The Best of Pan: The Battle of 11th Street in Which Shit Got Real

 [This post is from March, 2012. Around that time, Pan was starting to get more interested in performance. This was mostly due to Dean Liscum, who has written many amusing accounts of the Houston performance scene over the past few years. Since this time, Otis Ike and Ivete Lucas have had several more exhibits locally. The woman who attacked the performance was a local artist. She later explained that her anger was fueled by being hassled by the reenactors. She didn't like guns being pointed at her. She has since moved to a different part of the country, but out of respect for her I'm going to continue to keep her identity a secret!]

Robert Boyd

GGallery had an opening last night that dealt with the imitation and reality. The show, One Big Mistunderstanding, by Otis Ike and Ivete Lucas, was all about the subculture of Vietnam War reenactments. Like its better-known counterpart of Civil War reenactments, the Vietnam reenactors stage battles and skirmishes as realistically as they can, short of actually killing people. A chance encounter with a reenactor at a flea market led Ike and Lucas into the subculture. Ike and Lucas have documented subcultures before, so this would seem to fit in with their previous practices. The installation was very well made, which I have to credit to new GGallery codirectors, Diane Barber and Bradford Moody. (Indeed, the gallery in general looks a lot better and less cluttered now.)


One Big Misunderstanding installation view


One Big Misunderstanding installation view


Otis Ike, 1966 Moynihan's Men, photograph

The majority of the show consists of photos like this, some in color and some in black and white. The wall text suggests that the black-and-white photos are supposed to be more ambiguous--are you looking at a reenactment or the real thing? 

Lucas and Ike's documentation of the scene wasn't limited to photographs. They documented the online presence of the reenactors, including their obsession with Star Wars.



(This painting of Chewbacca riding a squirrel and fighting Nazis is by an artist named Tyler Edlin who, as far as I know, has nothing to do with the Vietnam reenactor community, beyond having a few of them as fans.)



One side of the gallery was occupied by this bamboo hut, where performers dressed as Viet Cong entered, exited, and busied themselves looking like they belonged there. In the hut, a video played which combined footage shot of the reenactments, footage from the Vietnam war, and what appeared to be a first-person Vietnam combat video game. They were clearly playing with what was real and what was a representation. This tension underlay the whole enterprise.



For instance, this guy manning the table with two machine guns on it. Was he a vet? Were the guns real or replicas?

There were numerous performers, in essence playing the part of reenactors who themselves play the part of actual soldiers. (The performers may have included actual reenactors, but I don't think all of them were reenactors.)


urban guerrilla


Viet Cong in stripper boots

At 7 pm a performance was to begin. The Viet Cong were gathered around their hut while the American soldiers crept up, snaking through the crowd of viewers.





Now all through the show, there was one viewer who had been loudly proclaiming her disapproval of this whole thing. This show and Vietnam reenactments in general were "bullshit." I don't want to put words in her mouth, but she seemed to be saying that there was something wrong if not obscene with playacting this horrible war. She was steamed. But no one expected her to attack the performance.



She is the blue-grey blur in the pile of bodies in this photo. She literally hurled herself into the middle of the battle reenactment with fists swinging. She's a small woman, but she managed to bring down these performers into a pile. The viewers were confused. I was confused. Was she deliberately joining in with the performance as a spontaneous provocative act? Or was she, in fact, physically attacking the performance.

It was the latter. This group of performers pretending to fight in Vietnam were quite unexpectedly attacked for real. The ambiguity between reality and representation could hardly be better demonstrated than by what happened.



But the performers were troopers. After their attacker had been dragged away, they stayed in character (playing corpses).



Then surreally, a guy dressed in 60s pop-star drag came out and sang "These Boots Were Made For Walking."



This seemed calculated to remind the viewer of one of the most surreal scenes in Apocalypse Now, the Playboy Bunny performance at the jungle base. By this time, the attacker had been hustled out the door, and was looking worse for the wear--swollen lips, two chipped teeth, and blood in her mouth. Her attack had been fueled by plenty of alcohol, and she was still mad as shit. But her friends managed to move her away from GGallery and ultimately to her home.

