Kill Six Billion Demons IV: “King of Swords” (part five)

We left off with Solomon David calling the others together and trying to mediate Mammon and Mottom's dispute before it really does become another multiversal war. Reaching out to the others besides those two might not have been the best idea. Who even knows what shenanigans they might pull to further complicate matters.

It's also pretty hard to negotiate a truce between an aggressor whose sole motive for aggressing was "nervous breakdown" and a defender who can't remember why these people are all standing around him even in the best of conditions, but confidence is something Solomon possesses in excess, so. Let's see how close he's able to get to not failing miserably at this Sisyphean task.

Mammon seems more coherent than usual. Also, he seems to have shrunk himself down to be able to fit in the room.​

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected. Special shoutout to Gog-Magog for validating my first point as well; seriously, does she ever do anything at these meetings besides try to stir up shit between the others and make bad jokes? She hasn't even pretended to take either conference we've seen so far seriously. At a certain point you'd think they'd stop even bothering to invite her.

Eventually, Mottom loses patience with the peanut gallery, and Gog-Magog fails yet another saving throw against disintegrate face.

Utterly shameless reaction image bait in the second panel there, but at least it's good at what it's meant to do.​

I'm starting to think she invented that spell specifically and exclusively for Gog-Magog. There are very few things Mottom has done that I don't hold against her, but this is one of them.

Also, is Gog-Magog actually a bunch of worms in a suit? I thought she just summoned them to regenerate her biomass with when injured, but this time you can actually see them flying out from the blast before the regeneration process starts. Maybe that's her own approach to the mortality problem? She moved her consciousness into a worm colony that can keep reproducing indefinitely? Well, even moreso than the others she seems like she's not all there, which might be a side effect of this. Or it might just be a matter of her having to be crazy to turn herself into worms in the first place.

...

Also, I was looking back at where her "Palace of Worms" was pointed out in book one's map of Throne, and apparently it's Gog-Agog, without the M. That's curious. Gog and Magog are recurring names in Abrahamic eschatology, usually closely associated and sometimes used as a single compound name (hence my initial mistake). They're usually interpreted as nations or armies that will be fighting on the wrong side of an apocalyptic war against the messiah. If Gog-Agog is a hive mind of worms, then that would make her fit the bill as a sort of one-woman evil army. I wonder why the author changed the name a little bit here while leaving Solomon David's perfectly biblical. Hmm.

...actually, hold on a second! Looking it up online now, the first instance of Gog-Magog, in the book of Ezekiel, is written in a way that suggests the M sound, the Hebrew letter מ, might not actually be part of the name at all. When placed as a prefix at the front of a noun, מ means "from (noun)." So, the original intent may have been "Gog, from Agog." Or perhaps just "Gog, from Gog" depending on the pronunciation.

In that case, Gog-Agog actually is the (oldest) biblically accurate Anglicisation. If the comic later clarifies that "Gog" is her personal name and "Agog" is either her empire or the worm swarm her mind inhabits, then that'll clinch it. Okay, I learned something new today!

...this might even be a multilingual gag as well, when you consider that the "A" prefix in French does something similar to the מ prefix in Hebrew, meaning "of (noun)." So, by French rules, Gog-Agog might mean "Gog of Gog," just like one of the possible Hebrew readings.

......also, ghag (pronounced fairly close to "gog") are edible worms that the klingons like to snack on in Star Trek. I want to believe that the author intended this connection as well.

...

Solomon finally puts his foot down. Or rather, he puts his fist down. On the table, really hard, making a loud noise to get everyone's attention. He reminds them that this is a sacred place, and they need to hold onto the gravitas and decorum that comes with that and not act out like this.

As he speaks, the camera sort of pans around the ruined conclave facility, with its broken columns, cracked chairs, and many dozen broken skeletons laying on the ground with their weapons still impaling each other.

Hmm. I feel like this scene would hit harder if Solomon were an older demiurge, who remembers what things were like before the war got really bad and is in denial about what's happened since then. Assuming Incubus was telling the truth about Solomon's origins though (big assumption, I know, but still), then Solomon only got his first Key after the height of the war. I guess maybe this is just more cynical showmanship on his part then, trying to appeal to biases that he hopes the others have by pretending to share them.

