Klarion #1

From This World to That Which Is to Come

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Frazer Irving

Summary: In Limbo Town, somewhere beneath the surface world, puritan witches live. There the dead awaken as Grundys to be put as slaves by the people. Here Klarion grows restless and defiant wanting to leave this place. The town is under the influence of the Submissionary which is controlled by Judah. Their god is named Croatoan, the Witch-God. When a Sheeda warrior is discovered, Judah calls to seal the Wicket Gate. However, this occurs about the time Brother Ezekiel of the Parliament plans to leave Limbo Town to further trade with the Trolley Men as he informs young Klarion. Three Submissionarys become the demon Horigal and kill Ezekiel as Klarion seeks to warn him.

In Limbo Town, somewhere beneath the surface world, Puritan witches live. There, the dead awaken from their eternal slumber as Grundys to toil in the fields. Here, Klarion grows restless and defiant wanting to leave the mundane existence that Limbo Town enslaves him in to find splendor beneath the legendary "Blue Rafters."

Noteworthy Items:

Klarion was originally created by Jack Kirby in the original Demon series.

Croatoan: Possibly related to a lost colony of Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. There, 117 settlers went missing from the City of Raleigh; deserted, plundered, and surrounded "with a high pallisado of great trees, with cortynes and flankers, very fort-like". On one of the palisades, he found the single word "CROATOAN" carved into the surface, and the letters "CRO" carved into a nearby tree.

The Submissionaires state, in believing the Sheeda are coming: "If Sheeda return, we will be retired from duty, deleted. After such long and faithful service our purpose will be at an end."

One CBR forum poster stated the following in regards to this: If we think of the series as one more prefiguration of the End Times (booga booga), and the Sheeda as the new version of The Archons or every other Great Beast from Beyond, then the Submissionaries are debased religion, serving the purposes of Yog-Sothoth (or whomever); i.e. they're there to keep humanity down. Quite why the Sheeda would bank on one small group of crazy Puritan witches is another matter. Perhaps we're to extrapolate that they're also running the Ayatollahs and the Cardinals.