Art by Michael Kaluta
Marisol is the red-haired woman that Madame Xanadu takes as her lover during the late 15th century in Spain just after the beginning of the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition. Her parents have died and seems to be without other relatives when Xanadu arrives in Spain. She was a quality seamstress, a trait she shared with her mother, and sewed vestments for the church. Please read the Xanadu entry for more information.
This bio narrowly focuses on developments in the five part “Exodus Noir” story in Madame Xanadu #11 – 15. The year is 1940 and Madame Xanadu has settled into her Greenwich Village abode strongly associated with the character’s ambience. Socialite Catherine Shepherd is distraught over the inability of police and private invesitgators to solve her father’s grisly death which has been attributed as a rare example of spontaneous human combustion. After hearing many rumors and vague account, she turns to Madame Xanadu for help. Xanadu empathizes with the woman’s anguish and agrees to help, starting with a visit to the man’s deluxe apartment suite where a faint odor recalls bittersweet and horrific memories of her experiences of life in Spain just after the start of the Inquisition.
Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish crown who financed Columbus’ journey to the New World, have conquered the final territories of Moors and reunited the land under Christendom. With Muslims expelled, the Vatican has decreed that all Jews remaining in Spain must convert to Christianity, leave Spain and forfeit their belongings and wealth, or stay and face the Inquisition’s wrath. The Inquisition, along with the lesser known Portuguese one, was also designed to cleanse the nation of sodomites and tribads (gay men and women) on threat of death by public immolation.
When we first see Xanadu in Spain it is with a redhaired woman named Marisol as they’re witnessing an auto de fé, the part of public procession of the condemned among the townspeople, partially intended to instil fear. Xanadu reacts with horror while Marisol has little reaction to it. They part to do errands, their hands lingering a moment longer. After Marisol has an unsettling encounter with Torquemada himself, she rushes back home where the two women kiss. Unknown by the pair, two boys witness the embrace while spying on them, ensuring they come under the Inquisition’s wary eye. On several occasions Marisol also refers to Xanadu as “novia”, Spanish for girlfriend.
Art by Michael Kaluta
Xanadu acts as midwife to a neighbor woman in delivery, giving her some potion and untwisting the baby’s umbilical cord to ensure a healthy, live child. Her feat comes to the attention of a priest who’s also been called to pray over the woman, and he relates the incident in terms of witchcraft to Torquemada, naming Marisol as a witness.
Later When Marisol drops off finished work at the rectory a priest insists on taking her to Torquemada. The priest inquires about the dark haired woman “who seems familiar with the arts normally reserved for doctors”, doctors traditionally being men while midwives were becoming largely suspect of witchcraft. Marisol can only agree when he insists she be taken to receive the host and confess her sins or attract undue attention to them both and risk the nature of their relationship being discovered.
Xanadu returns with a basket of fish only to find Marisol distressed when she politely explains she can’t partake in the sacrement because she isn’t Catholic. Xanadu’s comment that “[their] love is as natural as a bird in flight, as the rains in the fields…” doesn’t calm her. She cavalierly dismisses Marisol’s concern over arousing Inquisition suspicion toward them and leaves her lover to forage rare ingredients to make tinctures, perhaps even the one which keeps her youthful. Alone, Marisol is accosted and taken into custody. A zealous Torguemada confronts Marisol, beaten and bloodied, demanding to know where her “sister in sin” is. She accuses Torquemada of secretly being Jewish, enraging the man, and in turn she is locked away in a dank prison to wait to be put to “The Question”, surely a euphemism for torture.