When Le Sacre du printemps premiered at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913, the audience rioted. But this kind of reaction to a performance is rare. Even the most "transgressive" performances are viewed by polite, respectful audiences. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but it was thrilling to see this melée. It was refreshing to see someone who felt so passionately that she physically tried to interrupt it. Afterwards, I recalled Mario Savio's words: "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes  you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively  take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon  the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to  make it stop." But my pleasure at witnessing it was not so high-minded. I was pleased to see a polite little performance turn into something that seemed so real.

This unplanned bit of craziness and violence reiterated one of the themes of the exhibit better the show itself ever could. That tension between reality and representation was brutally brought home by this unplanned act. This small woman tackling several grown men was--unlike every other thing in the show--real. But as you watched it, you didn't know. You kept asking yourself, is this part of the act? Is this really happening? Like David after the dentist, this was a performance where you had to ask yourself, "Is this real life?" And as it recedes in time and becomes a part of memory, I am still asking myself that question.

Update: Over at Glasstire, one of the performers, Manik Nakra, has a first person account of the attack/intervention.  Also, I'm told by Otis Ike that the Nancy Sinatra performer is Paul Soileau, aka Christeene.

The Best of Pan: Newsflash: Thomas Kinkade and his Art are Ridiculous!

[This post was originally published on January 11, 2011. I'm proud of it because it spells out a theory of parody and explains why this massive installation failed as parody. At the time, Diverse Works was doing a lot of ambitious installations that just didn't really work--see this review of Tara Conley and Tria Wood's My Life As a Doll by Dean Liscum for another example. Since this post was first published, Diverse Works has undergone a complete change in management and Thomas Kinkade has died.]

Robert Boyd



Boy, that Thomas Kinkade sure does suck. He must suck, or Patricia Hernandez wouldn't go through so much trouble to create an elaborate parody of his oeuvre at Diverse Works. To be sure, Kinkade's saccharine confections are flabby and sentimental. His business empire is built on marketing kitsch to rubes. This has been obvious to everyone with a smidgen of education and taste in America. (In other words, the dreaded cultural elite that misters Beck and Hannity and O'Reilly do yeoman's work warning us against.) And, perhaps most satisfying to starving artists everywhere, Kinkade's empire is collapsing--his company, which went public in 1994 with an IPO of $110 million, entered bankruptcy in June of 2010. The self-proclaimed Christian evangelical was arrested for DUI last year and has lost several lawsuits brought against him from franchisees who say they were defrauded by the self-proclaimed "Painter of Light."


The transparent obviousness of Kinkade's awfulness, his corporatizing of art, his dreadful bad-taste-mongering, would seem to make parody or his work, well, a bit pointless. Why bother? And yet not only did Patricia Hernandez parody his work, she built a whole mall to do so. It is hard to imagine a more monumental waste of effort. I don't necessarily oppose kicking someone when they're down (indeed, when they are down, they're in the perfect position to be kicked), but I don't see much point.


Patricia Hernandez, Parody of Light showroom, installation, 2010

How does parody work? I grew up reading MAD magazine. About one third of MAD was free-form humor. Another third was satirical. And the remaining was parody. When I was reading it, the most popular parodies were their movie parodies, drawn by Mort Drucker. They seem pretty obvious in retrospect, but they had a great deal of power. Why? Because they were making fun of things that we 12-year-old readers were simultaneously consuming. We'd see a movie like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and read the MAD parody, "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid." And the parody would point out the cliches in the movie, and how illogical parts of it were, etc. It was undermining the very entertainment we were consuming--almost in real time. That's what good parody does. It speaks to the people who accept the thing being parodied as normal--and it tells them how not normal (how contrived, how ridiculous, how manufactured) it is.


Patricia Hernandez, Parody of Light branded toilet paper, installation, 2010

Parody is important. It's one of the ways we see behind the curtain. When we get used to the conventions of some form of art, parody comes along and reminds us that these conventions are there. This helps us because sometimes, those conventions can acquire status as eternal verities. These conventions can, over time, seem to have moral force. Parody is the court jester, the little boy pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. It's a key aspect of postmodernism, and is one way to achieve defamiliarization of the "normal."

