A Many-Petaled Hybrid: Neil Gaiman and Dave McKeans Black Orchid On the surface, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKeans 1989 graphic novel Black Orchid is overwhelmingly male. The premise of the text is that a male scientist with a plan to save the world first obtains and then clones the genetic material of the woman he loved as a child, and creates a gardenhouse full of half-woman half-orchid creatures, all of which look like his lost love. The woman is Susan Linder, who led a troubled life beginning with her adolescent escape from an abusive father to her murder at the hands of her gun-running (for Lex Luthor) ex-husband Carl Thorne seven years prior to the beginning of Black Orchid. The hybrids--who, curiously, all have Susans memories--are at the heart of the narrative, whether it be the first Black Orchid murdered for what she knew (working to expose rampant corruption in LexCorp and thus exact revenge for Susans death), or the second who carries on the murdered Sylvians work in the rainforest by scattering her own fertilized seeds. While not explicitly ecofeminist (or even feminist, for that matter), Black Orchid makes for an interesting juxtaposition with ecofeminism and toxic consciousness; the work is heavily rooted in a 1980s context and reflects critical tenets of ecofeminism as well as an increased awareness of nature, waste, and (albeit problematic and probably misguided in Phil Sylvians case) ecological activism. At the same time that Black Orchid is intrinsically a very male text, it is true that the artwork in Black Orchid is beautiful and elegiac, two elements seen more prominently in McKeans later work with Gaiman on the critically acclaimed comic book series Sandman. As in that series, a number of the pages in Black Orchid are heavily watercolored, a technique not then popular in American comics publications. Essentially, Black Orchid is gendered in some problematic and paradoxical ways; it is not any one thing. The artwork deviates significantly from traditional comic books, though it at the same time reinforces patriarchal images of female body types found in mass-market comic books; the narrative is both heavily first-world while also calling attention to ecological concerns and their representation in Western culture. Waste figures prominently in this narrative, whether it is waste in the literal sense, such as soda cans discarded in the rainforest, wasted potential (such as capitalism--LexCorp--smashing the individual green activist), or wasted lives (the scores of murder victims, for example). In addition, the most feared characters in this work (excepting Lex Luthor, who seems a little deus ex machina at times), the ones that the male characters set out to destroy, are women: Susan (murdered by Carl after agreeing to testify against him), the first Black Orchid (also known as Emma Halliwell, murdered during a LexCorp business meeting, first shot, then burned alive), and Pamela Isley (also known as Poison Ivy, condemned to spend the rest of her life in Arkham Asylum). Carl murders a greenhouse full of hybrids, and is eventually murdered himself only after chasing the two surviving flower-women into the rainforest; the only reason he is alive to die is because the second Black Orchid fished him out of the river Luthors goons had thrown him into. Perhaps more tellingly, the men who are feminized according to patriarchy--those who work toward environmental protection and conservation--all die, while the one woman who is masculinized (i.e. doing the same experiments as the men, but with far less technology toward far less noble ends) lives caged and hidden from the rest of the world in inhuman and unfathomable conditions under the constant threat of violence. Like any other theoretical mode, ecofeminism has had difficulty aligning peoples varying beliefs under one umbrella term. Feminists who also believed in Marxism had difficulty pulling the two elements together, as class struggle often overshadowed gender struggle (though theorists like bell hooks have posited that the privileging the eradication of one system over any other immediately returns one to the hierarchy that is the root of the problem). Theorist Ariel Sallah states in her Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern (1997) that the first thing ecofeminism does is interrogate the Eurocentric notion (dualism, patriarchy) that puts Man above both Woman and Nature. Sallah also believes that, despite the skepticism of other theorists, socialism, ecology, feminism, and postcolonial struggle can work together to unravel patriarchy, and that ecofeminism is in fact the carrier of four different--but related--revolutions. Salleh argues that ecofeminist politics are feminist because they critique capitalist patriarchal culture from a womanist perspective. In addition, ecofeminism is socialist because it honors the wretched of the earth (192), ecological because nature and humanity are again joined with one another in a more egalitarian context, and, because of the focus on dismantling Eurocentric patterns of hierarchy and dualism, ecofeminism is a postcolonial discourse. Though Sallahs work is heavily theoretical, her point is one that nearly all ecofeminists hold: the individual and the collective are of equal importance, and