In the afterworld, the Swamp Thing and his allies, led by Etrigan and his demon hordes, prepare to battle the Original Darkness. Doctor Fate, and a band of angels whom the Stranger has recruited, join them. Meanwhile, in Wintersgate Manor, Constantine has his occult teammates link hands around the table in a sort of séance, in order to channel their power, through Mento, to aid their afterworld counterparts. The Darkness, in the apparent form of an immense black tower, rises from the chaos, horrifying Mento, who begs to be excused from participating. However, the others insist he stay on.
Cursing John, Mento witnesses Etrigan charging single-handedly toward the Darkness, fighting off the opposing demons. Mento senses the Darkness's hunger for knowledge and understanding after having been excluded from the creation. Zatanna warns him, for his own safety, to focus instead on adding their power to Etrigan's. Despite Mento's efforts, the Darkness overpowers the demon and sucks him inside. It asks Etrigan to tell it what it is, to name it. Etrigan names it Evil and says it's locked in eternal combat with God's Light. The Darkness forcefully expels the demon, saying he's merely taught it "fatalism" and "inevitability."
With Etrigan down, Mento reports that the Darkness has noticed them in the material world and is about to attack. The occultists experience a massive shockwave as the Darkness searches for a weak link in the circle. Soon, Sargon begins to smolder, then combusts. He panics, but Zatara shames him into collecting himself and dying "like a sorcerer." Despite Sargon's death, and his own scorched hand, Constantine insists the team persevere, as the circle isn't broken.
In the afterworld, as the Darkness continues its advance, Etrigan's demons break rank and flee, leaving Doctor Fate to attack the Demons Three, commanders of the opposing horde. The Darkness surprises him and sucks him inside, then asks him to define "evil." Fate replies that evil is a "quagmire of ignorance" and a "vile, wretched thing" to be cast away. The Darkness, questioning how it can be so much lower than the Light, says Fate has merely taught it contempt. It expels him violently as it did Etrigan.
While the angels advance toward it, the increasingly emotionally fragile Mento reports the Darkness is once more about to attack their circle. It begins to target Zatanna. However, her father Zatara casts the spell "Ssenkrad ekat em daetsni," and burns in her place, but not before warning Constantine to keep his daughter safe or he'll haunt him from beyond the grave. John attempts to calm and reassure Zatanna, whereupon she blames him for her father's death, ignoring his heartfelt apology. Still, the circle remains intact.
Meanwhile, the angels too have fallen before the Darkness's onslaught. The Spectre is next to face it, growing tall enough that Mento can see the apparent top of the entity—which has a shell on its head—as the Spectre grapples with it. Mento is confused to see black towers falling upon the Spectre from above, as he too gets sucked inside. The Darkness threatens to extinguish the Light unless someone will answer his question: "What is evil for?" The Spectre says that evil's only purpose is to be avenged and serve as an example to others who'd oppose God. The Darkness counters that its own "eons" of pain require retribution as well. Claiming the Spectre has only taught it vengeance, it casts him out.
With the Spectre, nearly the most powerful thing in the cosmos, down, Mento fears all is lost. Constantine, however, demands Mento tell him what the Swamp Thing's up to. As it happens, the Swamp Thing simply walks peacefully into the Darkness, surprising even it. The Swamp Thing says he can't fight it, so he's decided to submit in resignation. The Darkness asks him to tell it the purpose of evil. At first, the Swamp Thing says he can't, despite having seen plenty of it. Then he remembers his audience with the Parliament of Trees, who told him to consider the soil. And he has an idea:
- The black soil...is rich in foul decay...Yet glorious life...springs from it...But however dazzling...the flourishes of life...in the end...all decays...to the same black humus...Perhaps [...] evil...is the humus...formed by virtue's decay...and perhaps [...] it is from that dark, sinister loam...that virtue grows strongest...
The Darkness says simply, "I see," then, sensing a climax approaching, allows him to leave in peace, as he came.
Mento, unaware of what's transpired between them, still assumes the worst as the Darkness continues to advance. Then, in terror, Mento witnesses a hand coming from the Light. His terror grows as he sees the dark tower rising to meet it...and realizes that what the afterworld forces had fought or defended was merely the Darkness's fingertip (the "shell" being its fingernail). Seeing the hands of Darkness and Light reaching toward each other, he's certain they're going to fight and destroy everything.
Instead, they clasp. As everything and everyone between them swirls around, forming a yin/yang symbol, Mento cries out that he doesn't understand. His helmet shorts out, leaving him completely insane.
Sensing the battle is over, the occultists who are still alive and sane release each other's hands and take stock. Baron Winters commends Constantine on a successful campaign, although he's unsure as to how they won. Constantine suspects the outcome was less a victory than a "no-score draw."
In the afterworld, the Swamp Thing regains consciousness, finding the Stranger and Deadman still there, their other allies having left. The Stranger observes that, in the battle's wake, everything looks the same but feels different. Good and evil, light and darkness, are still there, but having recognized their mutual dependence, they've partially, subtly merged, leaving a hint of each other behind within themselves (see page quote).