But parody implies an audience. The reason that the National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody and National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody worked so brilliantly (besides the brilliance of the creators of those works, Doug Kenney, P.J. O'Rourke and John Hughes) is because everyone read the newspaper (in the late 70s) and everyone had a high school year book. They were examples of default culture for everyone who read the parodies. Their fundamental normalness and the invisibility of the conventions and assumptions that went into them made them ripe for parody--but only if the people reading the parodies were already intimately familiar with the things being parodied.

You can see where I'm going here. Hernandez isn't aiming her parody at people who otherwise are surrounded by Kinkade's kitsch. On the contrary, by placing the parody in Diverse Works, she is hitting a sophisticated, art-savvy audience that already knows that Kinkade is a charlatan and that his art is kitsch. Her work can't defamiliarize Kinkade's art because we already can see the strings Kinkade is using to manipulate his viewers. The revelatory aspect of parody is entirely absent.


Patricia Hernandez, A Perfect Day, oil painting, 2010

What are we left with, then? Nothing pretty. Hernandez writes "The face of the clown [whom she has inserted into the paintings] remains unseen because it has no single identity. It's a stand-in for Kinkade, his audience, how the public often perceives artists, or in a couple of images, for me." [Emphasis added.] So in the end, this whole endeavor becomes another opportunity for sophisticated, educated people to make fun of the bad taste of poor people. It's a little like that website, People of Walmart. It's funny, but I feel uncomfortable laughing at the tastelessness and cluelessness of the working class. And that's what I feel like Hernandez is doing. Making fun of the rubes.


Patricia Hernandez, Leap Through a Void, oil painting, 2010

On February 26, Diverse Works will be selling the various "Parody of Light" branded objects to benefit something called Studio One Art Resources, which is a nonprofit formed by Hernandez to help Houston's alternative art spaces establish archives--a very worthy and needed project.

Zombie Formalist Shootout in Galveston

Robert Boyd


William Powhida and Jade Townsend, Map of the town of New New Berlin

This map greeted visitors to New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair, an installation by William Powhida and Jade Townsend, at the Galveston Artists Residency last weekend. Bill Arning is identified as mayor. Given that this entire installation is a satire of Houston and of the art world, it's not exactly a compliment. But why Arning and not, say, Gary Tinterow? Because back in 2012, the following quote appeared in Art in America:

“Moving to Houston four years ago I had no idea I would find an art scene so vibrant, international and spirited,” CAMH director Bill Arning told A.i.A. over the weekend. “I keep telling artist friends that it's the new Berlin: cheap rents; great galleries, museums, and collectors; and a regular flow of visits from the best artists working today.” [Paul Laster, Art in America, October 21, 2012]

Or maybe they were thinking of this quote:

First off I tell artists it's the new Berlin: cheap rent, a global audience, scores of supportive venues. It's an amazing life for art makers.  ["Interview; Bill Arning Director Of The CAMH HOUSTON the `New Berlin`", Maria Chavez, Zip Magazine, August 28, 2013]

First Arning is stabbed in the back by an artist he's exhibiting, now this: Arning portrayed as the huckster selling Houston to the art world, not so different in the spirit from the ad the Allen Brothers placed in newspapers across America in 1836.



The installation makes snotty fun of Houston, but isn't very deep. I'll outsource most of my opinions to Bill Davenport's great review in Glasstire, which can be summed up with one phrase: "simplistic carpetbagging."


entryway to New New Berlin



New New Berlin had privatized security, of course.



A saloon/whorehouse (where the warm whiskey was free if you were wearing a cowboy hat). The bartender was artist Brian Piana.



And David McClain played the reactionary newspaperman, who from time to time came out to read what seemed like a completely unhinged rant. It turned out to be from "The Alamo," Michael Bise's passionate but confusing editorial that ran in July in Glasstire.



