Cover art by Scott Hampton of the sequel graphic novel, The Life Eaters, published in 2003 by Wildstorm (DC) and republished in 2013 by IDW Publishing

(13) DAVID BRIN –

“THOR MEETS CAPTAIN AMERICA” (1986)

*

No – it’s not a comic or film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although the title obviously references the Marvel characters, at least for Captain America.

I fell in love with it when I read it in H!tler Victorious, an anthology of alternate history short stories that obviously involved, well, H!tler being victorious – a German victory in the Second World War. In his author’s note for the story, Brin noted that he was invited by the collator, Gregory Benford, to write a story of German victory in WW2 – but voiced the opinion that he could not conceive of a single event which, if altered, would have let Germany win the war, particularly as they had required a number of lucky breaks to get as far as they did. (An opinion which coincides with my own).

And so Brin abandoned any pretense of historical plausibility for outright fantasy and fell back on what is jokingly known in alternate history circles as ‘alien space bats’ – that is, some fantastic or implausible plot device that provides the difference (or what is known as the point of divergence), although typically not actual alien space bats as such. In this case, Germany essentially won the Second World War because they were able to summon the Norse gods to fight on their side. The fantastic implausibility of the premise is the point. It also gives some actual strategic sense to the H0l0caust, which, in history, was as strategically pointless as it was monstrous – as part of a mass human sacrifice or necromantic ritual intended to bring the Norse gods into being, which it does in 1944, just in time for D-day. Of course, most of this alternate history is told as backstory to the last desperate Allied attempt years later to destroy the new Valhalla – and by Allied, we mean American, with a little help from a renegade Loki, since Europe has long been overwhelmed.

What’s not to love? Alternate history of the Second World War, the Norse gods and comic book superheroes. Actually, the Norse gods in their guise here are distinctly unlovely – just as they needed mass human sacrifice to create them, they also need it to sustain them. God is a hole in the heart of the world and he’s hungry – omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous. And as for those comic book superheroes – well, that’s also part of the point of the story, as the protagonist dreads what dark and terrible gods the Americans would create with the same necromancy…

Brin subsequently adapted and expanded the story into comic form as “The Life-Eaters”, which added some interesting points but perhaps lacked quite the same concise purity of the original story.

*

RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)