Cain and Abel, in the realm of the unconscious, watch the three allies walk away, from the vantage point where they'd climbed at the issue's opening to observe the battle. Abel is anxious over what'll happen to the stories they guard, now that the conflict at their heart, between "good" and "evil," is no longer the same. Casually pushing his brother off the cliff, Cain tells him not to worry: "I'm sure we'll think of something."
This is the final chapter of the "American Gothic" arc, and the last issue which Stephen Bissette and John Totleben drew together.
Tropes
- An Aesop: Good and evil are not mutually exclusive absolutes, but are interdependent: evil can arise from good, and vice versa.
- Anyone Can Die: Sargon and Zatara, two of the original DC occult characters, meet their end during the séance.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage: The Darkness is so immense that it turns out everyone was merely fighting its fingertip.
- Black-and-White Morality: Moore once told Neil Gaiman that the purpose of the "American Gothic" conclusion was to subvert this trope or, as he put it, to address the "Manichean attitude" toward morality he saw as pervasive in American society.
- Book Ends: The issue opens and closes with Cain's and Abel's musings on the conflict's relevance to them and the stories they watch over.
- Break the Haughty: The Spectre, having been foolhardy enough deliberately to let the summoning take place so he could have a Worthy Opponent to defeat, instead finds himself utterly bested.
- Call-Back: Before the battle, the Swamp Thing, in conversation with Deadman, summarizes nearly the entire "American Gothic" arc to that point.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Played with. The Darkness, having blissfully lacked any self-awareness before the Light came along and provided a contrast, then exiled it, has no idea that it's "supposed" to be evil and in eternal opposition to God until its combatants tell it so. And even then, thanks to the Swamp Thing's words of wisdom, when it encounters the Light again it chooses to blend with it instead of destroying it.
- Defeating the Undefeatable: The Darkness proves stronger than the Spectre, who's second only to the Presence in power.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Zatara commands an Eldritch Abomination to take him instead of his daughter. He remains calm and dignified as he burns to death, looking steel-eyed at Constantine and charging him to keep Zatanna safe or his spirit will haunt him forever.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Original Darkness. Older than creation and, possibly, God, mightier than the Spectre (who's nearly as powerful as God), and so immense that part of what drives Mento over the edge is the realization that both he and the afterworld allies have only been seeing its fingertip. No wonder it addresses everyone as "little thing."
- "Eureka!" Moment: The Swamp Thing tells the Darkness that nothing he's encountered in his journey, not even the Parliament of Tree's advice, has helped him understand evil. Then suddenly, considering their advice once more, he comes up with an explanation that ends up changing the Darkness's mind about destroying Heaven.
- Face Death with Dignity: Sargon panics at first when he begins to smolder, but fulfills this trope at Zatara's urging. Zatara subsequently follows his own advice when his turn comes.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Although Mento's sanity had already been hanging by a thread for various reasons, two revelations at the battle's climax finally turn him into a laughing, gibbering wreck. First, that the enemy's scale is far greater than he or his allies had imagined; the afterworld forces had been fighting its fingertip. Second, that instead of fighting, the Light and the Darkness clasp hands and let their essences flow together.
- Heroic Sacrifice / Take Me Instead: Zatara doesn't merely offer his life in place of his daughter's; he demands it with an incantation.
- Language of Magic: Zatara uses his signature backwards-talking to make the Darkness kill him instead of Zatanna.
- No-Sell: Although all are tremendously powerful, the respective assaults of Etrigan, Doctor Fate, the angels (including Metatron, traditionally among the mightiest of them) and even the Spectre aren't able to inflict the slightest damage on the Darkness.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The normally haughty, self-righteous Spectre, following his defeat by the Darkness, is reduced to weeping and begging God's forgiveness.
- Organic Technology: Etrigan's armor is made of living arthropods and starfish.
- Primordial Chaos: The Original Darkness preceded the universe, and possibly even God, depending on whether one interprets its claim, "Before Light, I was," as referring to God's first creation ("Let there be light") or to the Deity itself.
- Quit Your Whining
- When Sargon begins to catch fire, he panics and begs the others to help him. Zatara chides him for upsetting his daughter and tells him, "For the honor of our profession, be silent and die like a sorcerer."
- Constantine, either unaware or not caring that Mento's sanity is already in a precarious state, loses patience with his growing panic and tells him not to "sit there whimpering" and to "bloody shut up."
- Shout-Out: When Abel refers to their recent disagreement over which TV channel to watch, Cain says, "Having successfully avoided that reanimated valley girl all week, I refuse to watch her on TV!" He's referring to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with whom he and Abel were then appearing in a comic-book Crossover involving Elvira's House of Mystery and Blue Devil.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Cain's casual murder of Abel serves as comic relief at the arc's end. However, it also illustrates Cain's point: despite the fundamental cosmic change in the relationship between good and evil, life goes on and the age-old tales (including the brothers' own, first story) still have resonance.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Among other contributing factors, Mento's overtaxing of his helmet-enhanced psychic power drives him insane.
- Yin-Yang Clash: The hand-clasping of Light and Darkness, lampshaded with the formation of a yin-yang symbol.