And naturally there was a money-grubbing church complete with a Dan Flavin-style cross. The preacher was Emily Sloan, who has a lot of relevant experience given her "Southern Naptist Convention" and "Carrie Nation" performances.


William Powhida & Jade Townsend, ABMB Hooverville, 2010, Graphite on paper. 40 x 60 inches 

It was the "Flavin" cross that caught my eye. As satirists of Houston, Townsend and Powhida aren't brilliant. But as satirists of the art world, they're quite clever. Their collaborative drawing ABMB Hooverville imagined the glitterati of the art world living in a shanty town on the beach, for example. Much of Powhida's solo work spells out (quite literally) his disgust with the crass Veblen-esque corruption that typifies so much of the upper level, blue chip art world. 

Typical of his work is to make a list--"Why You Should Buy Art", "Some Cynical Advice to Artists", "What Can the Art World Teach You", etc.--and then carefully draw it. I don't mean calligraphy (although that is a part of it). What Powhida does is to make a list or piece of text or diagram on a piece of paper and then carefully draw the piece of paper as an object.


William Powhida, What Has the Art World Taught Me

New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair are full of lists and signs.



The newspaper's editorial policy is a satire of corporate media.



The military/police/prison industrial complex gets the works, too.



And here is a map of the Nevada Art Fair.

And you can see Powhida's hand in them. The content is sarcastic and the writing is recognizable. But while the newspaper editorial policies and White Horse Security Services seem obvious and heavy handed, the more art related stuff seems funnier and stronger. Like the fact that you in the floor plan for Nevada (itself a take-off of the NADA art fair), the booth for Non-Profits is completely closed off.



The one building in New New Berlin that really works on this level is the Livery Stable. It reflects a common trajectory of post-industrial structures. First a structure may be a factory or a warehouse--a working building. Then after a while, that function no longer exists (in America, at least). The building becomes derelict until someone has the bright idea of handing it over to artists for studios. The artists move into this shitty but indestructible structure and turn it into a lively space for art. The once derelict neighborhood the building occupied gets a few bars and restaurants and becomes "hip." The owner of what was a white-elephant can now sell out to a developer who will put condos in the old warehouse after giving the artists the boot. It's an old story, and what I like about Townsend and Powhida is that they relate it to the old West (a livery stable being the nastiest building in town, and one devoted to work) and include the whole cycle in a series of overlapping signs--the "Artists Studios" banner that overlaps the "Livery Stable" sign, the "Luxury Condos" sign that is pasted on top of the "For Sale Sign".


Nevada Art Fair shooting gallery

The best part of the installation was the shooting gallery. Several "artworks" were hung on the far wall of the GAR gallery, and visitors had the opportunity to fire paintball guns at them. They were in "booths" for various galleries, such as David Zwirnered and the Joanna Picture Club (to give it a little local flavor).





Participants could fire paint guns at the pictures, which over the evening became encrusted with paintball residue. Shooters were in theory limited to five shots each, but many of these nice, liberal artsy types went hog wild as soon they got a gun in their hands, firing dozens of shots while Jade Townsend yelled "Only five shots per person!" in irritation.


 Jade Townsend firing in the shooting gallery


David McClain takes a shot

Hyperallergic editor Hrag Vartanian was there, and he commented that the paintings almost looked like contemporary abstractions one could see at a real art fair. That made me think of"zombie formalism," the term that Jerry Saltz recently applied to so much contemporary abstract painting. So what do you think, readers? Could any of these paintings go toe-to-toe with Lucien Smith, Dan Colen, Parker Ito or Jacob Kassay?







So New New Berlin and the Nevada Art Fair weren't entirely successful as works of participatory art, but shooting paintballs at canvases was a whole lot of fun. All art fairs should include a paintball firing range.

Pan is Five Year Old

Robert Boyd

  

I just realized that Pan had an anniversary this month. The Great God Pan Is Dead is officially five years old. Now if you look over in the right hand column, you will see posts going as far back as December, 2006. But that is a little deceptive.

