| Publisher: | WildStorm |
| Date: | 2003 |
| Writers: | David Brin |
| Artists: | Scott Hampton |
| Althistory: | yes |
| Letterers: | Todd Klein |
| Editors: | Jeff Mariotte Scott Dunbier Kristy Quinn |
The Life Eaters is a 2003 science fiction graphic novel written by David Brin and art by Scott Hampton (with Todd Klein credited as the letterer). It was published by WildStorm. The work is 144 pages long.[1]
The story is based on Brin's Hugo-nominated novella Thor Meets Captain America, featuring an alternate history scenario where the Nazis are winning the World War II, following successful use of occult and enlisting the aid of the Norse pantheon.[2]
The novel was first published by WildStorm (imprint of DC Comics) in November 2003 (ISBN 1-4012-0098-2).[3] In 2013 it was republished by IDW Publishing (ISBN 978-1-63140-201-2).
The novel was translated to French as D-day, le jour du désastre, published by Les Humanoïdes Associés in 2004.[4]
The universe presented in the story diverges from ours spectacularly some time in late 1943, when a number of bright lights appeared over Nazi-occupied Europe. Intentionally or otherwise, the slaughter of the death camps has been used to summon the Æsir, Norse gods. Quickly allying themselves with the gods, the Nazis are able to push aside their foes, unveiling their new allies on D-Day, crippling the Allies landing force with a magical barrage of cyclones. The extended war has an amazing effect on human technology – by the fifties, the American military has a manned spy satellite.[5]
The first third of the story takes place in 1962. Although at one point the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on Berlin, killing Æsirs Muninn and Heimdall, the Allies are slowly loosing the war. By that time, the Nazis had already conquered Great Britain, Africa and Russia, among other territories, and invaded Canada. It follows OSS Captain Chris Turing, who is part of the team which is going to attack Valhalla (located near Gotland on the Baltic), entering it through an airlifted submarine, with the aim of delivering a hydrogen bomb payload, while what remains of the United States Surface Navy attempts to distract the Nazi and Norse pantheon forces. Turing's team is accompanied by the trickster Norse god, Loki, who apparently works against his fellow Æsir. Back in 1943, on the night they arrived, Loki used his magic to whisk hundreds of thousands of death camp internees to safety in Persia. Loki, who until then has only given human some small hints about his amd Æsir's true nature, allows Turing to ask him three questions. Loki answers the questions asked, and in one answer mentions how he does not think that he is older than Chris and also implies that the Nazi extermination camps were established for reasons other than for "Nazi racial purification", but refuses to answer any further questions to clarify this. The group arrives at Gotland, and during the operation Loki disappears as Æsir forces led by Thor defeats the troops.
The American government had assumed the Æsir were alien invaders, but later during the mission, Thor and Loki reveal the secret of how the Æsir were brought into being, namely that the Nazis used death camps to fuel necromancy on a never before seen scale to summon them. The Æsir tell this to their human prisoners as they are about to die, assuming they would never have the chance to let anyone else know the truth. Although the mission's primary objective is a failure, and Vahalla remains standing, Turing manages to destroy Odin's Spear, inspiring human resistance, as his deed is seen by Æsir's human servants who spread the news of it to others.
The protagonists of the second part of the story are Joe Kasting, an American meteorologist-drafted-soldier by the Nazis, and an SS officer narrator, who once witnessed Turing's act of defiance and secretly harbors hopes that Æsir and other mythical beings could be destroyed, and humanity, saved. The second part of the story takes place years later, by which time the Nazis have already conquered North America, while their allies from Empire of Japan, aided by their Shinto pantheon, control parts of Asia. Although United States has became part of Nazi domain, as knowledge of necromancy spreads in use throughout the globe, a war of the supernatural continues. The surviving nations of the Southern Hemisphere have learned how to summon their own "gods", and each side slaughters millions to summon mythological beings who can fight to kill the other nations' gods. As a result of "Asian faith and African desperation... and all the madness of the tropics", the multiple gods of the developing world are given form through human sacrifice (hence, the title of the novel - "life eaters"), band together and fight the Æsir (who prefer the colder regions). As the Tropicals advance, they burn the Arabian oilfields, leading to global warming. With the potential of the Æsir creating a nuclear winter to counter the global warming, the remaining free humans (an alliance of United Nations, including underwater-dwelling survivors of the Allies, and Abrahamites, a necromancy-averse alliance of monotheistic religions centered around the Middle East) must race against time to prevent the gods from destroying the world as Loki schemes to fulfill the Ragnarok prophecy. The latter is revelead to be related to the use of Yggdrasil as a space elevator connecting to a space habitat, where Æsir want to shelter a few human survivors (for most Æsir, "brave warriors", but for Loki, the "clever" humans). The human protagnists however defy Æsir plans by stealing energy from Yggdrasil, briefly transforming Kasting into a new deity, who then renounces his new powers, transferring it back to Earth, hoping to strengthen the planets natural environment against the predicted "weather war".
The story is based on Brin's Hugo-nominated novella Thor Meets Captain America; the first third of the novel is a retelling of that story.
