Habsburg Empire - Apotheosis
Gabriel Wallach, aka Apotheosis, is a superhero created in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1920s. Originally created as a pseudo-Christian mythological extension of the Archangel Gabriel, Apotheosis has a long history of being coded as Jewish, up to the famed “Night of the Qliphoth” storyline in 1984 which publicly confirmed the character’s Jewish faith and heritage. Apotheosis has had a controversial publication history, with accusations of being heterodox or satanic in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, largely from conservative Christian groups, while also being lauded as “the quintessential Habsburg superhero.” The acquisition of Apotheosis Comics by the larger Intrepid Comics publisher in 1992 saw Apotheosis join a wider universe of superheroes such as the Steel Lion and Insight.
Gabriel Wallach was first created, both in art and writing, by Alexandr Pospíchal, a Vienna-born artists coming from a large Czech family. Pospíchal, though Catholic by birth and, especially in his later years, crypto-occultist by faith, grew up interacting with the large Jewish community both of Vienna and of the wider Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first sketches of Wallach, then dubbed “The Rosicrucian,” appeared in 1918, shortly after Pospíchal first read The Metamorphosis by his contemporary, Franz Kafka, which Pospíchal maintained was a major influence on his work. Fragmentary stories from this period suggest Pospíchal originally intended for Wallach to be a much more alchemy-based hero, though the idea of a metamorphosis of his own soon overtook these original plans.
In 1924, Pospíchal received a publishing deal from the Katholischer Preßverein to publish six-page adventures with his character “Apotheosis,” intended to show an “upstanding Austrian character challenging seditious and malcontent behavior.” Importantly, the Katholischer Preßverein obtained printing rights, but not ownership, of the stories and panels provided by Pospíchal. The first several issues of Wallach’s adventures mainly focused on his origins and his battling of demons masquerading as ordinary Austro-Hungarian citizens. Wallach’s powers, broadly including pyrokinesis and photokinesis, were said to have been bestowed upon him by the Archangel Gabriel with the express intent of defending against such hellish threats.
Pospíchal published with the Katholischer Preßverein from 1924 to 1931, during which time Wallach’s story was expanded to include his secret identity and his cover of working day-to-day as an assistant to a religious teacher - never explicitly stated to be Christian, as would be important in later recounting - and expanding his rogues gallery to include several stereotypes of Turkish Muslims. In 1931, Pospíchal severed ties with Katholischer Preßverein, claiming that their restrictive policies had prevented him from telling deeper stories about Wallach. It was at this time that Pospíchal created Apotheosis Comics, a small press based around his own stories.
Pospíchal continued to write for Wallach from 1931 to 1936, during which time he first introduced the Ship of Theseus, a secret society of wealthy, influential, and revered figures who controlled much of the world’s wealth and power. The society’s depiction has been noted to resemble the clothing of Cardinals of the Church and depictions of the Jesuit Order closely, and is often taken as a sign of Pospíchal’s frustrations with the Catholic dogma he had been required to write under. As a result, the 1931-1936 period in Apotheosis’s comics are known as being deeply subversive, going so far as to introduce Damian Lipowski, a Polish-Lithuanian hero and frequent ally of Wallach’s, despite deep-seated conflict between the Austro-Hungarians and Polish-Lithuanians.
In 1936, Pospíchal, now 54, transitioned into serving as the editor-in-chief of Apotheosis Comics, handing the writing of Apotheosis over to the team of Elias Mittermeier and Emilio Schiele, the latter having been Pospíchal’s correspondent in Habsburg Parma for the past decade. Mittermeier and Schiele dialed back the more subversive elements of Pospíchal’s later years, instead focusing on building Wallach’s character, background, and social circle. The 1936-1947 period under Mittermeier and Schiele, as well as the later addition of their protege Andreas Mosele, saw the creation of Wallach’s background as a middle-class child in an extended Transylvanian family who moved to Vienna. Wallach’s several brothers and sisters were introduced as side characters, along with his mentor figure, a Syrian-born Rabbi.
