Not an “intern” this time, but something else that needs to be addressed – namely, the need to fill out the magical world of Earth-616, which is dreadfully undermanned at present.
In the old time Baiame the Sky Hero, the first wise man, made the world and all people and taught the Aborigines the magic of the Dream. In the old time Bunjil the Eagle made the world and men (and possibly women, although some credit his wife Bat for the idea) and taught them all the skills they would need to know. In the old time the Rainbow Serpent made the mountains and the waterholes and fought the Sun to create the rain.
All of these stories are true, and resolving the contradictions (well, not actually resolving, but…) of the hundreds and hundreds of Aboriginal creation myths and magic stories – all of which are simultaneously true thanks to the heart of the Dream – is the source of deep, old magic, as old as the Earth itself. Magic that old invites many a person to come along and misuse it – be they white, black, brown, yellow or any other colour (including cyan – it’s a long story). More troubling yet are those who come to exploit Uluru, which is the universe’s Bridge to the World of Waking Dream.
(Some whitefellas call it “the Nexus of all Unrealities,” but that’s only because they called the place in Florida something like that and like names to sound like other names. The two spots really don’t have much to do with one another at all. Well, except when they do, but that’s not often.)
The shamans of the Dreaming People are powerful, but not inclined to combat such things. But there are always a few sorts who aren’t going to be shamans or wizards, and are too clever and observant in the ways of the wider world to be wasted as mere hunters. These men (and very occasionally women) become the hunters-of-sorcerers – those who can travel and manipulate the Dream itself. It’s not magic. Calling it magic is like calling a duck magic because it swims. It’s just something they can do.
Jampamarri is the title of the current man filling this role, a half-Warlpiri in his early thirties. (Or at least he appears to be that old, because that’s how many years ago he was born as we count them. He doesn’t age on his trips into the Dream unless he wants to.) Unlike most of his predecessors, he has a bit of a reputation within the wider world. Well, practically nobody knows him outside of Australia, but at least the non-indigenous peoples know him. He stopped a very bad man one time from doing unpleasant things to a young girl that man had kidnapped, and all Australia called him a superhero (they were very pleased to finally have one), and thanks to a newspaper interviewer not really understanding much of anything he became known as “Talisman,” which didn’t make much sense but he decided it was easier just to let them call him that.
And that’s how it goes for him. He knows the realms of the spirits (like everyone else to do his job, he loves to explore the unreal worlds) like the back of his hand, and knows most of the important political developments in those worlds as well – who’s angry at who, who’s made peace with who, who’s planning to invade Earth, that sort of thing. When Doctor Strange needs advice about traveling into the wider pandimensional realm – the bleeding realms of thought alone which mankind can barely conceive, let alone survive – Jampamarri is always his first stop. And when he needs advice about a foretelling-dream he just had, well, maybe he’ll stop by and ask Jampamarri about that as well.
Because working relationships? Are good things to have.
Top comment: Sorry Blackmage, but my personal canon explanation for why Australia has few superheroes goes like this: Animals with deadly poison. — HittheTargets
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Hey! Australia also had Lifeguard, one of the best/worst X-Men in YEARS.
Seriously though, awesome. The concept of the Dreaming is one which marries very well to Strange stories, and I’m surprised they haven’t really tried it before.
So this guy is Dr. Strange’s Dr. Wilson? Or, at least something in that regard? :-p
I’m liking this as a cameo-style side character. The worst thing a comic book can do is end up so insular that everyone is separated by one degree of birth / dating / Kevin Bacon. Nice to have someone completely out of the way to work into the story, so you can expand the plot a little. 🙂
Stamp of Approval.
Speaking of Talisman, are the Canadian mystics (Shaman and Talisman) going to be part of this pitch?
You know, that DOES work both ways. Being the (moral and ethical) Supreme means you have to answer the dumb questions and watch over the junior brethren.
“No, see, if you open the doorway to that realm of the fairy world they will drain your blood, eat your soul, inhabit your body and then get really nasty. Try using THIS spell. I think you wanted the wee folk that make cookies and toys for Santa…”
Didn’t Talisman get shot in Daredevil or something?
These are highly entertaining, but so far they seem rather, uhm, dude-centric. I know female comic book characters are often around just for the eye-candy, but I trust in your capable hands they would be much more intriguing.
Like Bird’s going to let this whole thing go by without sexy make-outs with Clea?
Actually, if I was going to guarantee one thing out of any Doctor Strange series I might write, it would be exactly zero sexy makeouts between Doctor Strange and Clea.
They’re exes. There’s nothing wrong with that. They still love each other a great deal – and you can rest assured that when one is in big-time trouble the other will be there post-haste – but there is way too much water under the bridge now for them to get back together.
But think of the fun he could have with Dormammu! “Hah, I guess all of your family goes down easy!”
Hm…perhaps not phrased that way…
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/talisman.htm
Well of course. Don’t you remember MGK’s first one of these? All the women in the world were disappearing and no-one really noticed.
Er, no, wait. That was the color blue.
Funny, I finally just got ahold of and read the OOP Contest of Champions trade the other day. Took me a long time and $20.
So of course, I’m sure Marvel will solicit a new HC version within the next few months.
“(including cyan – it’s a long story)”
What’s so long about saying “and then Atlanteans showed up.”
And on ‘filling in the magical world’… I really hope you are going to raid Drs Strange and Doom: Triumph and Torment, and the multitude of thereafter unseen mystics, mages, and wizards who Doom copied off of to get the second best score on the test.