I started a personal blog (initially called Boyd's Blog, later renamed Wha' Happen?) back in May 2006. I occasionally wrote about art on it, increasing in frequency as I made more of an effort to see more local art events and exhibits. Finally, in August 2009, I decided to spin off an art blog separate from my personal blog. My first post official post was posted on August 21, 2009. But I imported a bunch of art posts from Wha'Happen? into this blog, which is why it seems to start much earlier.

The first five posts after that introductory post were:

• An explanation of the title of the blog from a piece by William Burroughs.
• A post on Herb and Dorothy Vogel (with notes on the Menils and Glenn Bray).
• A post relating a dream I had about James Turrell. 
• A description of some of the acts at the Frenetic Theater Fringe Festival, including Jim Pirtle's wine enema.
• A post about James Surls giving a talk at Lawndale (featuring art by Emily Sloan and Elaine Bradford).

Interestingly, some of these are subjects I would return to again and again: two more posts about the Vogels,  several posts mentioning Jim Pirtle (including this one), ditto for Surls, Elaine Bradford and Emily Sloan.

As for Wha'Happen?, it gradually diminished as The Great God Pan Is Dead expanded.

To celebrate our fifth birthday, I'm going to re-post my five favorite posts, perhaps with a little introductory commentary, over this Labor Day weekend.

I want to thank everyone who has read The Great God Pan Is Dead for the past five years, and I especially want to thank the writers who contributed over the years: Dean Liscum, Virginia Billeaud Anderson, Betsy Huete, Brian Piana, Paul Mullan, Pete Gershon and Carrie Marie Schneider. Thank you all so much!

Who's Who in Jesse Moynihan's Forming (NSFW)

Robert Boyd


Forming II by Jesse Moynihan

I wrote about Jesse Moynihan's highly amusing götterdämmerung Forming a couple of years ago. The second volume, Forming II, has just been published (and you can also read it online at Moynihan's website). I thought about writing a review of the second volume, but such a review would have been too similar to the first. Suffice it to say, Forming II excellent.

But it occurred to me as I read Forming II that it's hard to keep everyone straight. There are so many characters in these books, and they come from such a wide variety of mytho-religious traditions. So I decided I'd make a list of all the characters, who they are in mythology and who they are in Moynihan's hilarious mash-up of mythologies.

I realize that this post will be utterly obscure to 98% of this blog's readers. And I admit it's a totally fanboyish post to write. All I can say is, check out his comic--you can read it on your computer for free--and decide if you're interested. Or just skip this post!

I thought about organizing it alphabetically, but I decided instead to do it in order of the characters' appearance in the story (more or less). That way, you can read it along with the books or online strip. But keep in mind--my descriptions of the characters will frequently contain spoilers.

There are several characters that have no name (yet) and no mythological counterpart--the Yeti-like creature that defeats Atys, the snake-man who aids Lucifer, the personification of death that visits Nommo on Dogon, etc. But I wanted to concentrate on the identifiably myth-based characters.

Two characters who are mentioned but don't exactly appear in Forming are Ahura Mazda (father of Mithras) and Ain Soph. Ahura Mazda is a Zoroastrian deity, and Ain Soph in Kabbalistic lore is God prior to his self-manifestation.


Mithras

Mithras. In the book, he is a powerful, high-tech being from planet Dogon who has come to Earth in 10,000 BC to develop a mining colony. He is the son of Ahura Mazda and his assistant on Dogon is Nommo. He weds Gaia and fathers several children, who rebel against him.

Mithras was a Roman deity. It was assumed for a long time that he was associated with the Zoroastrian angel, Mithra, but apparently this link is now considered dubious. There is not much known about the Roman Mithras (although much is known about his cult). The Persian (Zoroastrian) Mithra was subordinate to Ahura Mazda, and was associated with cattle, the morning sun and justice.


Nommo

Nommo. Nommo is Mithras' put-upon assistant back on Dogon. He is contacted in his dreams by Lucifer, who is seeking outsiders to help him escape from his hellish prison at the center of the Earth. Lucifer later transforms Iapetus into Nommo.

