Posted on: July 18, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Sheer Immanence: Ethical Affirmation and the Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt / :10 / 16M / [email protected] /

In our second piece dealing with animation as the purveyor of philosophy, Gregg Jashnani’s piece about “Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt”, a piece from the Secret Origins #2 Annual is very deep, almost unreadable to the layperson of philosophy. The piece (which does not have a good explanation given to it by Gregg in this issue; perhaps readers could understand it better if a synopsis of the section is given) is about the Flash, caught up at the end of eir rope. What happens is that for Gregg, the Flash, even though eir super-speed and abilities is never able to escape the matter that eir is from. The idea of Flash-as-circuit is an interesting proposition as the story shows that the Flash is influential in some way for eir becoming the Flash in the first place. Gregg ties this to a section in “The Gay Science” where Nietzsche describes a proposition given by a demon, to live one’s life over continually (comparable in a sense to the plot of Groundhog’s Day). The big question in Nietzsche’s piece is whether it would be fulfilling to “live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it”, to which the author responds positively. The Flash does much the same thing in eir meeting with the Anti-Monitor, and this synthesis of heavy philosophy and lighter comic narrative leads the reader to a crux. This piece may be dense and hard to understand at times, but give it a chance and one really will have an epiphany the second after one can connect the two philosophies.

Rating: 7.3/10

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