Actually, my personal canon explanation for why Australia has few superheroes goes like this:
On the Australian frontier in the mid-19th century, at the height of the gold rush, order and the civilised constraints of Victorian society broke down. A wealthy oligarchy controlled wealth and political power, using the police for their own ends; a vast, disenfranchised mass of miners and farmers took to petty crime to supplement their meagre outcomes; and all along the frontier, the risk of Aboriginal attack — especially once ancient taboos against sorcery amongst the Wiradjuri, the largest tribe, were broken — forced constant population movement.
From this Hobbesian frontier nightmare arose the ‘bushrangers’, Australia’s first superheroes. They weren’t glamourous. They needed baths, shaves and a good dose of civility; while the norm was merely to incapacitate criminals and leave them lying in the bush, some (like ‘Mad Dog Morgan’) were merciless towards their victims, as bad as the villains they hunted. But they managed to prevent colonial Australia from falling prey to its deep inequalities, constant warfare against the First Australians and the lingering authoritarian strain from the convict heritage.
But, around the time of the Eureka Stockade, the landed elite of the colony realised that the bushrangers, an unorganised force loyal to nothing but a rough idea of justice, could easily turn upon them. So for the next thirty years a merciless campaign of disinformation was spread. Bushrangers, not their enemies, were rewritten as ‘criminals’. History books were doctored. Newspapers were tightly edited. And the cowed and subservient police force used the Rangers Act — a law placing very heavy restrictions upon vigilante behaviour — to capture and execute every last bushranger on the frontier.
The last, Ned Kelly, made a great fight of it — using a ‘steampunk’ armoured suit to evade capture for months in the Victorian bush, before losing his life in an abortive republican rebellion against the elites. But with his death, the outlawed superheroes effectively vanished.
In recent years, however, the Rangers Laws (in each state and territory) have been eroded. Whitlam abolished them in the Northern Territory, leading to a new class of rough, tinny-drinking, stubbie-wearing superheroes in slouch hats. They’re not the refined, slightly foppish types of New York City. Their superpowers are less refined, and they’re not much good at using them. But the superheroes are rising against in Australia, and this time — they will NOT BE DENIED.
Sorry for hijacking your thread.
“be they white, black, brown, yellow or any other colour (including cyan – it’s a long story).”
Is this a lead up to a Spawn crossover?
Sorry Blackmage, but my personal canon explanation for why Australia has few superheroes goes like this: Animals with deadly poison.
“Sorry Blackmage, but my personal canon explanation for why Australia has few superheroes goes like this: Animals with deadly poison.”
Well, surely that would be a reason for MORE superheroes, not less? After all, if a mere radioactive spider gave Peter Parker his powers, then our bloody spiders would make him into Wonder Woman!
That place in Florida?
…OH! “The Place where Dreams Come True.”tm
I get it!
…or do I?
Wait, um, did I just embarrass myself?
I, ah, don’t think so. “The Nexus of all Unrealities” is a rip-off of “The Nexus of All Realities”, which is a swamp in Florida where the Man-Thing lived, according to Dakimh the Sorcerer. It’s also where Howard the Duck came to this world, or something close.
Man-Thing’s Wiki entry mentions the Nexus of All Realities more. Apparently it had an existence beyond Howard the Duck. Fancy that.
The Nexus of All-Realities got some recent play in X-Men: First Class and Marvel Zombies 3…
So…yes, I did embarrass myself, lol.
Jolly good.
That’s esoteric enough that I don’t feel too foolish.
Thank god no one’s mentioned Gateway yet….possibly the strangest and most gnomic of Claremont’s racial stereotypes.
Not that there’s anything wrong with gnomes…
What is the relationship between the Dream that Jampamarri travels in and Nightmare?
Also, aboriginal languages are themselves potentially very interesting–from the structural to the merely trivial (there’s an aboriginal language in which the native, non-borrowed word for “dog” is “dog”). In a mystical narrative universe, languages are almost necessarily strongly Whorfian, so you get drastically different thought processes. And a drastically different thought process is exactly what you need to defeat the things a Sorcerer Supreme needs to defeat.
Ned Kelly is kinda a steampunk cop killer Iron Man
having lived in Australia for 5 years i think an Aquaman type could do the most damage. a few shark deaths a year don’t stop people going to Bondi but one a day would seriously hurt our economy
Blackmage’s explanation has a “Dead End Kids” vibe. (I’m assuming other people read Whedon’s Runaways.) At least, Christian’s summary made me think of the Punisher analogue.
Greg Morrow beat me to the first question I had about this character…I think it would be kind of amusing if it eventuated that Nightmare, much as he loathes the Sorceror Supreme, still considers the Dreamwalker Supreme his #1 mortal enemy — leaving Strange not exactly jealous, but a bit nonplussed to find out that he’s a secondary concern to one of “his” stable of enemies.
It’s somewhere in between “related” and “not related.” Nightmare is ultimately a creation of mass sentient thought as opposed to a being from an unrelated reality that entwines within our own, but then again maybe the Dream created us, depending on which Aboriginal philosophy you follow, so possibly Nightmare isn’t bound by our existence and therefore…
Yes, I know, it’s complicated. If it were easy everybody would do magic.
Not exactly on topic, except to the general idea of the world of Dr. Strange, but let me toss in a recommendation for the Oliver la Farge story “Spud and Cochise”, collected in The Best of All Possible Worlds.
Nightmare is primarily a predator in America and the Dreamtime is mostly linked from Australia. Now if I refer to my willfully bad geography, halfway between the two is Japan, home of hentai.
DO YOU SEE THE CONNECTIONS?!?!?!?!
Liquidben is John Hodgman?
Steampunk Ned Kelly! Awesome.