In Dogon mythology, Nommo is not necessarily a person but a type of person--amphibious, hermaphroditic creatures. (The Dogon are a tribal group in Mali.) The Nommo are also associated with "ancient astronaut" claims, which sort of fits here.


Themis (left) and Gaia (right)

Gaia. She is a work-boss in Mithras' colony who becomes Mithras wife. We later learn that she was instructed to do so by Ghob, the gnome king. She has several children with Mithras--Brontes, Steropes, Arges, Cronus and Rhea--as well as two, Themis and Iapetus, with her lover on the side, Noah.

In Greek mythology, Gaia is the primordial goddess who represents the Earth. She is the mother of a whole host of mythological beings, including the Cyclopes, the Titans, some of the Muses and many more.


Cronus and Themis

Cronus. Cronus is one of the sons of Gaia and Mithras. Ghob instructs him to rebel against Mithras.

Cronus in Greek mythology is one of the Titans, a son of Gaia and Uranus. He becomes leader of the Titans and kills Uranus, only to be killed in turn by his son Zeus.


Left to right, Brontes, Steropes and Arges

Brontes. A son of Gaia and Mithras, he is a Cyclops.

In Greek mythology, Brontes is one of the three Cyclopes born of Gaia and Uranus. Brontes is also known as the thunderer, and all three brothers are expert craftsmen, forging Zeus's thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident, Artemis's bow and arrows, etc.

 
Steropes

Steropes. Another Cyclops son of Gaia and Mithras.

In mythology, Steropes is known as "lightning."


Arges

Arges. Another Cyclops son of Gaia and Mithras. He is contacted by Lucifer in a scheme to overthrow Mithras.He ends up in the pit of Tartarus, guarding a gem that Lucifer needs to escape his prison.

In mythology, Arges is "bright."


Serapis meets the native humans

Serapis the Androgyne.  He and his posse of Nephalim guards land on Earth sometime after Mithras. They are law enforcement figures whose job is to shut down Mithras' illegal mining colony--but Serapis wants instead to get in on the action.

Serapis is a Graeco-Egyption god, supposedly devised by Ptolemy I to bring the Greek conquerors and Egyptian subjects closer together. He is, in a sense, a Greek version of the Egyptian god of the afterlife, Osiris.


Serapis and the Nephalim Guard

Nephalim Guard. They are clones of Serapis, acting as his henchmen.

The Nephalim appear the Torah as offspring of the "sons of god" and the "daughters of men."


Thenis and Mithras

Themis. Themis is a daughter of Gaia and Mithras. She wears a blindfold and can communicate telepathically. She contacts Cain by telepathy when she becomes worried about the degenerating state of her mother.

Themis was a Titan, representing Justice and divine law.


Iapetus and Lucifer

Iapetus. A son of Noah and Gaia, he is prematurely aged during the overthrow of Mithras. He keeps running things more or less as Mithras had, under the influence of Lucifer. His face is ripped off by Ghob, but he gets a new face--Nommo's face--courtesy of Lucifer.

Iapetus was a Titan, and a god of mortality. He is one of the sons of Uranus and Gaia--but he is sometimes linked to Japheth, one of the sons of Noah.


Lucifer

Lucifer. At the dawn of time, Lucifer wills himself into being, declaring himself independent of Ain Soph. He is trapped at the center of the Earth and contacts Arges, Nommo and the unnamed snake-man to try to free him.

Lucifer is, of course, the angel in the Christian faith who rebelled against God and was cast down.


Michael holding Mithras

Michael. Michael is an agent of Ain Soph who battles Lucifer. During the battle, they inadvertently cause the universe to come into being. As punishment for this, Michael casts Lucifer into the center of the Earth, where he plots his escape.

The Archangel Michael is mentioned in Jewish, Christian and Islamic scripture.


Adam

Adam. One of the humans encountered by Serapis when he and his Nephalim Guard land on Earth. Like all humans before the aliens came, he could communicate telepathically with other humans and animals. He was vegetarian, but Serapis corrupts him into eating meat. He seems to fair pretty poorly under Serapis' "civilizing" influence.