prioritizing oppression--be it class, gender, or race--is counterproductive. What, in many peoples eyes, should be happening is that activists (whether self-identified as ecofeminist or not), while recognizing difference, should work together toward a common goal: the disassembling of patriarchy and patriarchal thinking. Despite the difficulty in defining ecofeminism (recognizing also the patriarchal construction of definitions, something many resist), and recognizing the difference in the various movements (such as cultural feminism or socialist feminism), all agree on the core tenet of ecofeminism: the domination of women and domination of nature are fundamentally connected. Ynestra King argues 4 tenets to ecofeminism (Murphy 7-8), while Janis Birkeland places 9 elements in an ecofeminist credo in her article Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice in the 1993 anthology Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature (ed. by Greta Gaard). First, King states that oppression of women and the building of Western civilization are linked through the notion that women are closer to nature. Many ecofeminists take issue with the woman-nature equation, because at the same time it emphasizes a gendered difference, it reinscribes a hierarchy and re-enforces a binary. If women are closer to nature, then men must be further away, according to the binary, and not all ecofeminists believe that this point is the case. Additionally, a number of ecofeminsts find the crux of this issue erroneous; women are no more intrinsically closer to nature than men are, and it is patriarchal to think so. Moreover, it is problematic to similarly generalize by saying that all ecofeminsts are identically aligned in terms of ideology; this is not so. There must be room in ecofeminism, most agree, for the same diversity ideally supported in the environment. So, why then are Alec Holland and Phil Sylvian (not to mention the absent Dr. Jason Woodrue) martyred to the ecological cause in Black Orchid, along with a greenhouse full of other orchids waiting to mature (who would no doubt have purple speech balloons like the other hybrids), while Pamela Isley (brown speech balloons) is left to rot in the dark corners of Arkham Asylum? The implication, at least in Black Orchid, is that women are, in fact, closer to nature, and most women (as the so-called weaker sex) are closer to the gentle, pretty side of nature rather than the dangerous and devouring side (violent, thus masculine). The second Black Orchid, in fact, is so beautiful that she transfixes the men who have been sent on behalf of LexCorp to kill her, and thus survives. By contradistinction, the women who are transgressors against patriarchal beauty and behavior standards in Western society, such as Isley (the only woman in the coterie of scientists that included Sylvian and Holland), are essentially punished for their actions. Men who are feminized are martyred, but women who are masculinized are punished in truly horrifying ways. The crux is that Isley is closer to nature, but not the flowery and palatable nature of Sylvians greenhouses and the rainforest; what shes closest to is the dangerous and powerful underbelly of nature that most people (especially first-world Westerners) either ignore or avoid (and if they do not take plains to be cautious, such as in the case of poison ivy, they later regret their heedlessness). Moreover, it is her toxicity that keeps Isley safe from violence and violation: The only reason I havent been raped by the guards is that theyre scared of me. Scared of my plants. Scared of my power (2, 41:5). The point seems to be that the only way that patriarchy (Arkham Asylum) can attempt to control nature (Isley and the hybrids) is through violence, which is predicated on power and domination. Paradoxically, the only way the hybrids can survive is through beauty; the second Black Orchid escapes the hired killers because she consciously draws their patriarchal gaze to her, and then turns it against them to immobilize them. (Unfortunately, I suspect theyd have murdered Isley on the spot, since generally power relations and domination are posited on fear). Kings second tenet of ecofeminism states that life on earth is heterarchical, not hierarchical (Murphy 7-8), which does not sit well with patriarchy as well as capitalism, or any other system that privileges a select few over many others, luring them with the possibility of upward mobility. Ecology is an interconnected web rather than a hierarchical pyramid: everything is affected by a change in the environment, though not every thing is affected the exact same way. Third, King argues that the balanced ecosystem of human and non-human must maintain diversity, and, finally, that species survival necessitates considering not only our relationship to nature, but also our own bodily nature and the nonhuman nature around us (Murphy 7-8). As cyber-ecofeminist Colleen McGuire put it: Nature does not need humans to survive. Contrary to techno-capitalist propaganda, human dependence on nature is inescapable. It is counterintuitive to manipulate, control, and attempt to transcend nature. To try to do so, it is implied, is irrational and patriarchal, and fueled as a concept only because of the hierarchical power structure