It's sort of like "Till human voices wake us and we drown", in reverse... And there you have it, friends--the cavern-mind of Grant Morrison! Ready to replay the stories echoing through its' chambers for our pleasure--and his own...

But the vibration is the key.

The first sign of a ripple occurs in Animal Man #6 (usually written-off, thanks to the Invasion badge on its' cover). I think it's a mistake to pay too much attention to the famous "Coyote Gospel"... It's a brilliant story, sure--but it throws us off the track, ramming that fourth wall... justifying the craze for a dead end... Killing coyotes doesn't solve anything... it certainly won't bring Billy back... Is this a paint brush I see before me? Out out damned ink blot!

So yeah, in issue #6 we find "Morrison"'s first avatar--the Thanagarian "art martyr". What's his deal? He gives us a good synopsis on page 17: "I've psi-recorded my entire life experience onto the bomb, fully cross-referenced and infinitely detailed. The bomb will conduct a high-speed random search through my life fractal and when it encounters my most emotionally charged moment...It will detonate." Previously, he had explained that: "A fractal shape is one which reveals more detail, more information, upon closer examination. It can be magnified indefinitely and still reveal new complexities. It occured to me that life itself could be regarded as having a fractal shape." He thinks rather highly of himself: "[I am] A thing of rock. My heartbeat measures geological time. I feel invicible. I can do anything. Anything. And in the end, only one thing matters... The performance."

Crazy art martyrs--they'll be the death of us yet! But not this guy! The bomb finds its' target (a proud moment: the creation of a fractal bird sculpture, a "great tortured shape wracked by infinities", which causes its' sculptor to wonder whether he is "creator or created") and Buddy stares in horror as it gets ready to serve up the void... Luckily, good ol' Katar Hol stops by, flashing a wry grin under that crazy beak: "All you had to do was switch it off."

That's Hawkman: 1, Apocalypse: 0.

You can't throw a rock at a page of Animal Man without hitting some nut who wants to bury the space-time continuum in gray matter. You may remember the Red Mask's friend--The Veil? An insubstantial avatar, to be sure. He's got the vision. But he's terminally lacking in the power department. Spoons his eyes out when he can't take it anymore...

The Time Commander is another story entirely. I believe I've read somewhere (haven't I?) that he's supposed to be a version of Dr. Manhattan--that makes sense, he certainly possesses the latter's enlarged temporal awareness--but he's not content (as the blue guy was) to keep this to himself: "There is no death! Love denies entropy! Through love, we abolish death!" uhhh... no dude! Through love, we give meaning to death--without love, death would be meaningless. And love needs time to grow. Yes, the man does beautiful things for people in this story--mourners steal moments with dead spouses, parents, pets...unfortunately, he's also turning Paris into a version of the whacko cartoon world that Crafty opted out of! "We've just seen German tanks and cavemen chasing Jean-Paul Sartre... The French Revolution's happening right around the corner!" Is there any doubt that the "final transformation" this man is preaching would fulfill the art martyr's mission?

Next up we've got the Psycho-Pirate--whose memory defies the raging current generated by the Big Bang of the Crisis... The end of time is bad enough, but the convergence of every dimension upon one poor asylum is catastrophic! How many story angles can dance on a pinhead? The Psycho-Pirate resolves to find out--chanting the names of the abolished dimensions... Meanwhile, Buddy walks through his own past trying to warn his family of the dangers that await them--unable to make himself known to them, like George Bailey in IAWL; or Scrooge in the Past; or Mary Henry in Carnival of Souls... There's a simple message here: "Time is cruel"... But the desire to go back is crueller still...and the desire to forget is worst of all... Only the (often jagged) ground of remembrance gives meaning to the present, gives us the power to be kind... There really aren't any other options--just canonball dives into loneliness and the void. Solipsism. There is no death 'cause I made this--and every choice is up to me. Emerson trod this path for years, off and on, but he could never quite rinse the dirt from his first wife's grave off of his fingernails--and if he had, he wouldn't have had much to say now would he...