Adam is the first human in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths.


Serapis, Adam and Sheshai

Sheshai. Another of the Nephalim.

In the Bible, he is one of the sons of Anak.


Rhea

Rhea. A giantess, she is the daughter of Mithras and Gaia. She loves her brother Cronus and has a baby, Zeus, with him. After Ghob rips Iapetus's face off, she engages with Ghob in an epic battle.

In Greek mythology, Rhea was a Titan, married to Cronus and the mother of Zeus. She hides Zeus from Cronus so that he can grow up and defeat his father, freeing his siblings, the Olympian gods, whom Cronus had swallowed.

 
Noah

Noah. Noah is one of the people of Atlantis not enslaved by Mithras. He is Gaia's lover and father of Iapetus and Themis.

In Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, Noah is the last of the pre-Flood patriarchs. He saves humanity and all animals by building an ark. His sons are Ham, Shem and Japheth.


Ghob

Ghob. The gnome king, he forces Gaia to marry Mithras, knowing that such a union would produce children capable of overthrowing Mithras. He later attacks Iapetus and rips his face off and subsequently engages in an epic battle with Rhea and Zeus.

Ghob doesn't appear to come from any ancient mythology as far as I can determine, but in modern "magical" practices, he is associated with the element of Earth and is the king of gnomes.


Serapis and Eve

Eve. Another of the humans Serapis encounters. He teaches her English then rapes her, impregnating her with Cain.

Eve is the second human in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths.


Serapis and Talmai

Talmai.  One of the Nephalim.

In the Bible, Talmai is a son of Anak and a member of the Nephalim.


Arba

Arba. Another of the Nephalim.

In the Torah, Arba is the father of Anak.


Anak and Atys

Anak. One of the Nephalim.

Anak is a figure from the Torah, an offspring of the Nephalim.


Atys

Atys. He comes from the same place as Serapis and Mithras. Repeatedly bested by Serapis, he finally seems to have the upper hand only to be defeated by what appears to be a Yeti, who turns him into a large stone.

Attis was a Phrygian god of self-mutilation (he castrated himself ) and vegetation.  At one time, he was associated with Atys, the son of Croesus as mentioned in the Histories of Herodotus. That identification was apparently spurious, though.


Emperor Mainyu

Emperor Mainyu. He sent Atys to assassinate Serapis for going rogue.

Angra Mainyu was the evil opposite of Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism, a sort of Satanic figure.


Janus

Janus. On a whim, Janus manipulates time and space to help Atys.

Janus was a distinctly Roman god (having no Greek counterpart). Two-faced, he was the god of beginnings and transitions.


Cain

Cain. Child of Serapis and Eve. Through communication with Themis, he becomes aware of the gem that Lucifer lost. His battle with Nommo and the army of Titans causes the destruction of Atlantis and the seeming death of many characters. (But with Gods, death is not always the end.)

In the Bible, Cain is also the son of Adam and Eve, and kills his brother Abel--the first murder.


Zeus

Zeus. Zues is the blue skinned offspring of Rhea and Cronus.

In Greek mythology, Zeus is also the offspring of Cronus and Rhea, but he kills Cronus, who had hitherto eaten all his brothers and sisters upon birth. These siblings become the other gods of Olympus and Zeus is their king. His overthrow of Cronus leads to the battle between the gods and Titans.


Left to right: Adam, Abel and Seth

Abel. A son of Adam and Eve. Half-brother of Cain.

Abel, is, of course, the first murder victim in the Bible. (But not the last!)

Seth. A son of Adam and Eve. Half brother of Cain.

In Jewish and Islamic traditions, Seth is the third son of Adam and Eve, born after the murder of Abel.


Metatron and Noah

Metatron.  "Mediator between higher and lower gates," he seems to be a messenger on behalf of Ain Soph, appearing to Michael and to Noah at various times.

Metatron is an archangel in Jewish and Christian folklore, although he does not appear in canonical scripture.