...looking back to the last meeting scene, at the end of book one, Solomon was kinda doing the same thing then too. Also, both then and now he sat himself at the head of the table, which doesn't seem to actually signify anything and the others allow just to humor him. I wonder to what degree Solomon has drunk his own koolaid by this point. Maybe a lot. Maybe barely at all, and he's sort of playing the buffoon for his rival Black Kings, making deliberately inept attempts to cow and manipulate them etc, to make them underestimate him. Maybe both, in different ways.

Anyway! After Solomon finishes his speech and starts getting down to business, he's interrupted by an approaching voice that he seems shocked to hear.

Incubus tottering his withered scarecrow of a true body to a meeting in person, rather than assuming control of one of his junkies and sending them, seems to be a highly unusual occurrence. Even within the scope of the meetings themselves already being highly unusual occurrences in this day and age.

Also, him calling Solomon "old man" suggests that he wasn't born yet during the events that led to Solomon's rise that he told Killy about in her dream. Which doesn't say anything good about his account's accuracy, even if he wasn't deliberately twisting the truth as he'd heard it.

Depending on how long the war lasted, Incubus may have been born and seized power toward the end of it, or he might have done so after it altogether. In the last case...well, that would explain a lot actually. Why the others act like he didn't earn his throne like they did. The Pact of the Seven-Part World wasn't signed by Incubus, it was signed by his predecessor. A predecessor who was probably the swordsage Meti, from the hints that were dropped so far.

Incubus' method of stealing probably-Meti's Keys were likely no different from how all the other Black Kings got theirs. But, he did it after they'd already consolidated their power over the multiverse, and set a dangerous precedent that scares them, so that makes him illegitimate and a bad guy as far as they're concerned. Something like that, at least. No wonder he wants to help Jagganath kill the other five.

And yeah, several of the others all start immediately shit-talking Incubus. Mottom tells him that he doesn't even belong in this room, fuck off. The Narnia lady in the ice block struggles out a few syllables about what a wicked, untrustworthy creature he is. On the bright side for Incubus, Mammon doesn't know who he is, and Gog-Agog's head is still reforming so she can't say anything mean about him. And...Solomon can't help but admit that Incubus (or "the boy" as he calls him) is right. As Gog-Agog grows back her head and asks irritably if anyone is going to call Mottom on her serial face-disintegrating misbehavior, Solomon proceeds to repeat that much as he likes to pretend otherwise, the war never really stopped. It's just had a prolonged truce. And the really dangerous actor never stopped being Zoss.

Ah, Mammon. Never change.~​

The fact that he referred to Incubus as "the boy" is further evidence for my interpretation. Incubus isn't just younger than Solomon, he's younger than all of the other six.

...

I wonder where Solomon himself falls, in order of age? How many of the Black Kings remember the time before the multiversal war at all? Do any of them? Some previous art panels implied that they (or at least, several of them) were among Zoss' court during the end of the demiurgic golden age, with Incubus himself being displayed prominently in several of those. Now it's starting to look possible that none of them actually predate the conflict, and that those depictions of them as ancient remnants of Zoss' regime might just be in-universe propaganda.

If all of them actually postdate the war, then that changes their entire context. These aren't the people who ruined the multiverse. They may have been making it even worse since they took power, but the real damage had already been done.

If all they ever knew was the war - worlds burning, tyrant-demiurgi depleting whole universes of resources to throw at each other, etc - then that makes them...not sympathetic exactly, but at least a bit more understandable. Just like the angels, just like the devils, they're only doing what they've been taught to do. They're the products of cosmic decay, not the instigators of it.

Well, many of them at least. It's still possible that some might be older. But I'm starting to doubt it.

...

Solomon also gives everyone the grim reminder that while Zoss' machinations with his heir and other catspaws have them all politicking at each other, Jagganath is still building his forces. The way he says it makes it sound like he might actually suspect that Jagganath himself is in league with Zoss. If he's right about this, then that would mean that Incubus too is (knowingly or otherwise) serving Zoss' agenda, not that Solomon knows about Incubus and Jagganath's secret collusion.

Also, we get another interesting shot of Zero Suit Jagganath, this time working on a new sword for himself. At least, I think it's for himself; don't know if his army includes anyone else big enough to weild it.

Wonder if he had that dental structure to begin with, or only since turning himself into a giant? I also want to know how big he actually was to begin with, given the possibility that humans from some universes might potentially have bigger or smaller subspecies.

