This
comic is the sister installment to the Tomorrow
Man. While before the Timed Machine was the result of youthful
recklessness, here "Miss Ross" sets off not with the
end in mind, but only to make right that which was wronged. This
coming-of-age is often wrought with seeming peril, so what better
way to portray this than a retelling of the last Toltec creation
myth? Descending into the world of the dead, far removed from
the Judeo-Christian myth, our plucky hero, like Quetzacoatl before
her, manages to return unharmed, remaking the Earth and Sky in
the process. What lies ahead is often uncertain; the Tomorrow
Man expected the best and received the worst, while here our protagonist
braces for doom, only to find that appearances (to draw from cliche)
are often misleading. A symbol of authority is exposed (in this
case, an inept teacher) and a portrayal of the dead is revised.
The
use of the Toltec (and subsequently Aztec) view of death is no
accident. Far removed from the Western dread of ghosts and various
spooks, the Toltecs saw death as the highest experience in life.
How rational is our own fear, then? As Zhuangzi put it, "How
do we know the dead long for life? Perhaps death is to awake from
a dream, and we cannot remember why we lived at all?"