Pospíchal’s death in 1947 resulted in a two-year hiatus from the publishing of Wallach, which concluded when Tomys Mariou, a Cypriot immigrant, became head writer. Mariou’s interest in “the Orient” and disinterest in many of the deeply Austro-Hungarian themes of the prior writings (the cultural milieu of the Empire, as a Transylvanian-born immigrant to Vienna mentored by a Syrian and friends with a Pole) led to a series of issues from 1949 to 1953 which saw Wallach go to Persia in search of lost treasures and looking for ancient orders of mystics. This period, referred to as “the Babylonian Captivity” Mariou’s run did, however, establish many new Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Chinese characters in Wallach’s social circle, many of whom were rewrites of previous villains he had encountered during the Katholischer Preßverein period.
Mariou’s run came to an end in 1953, and he was replaced by the returning Andreas Mosele, who penned the famous “Rose and Cross” storyline from 1953 to 1956. This story, often treated as part of the essential Apotheosis canon, sees Wallach discover a globe-spanning occultist secret society, leading him back from Samarkand to Ciudad-Mexico, Boston, Paris, and eventually back to Vienna chasing various villains. The final discovery he makes is that his powers did not come from the literal Archangel Gabriel, but from an ancient alchemical reaction divined from ancient Israelite secrets. This story also introduces Apotheosis’s most famous ally, the Rosicrucian (a derivation from Pospíchal’s original notes as shared with Mosele) and one of his most famous villains, the Kingmaker.
The conclusion of the Rose and Cross storyline saw Mosele hand the reigns off to Dragoslav Pajić, who made a point to establish a consistent characterization of Wallach himself. Under Pajić’s pen, Wallach became a brilliant but lazy alchemist and brutally honest mild control freak, but also a man with deep convictions of right and wrong and a strong resistance to inherent categorization, to the point that he once declares “There is no such thing as good and evil; just knowledge and ignorance.” Pajić found that a kind of gnosticism worked well for his interpretation of Wallach, as well as Wallach’s two enduring foes, the Ship of Theseus (an organization which aggressively categorizes all its members to the point that replacements are altered to look identical to their predecessors) and the Rosicrucians (an organization which has achieved immortality through alchemical means, only to be denied the ultimate revelations of life and death). Wallach, a man who, by virtue of living in the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire, is forced to contend with such aggressive categorization.
Pajić’s run, influenced by that of Mosele before him, saw the beginnings of public perception swinging against Wallach, as accusations of the comic turning young readers into satanists, atheists, or subversives came into full swing. Pajić, especially after his early runs, began to dial back the more subversive or occultist influences, and later in his run, the 1965-1966 story “The Father and the Son,” which saw Wallach’s Rabbi mentor die and see Wallach seduced by a new mentor figure in the form of a Neapolitan Priest secretly operating a modern-day slave trade through North Africa. This intensely personal story entrenched it as a second essential part of the Apotheosis canon.
Pajić retired in 1974, after writing Apotheosis for nearly two decades, leading to seven years of shortly-serving writers who began to return to the more occult, subversive, and political themes of the Rose and Cross era. This period also saw Matthias Tibor, the first Jewish artist for Apotheosis, begin to increase the Jewish iconography surrounding the character, playing on the long history of Wallach’s association with Jewish culture in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1981, Matthias’s brother, Adrian Tibor, was brought on as the author for Apotheosis, and spent three years building a reputation as a long-term storyteller.
In 1984, Adrian and Matthias Tibor received the OK from Apotheosis Comics to “out” Wallach as being both ethnically and religiously Jewish, with depictions of his family gathering for Hanukah, Wallach’s day job being revealed as teaching at a Jewish day school, and a storyline directly connected to Jewish theology. The 1984-1987 storyline “Night of the Qliphoth,” all taking place over a single day and night, sees Apotheosis faced against a new enemy, the Decay, which withers living creatures around it. Night of the Qliphoth became an instant hit, and rapidly entered the canon for essential Apotheosis stories. The revelation that Apotheosis was Jewish (and, according to Apotheosis editorial, had always been intended as such) was not without controversy, however, and led to the creation of “the Ascended” by the Katholischer Preßverein, a rival and deeply similar hero to Apotheosis, which led to an extended court battle between the two sides.
The Tibor brothers continued to write and draw Apotheosis until their retirement in 1991. At this point, Intrepid Comics, a multinational conglomerate of comic companies with access to characters such as the Ottoman Steel Lion and the Venetian Insight offered to purchase Apotheosis Comics, which was agreed upon. Apotheosis thus joined the ranks of many other heroes. For much of the 1990s, Apotheosis was published as an adventure serial set in Eastern Europe, lacking much of the biting commentary of the prior decades.