Where Walk the Gods!
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| Where Walk the Gods! | ||||||||||||||||
| Publisher | Marvel Comics | |||||||||||||||
| Published in | The Transformers issue 4 issue 5 | |||||||||||||||
| First published | 1st November, 1984 (part 1) (part 2) | |||||||||||||||
| Scripter | Marv Wolfman | |||||||||||||||
| Artist | Steve Ditko | |||||||||||||||
| Colourist | Bob Sharen | |||||||||||||||
| Colors | Bob Sharen | |||||||||||||||
| Letterer | Irv Watanabe | |||||||||||||||
| Editor | Marv Wolfman | |||||||||||||||
| Consulting editor | Jim Shooter | |||||||||||||||
Man's inhumanity to man pushes Aaron over the edge, unintentionally manifesting a group of all-powerful and judgemental beings.
Synopsis
Part 1
Machine Man is in the Bowery when he overhears a mugging in progress. The mugger takes an old lady's purse; Machine Man criticises his lack of empathy as he traps him in a dustbin. But when he returns the purse, the old woman is frightened – he's no human, he's a monster, a thing! Machine Man is confused that she would shun her unfamiliar saviour, but he picks up the sound of another incident.
A man has been hit by a car, but the driver isn't stopping. Asking if the world has gone mad, Machine Man sprints with his hydraulic legs and uses his telescopic arms to crab the grille of the car, wrecking its back end with his super strength. The driver runs for it, but Aaron grabs a manhole cover and charges it using his interior power generator, magnetising it. He throws it at the driver, and it sticks to his massive belt buckle, and it returns to Machine Man like a boomerang. The driver admits to being a paid killer, his hit and run victim having stole something from the mob. Aaron is disgusted by this violence and greed, but he hears gunshots less than a mile away.
Arriving in another alley, Machine Man finds a boy slumped over his dad's body and a gunman fleeing the scene with his money. Sickened by the thought of money being worth more than a human life, Machine Man decides to punish the gunman, trapping him in a chain link fence that he has electrified... but he stops before killing him, as that would make him no better than he is. Has his time among humans corrupted his sense of judgement?
Aaron's anger overwhelms him, and he rises into the sky, releasing his rage into a burst of electricity. Unknown to him, an arc of energy oscillates into a laboratory, and five scientists are struck down... and, infused with chemicals, they glow with power, evolving into something new...
Machine Man returns to the boy, who implores him to do something to save his father. Aaron hesitates; why should he help a race that has always demonised him? The boy can't speak for all of humanity, only his love for his father. Aaron realises he'd be becoming what he is accused of being if he doesn't help, so he generates a magnetic current with his hand to remove the bullet from the man's chest.
The gunman regains consciousness, and threatens to call the police if Machine Man attacks him. Aaron is angered by the hypocrisy, threatening to take out all his bottled rage on the lowlife.
He is stopped by a shaft of light, as a group of golden glowing humans address him as "father", telling him that life is sacred and that there must be no violence!
Part 2
Featured characters
| Regular cast | Antagonists | Incidentals |
|---|---|---|
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Quotes
"Perhaps I should allow my emotions to control me, eh? I can always justify my actions later... just as you humans do."
- —Machine Man is right, we suck!
Notes
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Original printing
- Machine Man (vol 1) issue 12, September 1979
Edits
- Pages 1-3 and 7-9 of part 1 are printed in black and white.
- On page 2 of part 1, "savior" is changed to "saviour". On page 3, "analyzing" becomes "analysing".
- On page 4 of part 1, Machine Man refers to the manhole cover as a "disk". A perfectly acceptable word for a round, flat object in the U.S., in the UK the word is typically short for "diskette", and so it is re-lettered to "disc".
Artwork and technical errors
- An attempt is made to change Bob Sharen's credit from "colorist" to "colours", but the U.S. credit isn't actually removed, resulting in "colo" followed by a mess of overlapping letters.
- Several American spellings slip through in part 1, including "grill" instead of "grille", "magnetize" instead of "magnetise", "judgment" instead of "judgement", and "energized" instead of "energised".
- "...Machine Man is the one to insure he is punished!" Unless this is a pun on his day job, that should probably be ensure.
- Cards on the table, I don't know if "Everywhere grow monuments to man's inhumanity to his fellow man!" is grammatically correct or not, but it sounds weird.
- "––whatever the bands of energy accidentally touches..." If it's plural bands of energy, they accidentally touch.
Continuity errors
Continuity notes
- The Ethicals refer to Aaron's father, Abel Stack. Aaron takes it poorly, while also referring to his father in the past tense, so presumably he found out about his death.
- The name "Ethicals" doesn't actually appear in this story, instead coming from their next appearance 1990's Quasar issue 14,
but hey, we've got to call them something.
Real-life references
- Aaron compares the manhole to a Frisbee and hopes his throw is worthy of a Major League pitcher.
- In his fit of anger, Aaron paraphrases "Man's inhumanity to man" from the Robert Burns poem "Man was made to Mourn".
- Threatening to beat the gunman, Aaron reminds him that the Bible preaches "An eye for an eye". This is from the Old Testament's Book of Exodus.
- The Ethicals also make Biblical and/or religious allusions:
- "There must be no deaths" evokes "There will be no more death" from the New Testament's Book of Revelation.
- "Thou shalt not kill" comes directly from the Ten Commandments.
- "Violence must not beget violence" evokes the sentiment of "Violence begets violence", described in the Gospel of Matthew and also used in the rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr..