that places Man towards the top of the triangle and Nature at the very bottom. The Judeo-Christian-centric hierarchy inherent in patriarchy places God at the top, with Man second in line, followed by Woman, Children, Animals, and Nature at the very bottom of the list. Most ecofeminists clearly identify the dangers of--and their objections to-- dualism, but stating that difference should exist without binary and hierarchy. Birkeland points to this issue many times in her ecofeminst credo, calling for a total restructuring of the current patriarchal power system to create a world based on respect for the land as well as each other rather than the current system which is based on domination (Gaard 20). Black Orchid, however, plays with patriarchy and hierarchy, where God and Man become one, because of genetic experimentation, cloning, and hybridization, but at the same time Woman and Children become Nature as well as God, with the new creations of hybrids between Black Orchid and Swamp Thing. Animals become Nature, as evidenced by Pamela Isleys aberrant experiments deep in the dank cellars of Arkham Asylum, and perhaps vice versa. Humans becomes animal. Isley remains caged and semi-feral, left alone only because she is feared. Additionally, it is implied that not only is she clearly insane, she is lacking in social graces, like the hierarchical notion of animals being less civilized than man (when, in actuality, they are differently socialized, rather than civilized--again, another patriarchal and Western-centric notion). To complicate matters, especially in discussing Pamela Isley, whose alter ego is, after all, Poison Ivy, is the notion of toxicity. According to theorist Cynthia Deitering, toxic consciousness can be defined in a multitude of ways. She poses that during the 1980s, when the world ushered in the decade with speculation about the lingering effects of Three Mile Island and the Union Carbide incident, and closed it out with congressional hearings about the Greenhouse Effect, there was a trend among fiction writers to reflect and amplify increasing concern about pollution and toxic waste in their works. Fiction of the 1980s, in its sustained and various representations of pollution, offers insight into a cultures shifting relation to nature and the environment at a time when the imminence of ecological collapse was, and is, part of the public mind and of individual imaginations (196). Deitering points to a shift in cultural identity where American society and writing is defined not by production but by waste, and the literary toxic landscape exists as a thinly-veiled metaphor for real-world pollution. There are a number of examples of toxic consciousness in Black Orchid, most obviously the notion of genetic tomfoolery. Dr. Phil Sylvian becomes, after a fashion, God with a greenhouse full of hybrids; half-human, half-plant women, most of which end up destroyed by Carl. These naked, wispy, purple creatures are set up in direct contradistinction not only to both humans and plants, but especially in comparison to the only other plant-woman: Pamela Isley. Isley, also known as Poison Ivy (an aspect reflected in her personality if not her biology), is coded as evil and threatening, hidden away in the basement of an asylum and in constant threat of violation. Isleys life, in a fashion, is wasted even though she is neither murdered (like Susan, whose death predicates the entire action of the novel, or Sylvian) or murdered and then destroyed (like the first Black Orchid cloned from Susan, whose murder sets the books action in motion). Nor is Isley hacked into bits and hosed with weed-killer, as are the other hybrids in Sylvians greenhouse, or sliced through like the rainforest at the end of the novel. Of course, actual waste appears in the book, such as the discarded and rusting soda can in 3, 22:5-6, or in other places where things are thrown away. Though some ecofeminsts pose that fear of death is a constructed anxiety, because death is an integral part of the natural cycles of life, one can easily infer than they mean a natural death. Dying itself is part of life, but being hastened toward an untimely end is violent and a flagrant waste. The sheer fact that hybrids are the main characters in this novel, and that they are female hybrids created by a male doctor directly patterned after a woman he was clearly infatuated with (and had been since childhood), is disturbing as well as highly fetishistic. Phil Sylvian stole genetic material from Susan Lindens corpse, after she was murdered by Carl, her gun-running ex-husband, seven years prior to the start of Black Orchid. Sylvian is presented as the most ecofeminist of this group of scientists; while Holland is concerned with feeding the world, Phil dreamed of air...he dreamed of showing mankind that the world was one thing...all connected, intertwined (3, 7:2). The text goes on to explain that Sylvian dreamed also of creating hybrid plant-people, who would create oxygen rather than deplete it, and stop the destruction of the Earths resources. Despite Sylvians so-called noble attempts to save humanity, there are a few things that clearly do not work, either in terms of his grander plans for the planet, or simply in terms of science. The most glaring of these--if the reader accepts the