WHAT IS HUMAN?
"Honestly, there are some things you wish you'd never lived long enough to see. December, man. That was a pure cunt of a month."
— Nameless
Nameless is a 2015 comic book written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Chris Burnham, and published under Image Comics. The Cosmic Horror Story follows "Nameless," an occult hustler who is recruited by a group of billionaire futurists to save the world, as a massive asteroid named Xibalba is on a collision course with planet Earth.
The comic provides examples of:
- Antagonistic Offspring: It's heavily implied that Nameless is actually one of Paul Darius' children.
- The Anti-Nihilist: In the midst of a Humans Are Bastards rant by Nameless, Sofia implores him to just enjoy a beautiful day while it lasts.
- Arc Words: What is human?
- Author Tract: Morrison is a practitioner of Chaos magic
, and a good deal of the comic exposits on their metaphysical and philosophical beliefs. - Battle in the Center of the Mind: The true nature of the series as Nameless is trying to fight Xibalba's control over him without fully knowing it.
- Bizarrchitecture: The inside of Xibalba is a titan-sized New Brutalist labyrinth.
- Dead All Along: Darius and Nameless' crew mates are long dead, having been murdered by the titular character himself after he'd been possessed by Xibalba. The versions seen for most of the series are mental projections created by Nameless to help him fight Xibalba.
- Deface of the Moon: The fate of Xibalba after having its mental link with Nameless turned against it so it's steered to hit the Moon instead of Earth.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Outsiders are an entire race of these though they're actually thoughtform invaders that gradually warp the minds and bodies of their victims into more physical manifestations of this trope.
- Eldritch Location: Xibalba proves to be this not too long after the humans have approached it.
- Geometric Magic: Nameless paints special sigils on the space suits and the White Valiant to help protect them from Xibalba's magic.
- A God Am I: What the entity residing in Xibalba claims to be.
- God Is Evil: The Xibalba entity is responsible for the very concept of God in the human psyche.
- He Who Fights Monsters: The Titans of Marduk in both a literal and metaphorical sense as their creations became nigh-indistinguishable from the Outsiders as their war intensified.
- Hero Antagonist: The Veiled Lady/Sofia Darius who's trying to save the world in her own way, but is clearly more invested in getting revenge on Nameless for killing their father.
- I Know Your True Name: Nameless expressly gave his name up so nobody could pull this on him.
- I Owe You My Life: Nameless agrees to help Sofia because she saved his life. Or so she has him believe.
- Living Bodysuit: Nameless has been one for Xibalba this whole time.
- Mind Rape: The specialty of the Outsiders and in doing so makes their victims "give birth to increasingly more monstrous ideas."
- Mind Screw: The way the story unfolds is anything but straightforward, presenting everything in a surreal dream logic.
- Monster Clown: One of Xibalba's most favored forms.
- No Name Given: Most of Nameless' fellow crew members and Darius' Tribal Elders. They're all revealed in the fifth issue.
- Occult Detective: Nameless gives his profession as "occult consultant" to various governments.
- Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: Ixaxaar.
- Shout-Out: Much of Nameless's dialogue references philosophical pessimist writings, such as Ray Bressier and Thomas Ligotti. Also serves as a Take That!, as these very beliefs render Nameless helpless against Xibalba.
- By contrast, in the final issue, the Veiled Lady quotes Julian of Norwich, an optimistic Christian theologian (though perhaps ironically).
- Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Nameless's gleeful nihilism blinds him to just how much Xibalba is consuming him from within.
- Sole Survivor: Xibalba among the Outsiders as its imprisonment actually spared it from dying out after the Titans killed themselves to cut their enemies off from more sustenance and potential vessels.
