There are many reasons to read DIE in print, including the sheer scale of the image and power of the colors, but it’s the dramaturgy of the page-turns that really motivates me to say this, as it’s an element that doesn’t quite translate on the screen. Turning the page to reveal a full-page spread can be such an magical, immersive pleasure. Turning the page on that final image in the third issue, where the question ‘would you follow’ is effectively answered in the negative by closing the story - it adds an extra level of conflict, at least for me. The amount of thought Gillen and Hans have put into this invisible condition (this frame that conditions the visible) is staggering, inspiring.
DIE #3, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles ...
Thoughts on this poster. Spoilers beneath the cut.
Seen in a hobbit’s flashbacks to Little England, the propaganda poster is remarkably complex. Against a red background featuring dragons and a number of eight-sided stars (or stylized suns), a lion, its mane stylized to resemble rays of sun, speaks to potential recruits from a centered, pale circle, its words - “I need you!” - punctuated with dots evocative of the Tengwar alphabet. Much like Uncle Sam, who points and glares at the viewer in the famous recruitment image, the lion has a paw outstretched and pointing - though it it is with claws that he points, not fingers, and a gaping maw that shows many teeth, that both speaks and speaks to devouring, to fire and mutilation.
The poster calls back to other references - the use of lions as a national symbol in British war propaganda, for instance, not least in propaganda aimed at "overseas states” - Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand:
As @gen-is-gone has pointed out on Twitter and for the @die-compressed podcast (which includes many great observations), the sun-lion also works as a reference to Aslan, to C. S. Lewis and his approach to fantasy.
Tolkien has been a presence in the comic from the beginning (Isabelle calls Ash "Gaylord of the Assrings" in the first issue, the second issue reckons with the legacies of elves and orcs, etc), but so too has Lewis, invoked in the second issue by Chuck:
DIE #2, by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles ...
Leaving aside this meta-commentary on the relationship between how you enter Die and how you enter Narnia, the relationship between the recruitment poster and Narnia’s Aslan is laid out with more than lion imagery. In the books, Aslan is associated with the sun and related emblems, such as gold (much as Solomon has been in the comic, as the “golden child” nicknamed “Sol” ... ). A “rhyme” about Aslan in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, includes the lines: “when he [Aslan] bares his teeth winter meets its death and when he shakes his mane we shall have spring again”. Echoes of this Aslan-as-Christ-allegory is not only to be seen in the poster, it can also be heard when the comic’s hobbit-reference speaks of being promised spring ... and concludes the promise was false.
Given Tolkien’s apparent dislike of Narnia, his critiques of allegory for its dictatorial relationship to readers, for its reduction of interpretative freedom to the act of recognizing one-to-one correspondences between fiction and religious ideas or historical events, it’s notable that his reference character in Die is stuck in an a place that situates his work against WWI. But if allegory is veiled comparison, this “hell” unveils. There’s no coyness here about the terms of comparison.
On the contrary - allegory is “ugly”, Tolkien’s reference says, but “poetry” and “war poetry” are something else. What they are is not directly stated; what they could be is hinted at in how, by telling the life-stories of the dead, the comic’s poet-like character - Ash, a kind of bard - invokes grief, making it possible for Matt to kill the dragon. Warden of the “orcish mockery of my elvish tale”, the Tolkien reference character also bears witness to how war devours “better men”, as though to ask readers to imagine the hobbits not only as references of his own creation and his own history, but also as references to dead who can no longer speak for themselves. To be sure, “this is not what I wanted”. Whether he refers to his antipathy towards “ugly” allegory, to Die’s interpretation of his “elvish tale”, or to something else, he also acknowledges that - still, the dead “should be remembered”, their “message” sent “home”, and so he stays.
(There’s a lot of weight put on this staying. Whether he must stay in the trenches or could be elsewhere in Little England is one question; possibly he stays too as an enduring presence or legacy).
At the same time, the Tolkien reference is shown to be an inefficient messenger. The eagle he sends is far too large and easily spotted; the message is shot down with the messenger. If his attempts to keep memory alive with “poetry”, or “war poetry”, are potentially recognized in a comic that itself draws on poetic techniques (by which I mean: techniques that create patterns with words, producing relations of similarity and dissimilarity - I’m not using poetry as a synonym for romanticization), there also remains plenty of room to critique his methods.
Not only his. There is something indeed rather sinister, to me at least, about the poster of the British Lion as the Sun / Aslan. The Tolkien reference in Die is an officer who sends men to their deaths but also directly risks his own life in the trenches (assuming he can die as the Grandmaster apparently could). He honors the memories of the dead - memories that are subsequently captured, declared propaganda by the enemy (a rival Master?), and destroyed. What is destroyed with those final words, those words Ash herself noted down for a dying man, is certainly a critique of propaganda - critique of the reference to Narnia-as-allegory. The hobbit reference warns his family, tells his wife not to send their boy into battle. For the lion poster tricks the vulnerable into believing there will be spring, and sells lies about a life beyond war, beyond death.
Such allegory would be “ugly”, indeed.
Taking another close look at the poster - those eight-sided stars, in addition to referencing suns (and sun-gods), could they also be a reference to the numbered face occupied by Little England on the D20 world that is Die? Looking at Angela’s map in issue #2, the route through the war zone seems to snake between the faces numbered 8 and 9, which could be Little England and Eternal Prussia, respectively, while 10 would correspond to the Seas of Gondol.
In this context, it’s worth noting that star symbols have come up before - the Elf-Queen wore two five-sided stars that dangled from her tiara and another on her chest, from where it shines.
This could suggest she is from a realm correlating to the face numbered 5 on the map - which, to be sure, isn’t shown. By the time we see Angela’s map, the party has been traveling a while, so their position around 7 may not reflect where they started. But it's certainly possible that the stars correspond to something else; my point is more that stars have been prominently shown and might be worth paying attention to in future (similarly, Chuck’s necklaces? are fascinating ...).
(I’m a bit worried this comes across as though I were trying to nail down what the comic is - which is not the intention at all. The comic seems to be doing hundreds of things at once, which makes me want to think aloud - because that is fun and a good distraction from darker places. That’s all these posts are about, that and the hope of getting to talk to others about the comic.)