initial premise of creatures half human and half orchid--is the omission or absence of male hybrids. In addition to the belief many ecofeminists generally hold that biogenetic engineering is dangerous for many reasons, one of which is because it is predicated on the elimination of women as the primary force in the creation of life, there are no men in Sylvians new world order aside from himself. This absence of other males may not in any way be coincidental, especially if one factors in the notion that Sylvian essentially re-created the one woman he could not have. Early in the narrative, Sylvian mistakes the second Black Orchid for Susan, a mistake one would have thought he would not make after the first Black Orchid. Even more problematically, all of the Orchids have Susan Linders memories and recognize people theyve never met, but Susan had. By dint of the fact that Black Orchid is a comic book work, the text already points to a long history of fully indoctrinated and institutionalized patriarchal violence against women as well as nature. Additionally, comic books have long been regarded as low art, and disposable entertainment, a trend that began in Britain at the turn of the century with penny dreadfuls--cheap comics publications designed to be read between train stops. Comic books have also long been considered a male-oriented domain, especially American superhero comics. Almost all comic books published by major publishing houses are written and illustrated by men, and often comics retailers (almost always men) will stock only what their (mostly male) clientele will purchase. In addition to economic factors, many women will not read mass-market comic books because they reinforce ridiculous gender stereotypes, especially patriarchal standards of female beauty. Mass-market female superheroes are often (but not always) white and blond, with astonishingly large breasts, dressed in exceedingly tight clothing. They are almost always young, and are never fat. Despite adhering to or echoing some of these aspects in Black Orchid, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean are trailblazers in the comics industry, despite their overwhelmingly first-world male perspective. It is, unfortunately, a Sisyphian task to begin dismantling the patriarchal barrier surrounding comics publications, since there are always already a number of other issues surrounding comics publications. An example of Gaiman and McKeans addressing a male readership while also partially dismantling the expected comic book conventions would be the mitigation at work in the text. Though the female hybrids are naked and thin, these aspects are mitigated by the truth of their biology: lack of nipples, navels, and body hair, their purple skin, and the fact that they are half-human, half-orchid. The primary audience for Black Orchid was likely male, white, 30-40 years old, and weaned on superheroes of the 1950s and 1960s. This point is not an assumption; rather, it is predicated on the documented popularity of comic books with an overwhelmingly male audience, and the evolution of the graphic novel which was (and remains) a format clearly targeted both narratively and economically at an adult readership. The graphic novel has long been under fire from both inside and outside the industry; debate rages about the origin of the graphic novel (many pinpoint comics pioneer Will Eisners 1978 A Contract With God while others steadfastly stick with the Big Three), what to call it (some publishers prefer trade paperback because graphic novel is seen has having two major shortcomings: first, graphic is a word that connotes graphic sex and violence to a significant segment of the readership, and, second, if one is attempting to legitimize comics publications as literary, why preface novel with graphic--why not just say novel?), and how to overcome the American bias of comics publications as cheap art with little social value or literary significance. When confronted with the graphic novel, especially in the context of the Big Three, all of which looked more like books than any other comics publications, the book industry and general readership had no idea how to react. In 1985 and 1986, three graphic novels were published within short order of one another; all were written by men about decidedly male experiences even though each revolved around a heightened sensitivity to the human condition. The best-known of these three works--generally referred to as the Big Three in the industry--is Art Spiegelmans Holocaust narrative Maus, in which he tells his fathers story as a Holocaust survivor (as well as the tragic, though tangential to his text, story of his mothers suicide) as well as his own story of surviving his father. Frank Millers The Dark Knight Returns also took a long hard look into the human heart, directing its gaze at Batman, who, unlike the morally upright vigilante of the 1940s and 50s, was disinterested in crimefighting, refused work for the government, and ended up fighting Superman (government operative) to the death. