recorded by the Maison des Cultures du Monde and later distributed on CD. The producer of Enigma, Michael Cretu, later obtained the CD and proceeded to sample it. In addition, the drum beat of the song was sampled from the Led Zeppelin song "When the Levee Breaks", played by John Bonham.

In March 1998, Difang and Igay sued Cretu, Virgin Records and a number of recording companies for unauthorised use of their song without credit. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money and all further releases of the song were credited (including royalties) to the Duanas. Cretu has stated that he had been led to believe that the recording was in the public domain and that he did not intentionally violate the Duanas' copyright.

"Return to Innocence" received a total of 57,2% yes votes.

[throwbackblr]

[ywraa]

i mean, we have oil painting sky in the story so technically something like this could be possible

[algoney]

[squidcandy]

do you think if i draw them enough they’ll be playable

[distxrtionist]

why is this literally them 😭😭😭

[fishareglorious]

[l3r40l]

So, how is the hunger strike going?

[arcanistsanctum]

Vereinsamt In-Game CGs (2/2) *Unrecorded

[nobeerreviews]

Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.

-- Dorothy L. Sayers

[weirdlookindog]

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) - Enigma

illustration from Hugh McCrae's "Colombine", 1920

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