In the author's notes for Thor Meets Captain America, David Brin records that he was invited by Gregory Benford to write a piece for an alternate history collection, entitled Hitler Victorious, but voiced the opinion that he could not think of a single event which, if altered, would have let the Nazis win the war, and, contrariwise, that they had required a number of lucky breaks to get as far as they did (see also: alien space bats). Benford's reply was "I bet you could think of some premise that would work, David". That story was the result.[6] Brin also notes in the afterword of his story that he wrote it as a possible explanation for why the Nazis "do so many horrible, pointless things".[7] In the afterword of the graphic novel he notes that modern popular culture forgets about the sinister side of mythical (the black magic) and that many of our modern stories have "a tendency to follow the old trope of Homer - the notion that super-empowered demigods matter more than the hard, cooperative work of skilled men and women". He then adds that one of the messages of his story is that "a world needs saving, in myriad ways" and that the force that will save us will not be mythical beings, or aliens, or superheroes, but instead he is "betting on us" to do so.
In 2004 Steve Raiteri argued that "Brin's desire to downplay the role of heroes and highlight the good work of the average person is notable in a field full of superheroes, but in the end it mitigates the strength of the story".
In 2013 Dalibor Vácha wrote that "The Life Eaters comic connects Norse mythology with the mythologies of other nations (and continents) and historical reality in a pop culture mix characteristic of the entire genre".[8]
In 2017, writing in a book Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives: Encountering the Nazi Beast, Joanne Pettitt uses the work as an example of how "Nazism has come to occupy a position in our cultural imagination that is akin to that... mythological heroes" such as superheroes In 2018, in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, she revisited the topic, arguing that the central motif of the story is about the need to disempower or "disavow the myths" (what she calls "demythologisation"). She also discusses how the discourse of the Holocaust in the novel can be seen as problematic, simplifying it into a trivial popculture icon, a simple symbol of evil ("The Holocaust as a historical tragedy is glossed over in favour of its (potentially) more light-hearted focus on the divine/super beings"), while at the same time noting that one reading of the novel could be as a critique of this very approach. That reading would be the one that focuses on the need to "move beyond the genocide’s haunting presence", not by forgetting it but by refocusing the narrative from a story about superheroes to one that "confronts the human actions and motivations that led to the genocide". Pettitt also discusses how the novel's plot, in which Holocaust victims are rescued and teleported to other parts of the world, gives the story a global context, allowing for a discussion of the Holocaust in the global, rather than just European, context.[9] In her earlier book, she concluded that the novel "challenges the reader to move beyond mythologised understandings of Nazism and expel its overtly destructive force".
The work received a number of reviews.
In 2003, Cindy Lynn Speer-reviewed the graphic novel for SF Site. She saw the work as a "cleverly written what-if story... often times as optimistic as it is heartbreaking" that tackles intriguing ideas such as Nazism and the occult, and "what happens when... pantheons come to life". She praised the story's heroes as "admirable [humans who] make us feel optimistic about the future of human kind". She also concluded that "Scott Hampton's art is a good match for Brin's prose", in particular commenting on his fitting choice of "subdued palette of colors".[10]
In April 2004, Charles de Lint for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction wrote that "The Life Eaters has all the drama, scope, and power of one of the old Norse sagas, for Brin is working on a grand scale here, juggling many balls, and not dropping any." The reviewer praised the storyline ("gripping"), dialogue ("that suits all the different voices"), characters ("real"), the setting (in particular, "how technology we take for granted now was developed in different circumstances, how world politics would have adjusted") and the artwork ("most of the book is painted, magnificently bringing Brin's dark visions to life)."[11]
In August that year, Paul Di Filippo reviewed the work for Asimov's Science Fiction. Filippo positively commented on Hampton's art ("whose harsh-edged, yet graceful painted art is the perfect match for a grim tale. Hampton's palette is appropriately subdued as well, but it allows for such bright contrasting flashes as the blue of a Hindu deity"). Di Filippo appreciated fleshed out main characters, and elements of the setting, such as portrayal of Yggdrasil as a space elevator and also noted that "the story's conclusion is open-ended yet hopeful", expressing hope that a sequel would appear.[12]
Also that year, writing for the Library Journal, Steve Raiteri wrote that that "Hampton's full-color paintings are realistic and often powerful." He also noted that the book is recommended for mature audiences "midteens and up... owing to bloody violence and minor nudity".[13]
Also that year, in Publishers Weekly, Jeff Zaleski praised the work for "lots of imaginative details" but criticized it for "a certain amount of heavy-handed preachiness", such as "an inappropriately clunky vision of ash-induced global warming; a dreadfully sappy scene in which leaders of every religion put aside their differences to defend the planet; and a climactic scene in which a human is tempted by divine power that's straight out of a mid-1960s superhero comic". Likewise, he had mixed feelings about the art, seeing Hamptom's style as good for "larger-than-life images" but less so for "punch-'em-up action scenes and talking-heads sequences".[14]
In 2016, in Hampton's entry in The Art of Painted Comics, the authors positively reviewed his work, noting that his "subdied palette and vivid details [combine] to create an intricately realized world populated by avatars of the Norse gods".[15]