Interestingly, there's also a shot of Jagganath's helmet laying on a shelf next to him as he works, and it appears to actually be made (in part) from the skull of another, more monstrous looking, gigantic humanoid.

I wonder what that's all about?

Solomon next summarizes the situation with Killy and Zaid. He, like Mottom, does seem to legitimately believe that Zaid is the true heir and Killy is some kind of decoy. He also says that it's pretty ominous that this gormless rando has managed to "thwart two of you at every turn."

Erm...Solomon? I think you've been reading a different comic than I have. Killy thwarted Mottom once. She was never an antagonist to Mammon at all. Since then, it's been Mottom and Mammon fighting each other because of Killy happening to be standing near Mammon when Mottom's directionless rage finally boiled over. There's been no indication of either of them making moves on her since then, and quite a few indications that they haven't (though I'm still not sure WHY they haven't, at least in Mottom's case).

It's...also strange to me that neither of them are objecting to Solomon's read on recent events. I guess Mammon probably thinks that Killy really has been thwarting him repeatedly for the last year now, since Solomon says that she's been doing that, but Mottom?

...

More and more, "King of Swords" is starting to feel like a sequel to a different version of volumes I-III.

Can't say I'm thrilled about this. :/

...

When Solomon describes Killy's alleged doings, the resident shitposter sees an opportunity to butt back in. Prompting Mottom to once again use her moderator status to good effect.

Gog is going to get herself perma'd at this rate.

With the babbling dumbass silenced once again, Mottom asks...okay, this is actually almost as shitposty as what Gog-Agog was saying. Mottom asks why Solomon thinks he has the right to keep Zaid prisoner, or why he's more qualified to keep him isolated and under control than any of the others.

...Mottom. If you hadn't literally given Zaid away to Mammon yourself, I wouldn't think twice about this. But you did. And then Mammon, who YOU gave him to, decided to pass him on to Solomon. Sure, technically it was the Reverend Mother who did that, not Mammon himself, but it was probably the RM who also technically accepted custody over Zaid in the first place, so that doesn't change anything.

The problem with this is that, in light of the conversation so far, I don't know if this is Mottom being incoherent, or the author changing his mind about how that sequence of events went down.

The next panel reassures me that it's more likely the former, though, because it makes a point of showing that NONE of these people can think in a straight line anymore. To prove his power and competence, Solomon breaks the table.

It gave Mottom a jumpscare, sure, but I don't think it proved anything to anyone. With the exception of Pevensie stuck in her ice block, any of them could break a big chunk of marble just as easily as Solomon did. I especially love Incubus' bored, exhausted expression in the back there.

I guess this cooooould be meant to signify that Solomon, the guy who cares about protocol and decorum, breaking the sacred meeting room table that he waxes poetic about means that this is something he's really serious about. Or perhaps, it's meant to communicate that okay, fine, he won't keep pretending things are better than they are if everyone is going to keep bitching at him about it, let's do things their way. Even then though, I don't think it makes a very strong point.

Sure, Solomon says, the war isn't over. However, the phase of the war that destroyed the multiverse - the phase during which it was a free-for-all of every demiurge for themself - is over. They've abided by the pact of the seven-part world so far, even Incubus who (it's been strongly implied) didn't actually sign it but merely took over an empire that had. That means that if someone really does make a move on someone else, the other signatories MUST and WILL come to the aid of the defender. That is all.

In other words, he's completely ignoring what happened a year ago while insisting that the pact is absolutely binding and exceptionless. By the terms of the treaty, Solomon, Incubus, Jagganath, Gog-Agog, and Clive Staples Lewis should have all dogpiled Mottom the instant her fleet attacked Yre. But, what Solomon really means by this is that they all need to be ready in case Zoss or Jagganath try anything, because those are the ones he personally doesn't think he can handle.

So, really, he wants all the others to sweep the obvious treaty violation that took place under the rug, so that they can all be ready to deal with the kind of treaty violation that Solomon David is personally threatened by.

...

Okay Abbadon, credit to you. This really is a great takedown of the UN security council.

Like, that's totally, 100% what the author is pointing at here.

...