In the final chapter, Xanadu returns from her foraging. Seeing something is amiss and Marisol nowhere to be seen, she approaches another neighbor who tells her to stay away, calling her a “whore of Satan” and informing her that her “ruddy bed bitch” is getting “what she deserves!” A hasty consultation of her forsworn Tarot deck confirms danger and a horrific scene awaits Xanadu upon entering the town. Marisol is standing atop a pyre, held captive by black hooded executioners while a crowd of townspeople stand silently as witnesses. As she’s bound to the stake Marisol sees her lover and shouts out “Novia! Yo te amo, novia…” Xanadu is unable to save Marisol’s life; one executioner snaps her neck, calling it a gesture of pity. Xanadu recoils in shock, confessing her love which catches the attention of a priest standing nearby and calls out for guards to seize her. Thankfully Xanadu has enough wits about her to blind the priest with some enchantment so that she can escape in the confusion. Wagner ends the story of Marisol and Xanadu here by simply writing she flees Spain never to look back.
While Wagner tells a fictional story, the Inquisitions that he places the lovers in were a historical series of events in which contemporary gays and lesbians (or sodomites and tribads) were persecuted, tortured, publicaly humiliated, and murdered at the behest of the Catholic Church, whose hands were considered bloodless for having put the Spanish Crown in charge of meting punishments.
As revealed in the beginning of Matt Wagner’s initial story arcXanadu is first known long ago as Nimue Inwudum, a name she stopped going by after being deceived by Merlin. Readers have seen Xanadu in a romantic relationship with magician John Zatara, father of Zatanna, who very much wanted to marry her. His proposal was turned down because Xanadu had seen the future love of Zatara’s life in a vision.
After her short lived series ended, Xanadu became a supporting character during part of the second volume of The Spectre. It remains to be seen if or how Wagner will acknowledge or incorporate any elements of her appearances there in his stories or the more recent events that occurred in Days of Vengeance in which an out of control Spectre blinded Xanadu struck out against magic and its users.
Xanadu’s first appearance was in Doorway To Nightmare #1, her first short lived comic. Matt Wagner reveals Xanadu having loved Marison in Madame Xanadu #11. Read Madame Xanadu’s Wikipedia entry for more information.
The “Exodus Noir” trade is available for pre-order at Amazon.
Please read Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition.
© and ® Dc/ Vertigo Comics. Used without permission. Created by David Michelinie and Val Mayerik.
Susan Veraghen, this incarnation of Grendel, returns to her nameless hometown riding a hover cycle in a dystopian future. The town has changed. Seedy before, it seems now dead people are hung from transmitter towers to help keep the population intimidated. Veraghen stops in at her former favorite bar, Ground Zero, where she finds people even more desperate than when she left. She also learns from the bartender the reason that people are fearful. A gang called Orion’s Bastards rule the city.
A prostitute named Avril propositions Veraghen in the bar. With a little closer examination, Avril (once known as Martha) recognizes the green-haired woman as a former friend with whom she made out one night. Avril accidentally offends Veraghen, and she storms out of the bar to find her cycle surrounded by gang members who demand she give it over to their leader as an act of tribute. She beats up the various gang members and takes off on the bike with Avril.
While the goons report their defeat, Susan and Avril get further reacquainted at her apartment. Avril admires Susan’s tattoos that adorn parts of her body and they relax together in a hot bath, reminiscing about their past friendship and the night they made out. Susan reveals her time as a soldier and having a lesbian relationship that ended due to political circumstances.
Susan convinces Avril to leave the hellish city. Avril agrees and starts to pack clothes. It isn’t clear why Susan leaves her alone, but the hulkish gang leader Buster accompanied by humiliated subordinates viciously attack her. Susan returns to find Avril and rather predictably, there’s a tearful scene before Avril dies in Susan’s arms.
After burying Avril, Susan readies herself for combat (see image). Veraghen encounters other member beating up two gay men. She in turn beats them up, shooting one in the knee to find out where his leader is. She finds the abandoned catacombs, and walks through an orgy. Finally she confronts him. He downs a fistful of pills to stimulate his strength and rage and overdoses before Veraghen can exact her revenge. The final page shows Veraghen leaving the city and cuts to a close up of a dead Buster with a sign reading “bully” hung around his neck and dangling from a transmitter tower.
Veraghen first appears and is confirmed as a lesbian in Grendel Tales: Homecoming #1
© 1995 and 2000 by Matt Wagner. Published by Dark Horse.