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, was primarily preoccupied with the heightened possibility of nuclear annihilation. The truth of our existence is that the missiles could be in the air...now. How do you live with that? Moore said in a 1991 interview about the overriding question of Watchmen. First published in 1989, there is no doubt that Black Orchid was read by a high number of adult males, lured back into comics specialty shops with the promise of new cutting-edge versions of old superheroes. These revamped superheroes--Batman, for example--were the ones they had grown up on prior to the 1954 creation of the Comics Code Authority. With content regulation mandated by the CCA, superheroes were commonly thought of by many (but certainly not all) readers as having lost their edge. Additionally, a number of readers prior to 1954 may likely have given up comics reading altogether under pressure from parents or educators (returning to the discussion of comics as illiterate, and unsuitable for adult reading). Black Orchid makes no secret of having a high degree of intertextuality with commonly-known superhero-book villains and crimefighters; in fact, significant sections of the narrative are predicated on outside assistance from superheroes so well known that even the casual reader of Black Orchid (implied to be women) would understand the reference. Lex Luthor, easily one of the best-known comics villains of all time, is the head of the rabidly capitalist LexCorp, which is behind the main action of most of the narrative. Luthors plan to silence the first Black Orchid (cloned from the genetic material of the murdered Susan Linden) succeeds in the first few pages of the book; only later, after she is brutally murdered, do readers learn that she was working undercover as Emma Halliwell in order to expose the corruption infiltrating and engineered by LexCorp. Alec Holland--the title character from Swamp Thing--appears in Black Orchid, factoring prominently in the narratives progression despite only appearing for a few pages. Alan Moore spent some time scripting Swamp Thing in the early 1980s prior to his work on Watchmen, and the characters story is simple enough: Alec Holland was murdered because of his work to dismantle ecologically unsound industry (cash crops, for example). His body was discarded in the Louisiana Bayou, but instead Holland became nature instead of being devoured by it; Swamp Thing is a creature, mostly plant, who was once a man, but still has human aspects. In Black Orchid, Swamp Thing explains her genesis to the second Black Orchid (the older of the two escaped hybrids), tells her where to find Suzy (the younger of the two hybrids, also known as the little one), and giv[es] her babies in the form of plant seeds in the beginning of the third chapter. The second Black Orchid distributes these plants in the rainforest, thus continuing her (and Swamp Things) species. Moreover, the existence of these orchids is multifold; not only are the species continuing, the murdered Phil Sylvians work will continue, if in a slightly more natural way than he had intended. However, it is Batman which is granted the highest number of crossover characters, from the various incarnations of Batman himself to the coterie of super-villains who appear and disappear from issue to series. From the appearance of the Bat himself in the second chapter, the second Black Orchid finds herself in the notorious Arkham Asylum, where criminally insane super-villains are left to die. Here in Arkham, we (as readers) meet Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy) and Harvey Dent (Two-Face), two well-known characters (especially lately, since both characters have in recent years been featured within the Batman movie sequels, though Poison Ivy was made far more glamorous than her incarnation in Black Orchid). Isley had been referred to earlier in the narrative as a friend of Alec Holland (murdered because of his eco-positive work) and Phil Sylvian (also murdered because of his eco-oriented work, though his was far more ethically suspect than Hollands); she was always coded as dangerous. Phil explains Pamela in paradoxical terms while telling the second Black Orchid about Susan: She was weird. Real smart, but one second shed be so sweet, the next shed be poison (1, 34:2). The explanation of woman as poison could be read in varying ways, depending, and in more complex ways than simply woman = evil. Feminist theorists adopted the femme fatale in film studies as the one character with all of the true power; similar arguments could be made about Pamela Isley. After all, shes the one they all fear enough to have locked up and hidden away. Though Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean likely did not have a feminist or ecofeminist agenda in mind while creating Black Orchid, the text does include interesting constructions of gender roles, and an increased awareness of nature, waste and ecological activism. This combination makes for an interesting relationship with ecofeminism and toxic consciousness, albeit not an easy one. On the other hand, ecofeminism is polyvalent and known for having a number of various interpretations, as the root of ecofeminism links very closely to concerns about diversity, women, and nature. Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Gaiman and McKeans text is that Black Orchid is a comic book, and interrogates all of these aforementioned issues in a format considered by most as lowbrow and as suspect as ecofeminism itself.