Thoughts on 001 and Mammon

I was just musing how I love the design of 001, and her relation to Mammon. Both the visual, and what's implied by hot they interact.

Abbadon doesn't go into ALL of it, but if you know anything about Christian and Gnostic mythology and art, you can read between the lines and see what he's referencing and constructing.

Mammon is clearly the biggest "Christian Mythology"-influenced demiurge in this book. (I suppose Solomon David is too--Solomon was said to have had a child with the Queen of Sheba who is sometimes seen as African/Ethiopian, thus probably why Solomon David is black too in this comic.)

Back to Mammon.

Obviously, the idea of Mammon in Christianity is greed, wealth. Sometimes said to be the devil himself, other times just one of his demons.

But the devil/evil/etc. is often represented in historical Christian art as a dragon. (Abbadon is drawing on his art history knowledge here, which he also does with some of the scenes with White Chain, who strikes several poses seen in religious angel art from history.)

But, again, dragons in non-religious fantasy mythos are also thought to hoard wealth--and so you circle back around to the idea of this great evil dragon who is simply so greedy and ambitious for adding wealth to his hoard that it does great harm.

But the cool thing here is 001 and her relationship to Mammon. Looking at her design, it's heavily inspired by Marian art. That is to say, 001 is quietly implied to be Mary...who is mother of Jesus, right?

Well--look at Mammon's forces. ZOMBIES. And you could make good argument that Jesus, rising from the dead, is CLEARLY a zombie, yeah? And here we are, with Mammon's zombie forces? And his emissary is basically Mary?

So it's quietly implied that Zombie Jesus exists in this universe. 001 might even be his mom. It's just that Allison simply didn't meet him.

And 001 is wearing a chastity belt--in the comic it's visually played as Bondage Nun, but it's also probably a reference to Mary giving virgin birth to Jesus.

(And if 001 has had a child with Mammon--yeah, you'd have to have some magical fuckery going on to even accomplish it...heh...and that could very well leave 001 technically a virgin.)

(...I wonder what a half-human/half-dragon would look in this world?) (Would he have inherited Mammon's immortality?)

Anyway, back to 001. So, in my head I've taken to calling her "Mary-Sophia". Why? Because in Gnosticism (which is a bunch of early Christian-adjacent sects that got stomped out), there's this idea that the demiurge is the corrupted son of Sophia, who is knowledge.

And we see 001 here acting as the wiser caretaker who is trying to shield her mentally febrile charge, Mammon, from the horrible world. And while that sort of conflicts with the idea that 001 is Mary, you could easily hand-wave it away that the two facets of 001 got separated into two different myths (esp. since Allison's world is not conquered so what knowledge that comes to it must be riddled with fiction), or that someone maybe said somewhere that 001 "mothers" the demiurge, and that turned into a myth of her being his real mother instead of his caretaker.

The whole idea in Gnosticism is that the demiurge is corrupted by the physical world and doesn't have knowledge/wisdom to be divine. Sophia has wisdom, but the demiurge (her son) does not.

In the comic it's played as 001 (probably) doing things behind Mammon's back because he is going senile.

So yeah. 001's influences are half Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and one half Sophia, mother of the demiurge. It's a really cool usage of both myths--I honestly love how Abbadon took those things and twined them together in a way that made sense.

Anyway. If you guys like 001, I heavily recommend looking up wikipedia articles on Gnosticism and related subjects, and Sophia, along with the article on Marian religious art.