Anyway, Solomon is pretty heavily implying that he WILL invoke the pact against Mottom (and possibly Mammon as well) if the situation between them doesn't quiet down again soon, but at the same time he's badly eroding any remaining faith the others might have had in him by ignoring that obvious first violation in the first place. He tries to dress this up by reminding them of the doom that may befall the entire multiverse if they, its guardians and caretakers, don't do their jobs.

Or perhaps, he's implicitly changing the terms of the pact. They're not pretending that there's no war anymore, but they're making an alliance of five (or six, if Incubus insists) against two (or one, if Incubus insists). Which...well, I can't fault Mammon or whoever he has doing the thinking for him now not seeing things that way.

With Solomon's closing words, we get an ominous close-up on Gog-Agog as she reassembles her face once again.

She's not firing that hateful glare at Mottom, though. She's shooting it at Solomon. I guess the fact that Mottom literally, physically attacking her all the time at the damned meetings themselves under Solomon's nose makes his hypocrisy even more odious to her than it is to the others. Mottom is at least honest about what she is and how their "concordance" really works.

The alt-text for this page, by the way, is just the final verse of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Conqueror Worm."

“Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

Which implies that, perhaps, Gog-Agog just wants the multiverse to be destroyed anyway. Man, she's going to be pissed off when she finds out that Jagganath and Incubus didn't invite her to the party.

...or did they? Maybe it just hasn't been shown yet, but they might actually have a a secret three-part pact going on. For all we know, she could even have had her own visitation from Metatron or one of his agents. The choice of quoted poems, with angels declaring the worm victorious over man, does hint that there may be a direct connection there.

Well, regardless of her general motives, methods, and possible allies, Gog-Agog seems to really hate Solomon David. It seems likely that she's going to try and sabotage that tournament of his that Killy is planning to enter.


That's the end of the meeting scene. It was pretty short in terms of page space, but it had a lot for me to talk about, so I think that's where I'll stop for now.

One thing that I'm walking away from this scene with is just how literal White Chain was being when she called the Black Kings insane. These aren't just dysfunctional rulers; they're dysfunctional people. Psychologically crippled. At least for many of them, it seems like the crippling may have been done by trauma as much as good old fashioned corruption and decadence. That doesn't make them any less evil, of course (at least some of them are implied to have been WORSE back when they were more sane), but it gives them a layer of tragedy.

It definitely feels like Zoss was (past tense) the real villain here. He might be trying to set things right now, but the fact that in order to do so he needs to crush seven of his own victims and punish them for what his own legacy turned them into, well...if he really did have a change of heart, then that has to be weighing on him.


I'm also wondering how far the comic is trying to take the seven deadly sins motif, with the Black Kings. I didn't comment on it until now because it seemed fairly explicit at first, but...hmm. Mottom's empire is very much gluttonous, and she has a consumption motif with her fork-wand and her constant supply of fruit, but the sin that actually characterizes her the most is probably sloth. With Mammon, was his "start of darkness" incident really him acting on greed (preventing his clan from trying to take his wealth) or wrath (retribution for them looking down on him)? We don't really know how much he ever cared about accumulation for its own sake, and his obsessive treasure count seems more like a nervous coping mechanism than a motivation.

Incubus as lust and Solomon as pride...I think those two work the most straightforwardly, assuming you interpret lust as more general wanton desire and impulsiveness rather than sexual lust (the comic has been leaning in on the "dream" aspect of the mythical incubus creature, rather than the "sex" aspect)...but that said, Incubus' collection of worn-out junkies and discarded golden cups looks a lot like gluttony to me, and this seems to be closer to the core of who he, personally, is than it is for Mottom, so...yeah, I don't know.

Jagganath LOOKS like wrath, but I'm not sure if that really is what he's all about. WHY is he planning to start a new war? We don't know at all. Gog-Agog's association with the color green, worms, and quietly hateful stares are all traditional symbols of envy, but just like with Jagganath we don't know what really makes her tick yet. Is she envious of Solomon because the others bother pretending to care about his opinions, or just wrathful at his own disregard for her? Jadis is stuck in a block. That might resemble sloth, but unless she's in there by her own choice I don't know if it actually IS sloth.

So yeah. Not sure. Some of them are really clear in which sin they're supposed to represent, but others really aren't.

...man, I've kinda missed playing this game. Well, at least for this round it's probably the actual seven deadly sins I'm puzzling over, rather than having to reverse-engineer a crazed homunculus' misinterpretation of them.~