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Long Ramblings on the Sad Case of Doctor Druid

There can be very few characters so thoroughly destroyed by unfortunate combinations of writing and editing as Antony Ludgate Druid. One of the handful of characters that pre-dates the Marvel Universe proper (debuting as Dr Droom long before the FF faced his near namesake Victor), and reprinted in Weird Wonder Tales (from #19 from memory) he went on to achieve that great honour, chairmanship of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. But in the process he brought about the destruction of one of the best teams in the Avengers' history, and cost the title Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Nebula, and Roger Stern. I understand that it was editorial differences about whether the Druid as Nebula's pawn would permanently damage the character and the team which led to Stern's departure. In retrospect, Stern was right and then-editor Gruenwald was wrong. Had Walt Simonson remained with the comic after #300 then things might have been different. As it was, the Avengers comic took a long time to really recover and one particularly bright era of the title came to an ignominious close.

But that's all real-world rationale. What are we to make of Druid's character in continuity?

It's a little hard to gauge old Marvel continuity in these days of timeline retcons, but if the recent Roger Stern Marvel Universe title can be believed, Druid really was active before the advent of the FF, even as he was in publishing history. Before ever he gained his powers he was a seeker after truths, an investigator of the unknown, a scholar of Celtic lore. It was that which led him to make the trek to the East and his eventual encounter with an unnamed lama whom he discovered much later to be the Ancient One. The then-sorcerer supreme of Earth, knowing that his time on this plane was nearing an end and feeling his abilities wane had determined that a Westerner should next take up the mantle. Because this was a departure from previous tradition the Ancient One decided on a "test run", awakening hereditary mystical powers within Antony Ludgate (the latest retcon makes Druid his "stage name"), combining some granted or devolved power of Eastern mysticism with the druidic abilities of his forefathers.

We need to consider these gifts because for quite a bit of his career, Druid has been written to suit his powers. "Ok", think the writers, "He can levitate, read minds, create illusions, and heft little things about psychokinetically. He's therefore probably scholarly, devious, esoteric, serious, arrogant, and bald. Let's make him a psychiatrist." Some later writers have really picked up the Celtic angle and have introduced some rather weird effects and powers as a result of it, perhaps culminating in the bizarre triple Druid (young man, normal pot-belied version, and aged savant) of Avengers Spotlight which is something of a masculine reflection of the three phases of the Celtic (and other cultures) triple goddess. Few of the Celtic add-ons have been very effective, but they have led to Druid's character being rather changeable in his latter appearances; but more on the Druid mini-series further on.

We now know that Druid inherited power from his ancestor Amergin of Avalon. This is an unfortunate mixing of mythoses, for Amergin is a legendary Irish sorcerer priest associated with the Tuatha de Danaan (or Danu), the demi-god early settlers of Eire whose myths descend to us through the writings of early Christian monks. The Formor, the enemies depicted in Avengers #225 and 226, were the Danaans' enemies in the same way that Asgardians fight Frost Giants and Olympians battle Titans. Avalon, on the other hand, was the mystical Isle of Apples to which Morgan le Fey bore Arthur to sleep and heal after his death at Camlaan. There is an island with apples on in Tuathan myth but it... well, that's a rather scholarly debate for another bulletin board. Suffice to say that in the Marvel Universe at least, the Formor are big monster baddies who try to capture a mystic place called Avalon which is protected by a druid called Amergin. This may or may not be the place where the Black Knight got his new horse, sword and shield from in Heroes for Hire. As for the Celtic pantheon that Tom de Falco introduced in Thor, they are even further off base than Marvel's other legendary pantheons - but don't get me started.

Deep breath.

OK, Druid inherits his mystical ability from the line of Amergin, and on one occasion this link is used to pull the Avengers back to Avalon to fight the Formorians. The rest of the time this gives him some undefined additional abilities and a weakness to iron (that's usually fairies not druids but who's even keeping count by now). The only other significant effect is that he occasionally says unfortunate things like "Great Dagda!" when writers have done some minimal background Celtic reading.

The most interesting and persistent character trait Druid has is the first one he demonstrates - his enthusiasm for exploring the unknown. Perhaps this accounts for Druid's role as narrator of short horror tales in Marvel reprint comics, or perhaps it was that original role which prompted writers to play up his intense desire to understand the unknown.

His second significant trait is his predilection to gather companions about him. Although we had not seem him as a team player up until his Avengers appearance, retrospective continuity of Marvel Universe showed him as a member of the Monster Hunters, and he later went on to be leader of the Secret Defenders and of the short-lived Shock Troop.

Another side of Druid is his involvement in the media as a "supernatural expert". Druid is sometimes one of these late-night chat show circuit people, promoting his next book and looking down his nose at the next guest who claims he was abducted by aliens - all the while secretly planning to go and investigate the cornfield. This has never been very well depicted though; we usually see Druid appalling his agent by neglecting a personal appearance because some mystery or duty beckons. It's a shame we never saw more of this, as there are some interesting story hooks could come from this, and it distinguishes Druid from a plethora of other occult investigators from Stephen Strange (surgeon) and Jericho Drumm (another psychiatrist) to Hannibal King and Jack Russell. A Marvel rule-of-thumb for occult practitioners, by the way, is that magic-wielders must have a medical background, horror characters are down-at-heel gumshoes.

In his Avengers appearances Dr Druid hardly had time to establish his character before he was acting out of character because of the woman we then thought to be Nebula's manipulations. In the brief interval we do see him as himself he comes across as somewhat patronising and pompous, coupled with an almost juvenile sense of humour when using his illusion powers to fool She-Hulk. He comes across as a sort of mix between M*A*S*H's Charles Winchester and Frasier Crane. It is a pity that we never got to see what Stern had in mind for the good doctor because he was undoubtedly going to be a source of significant character interaction within the team. In an early Avengers Spotlight appearance in a Black Knight backup, Druid's inquisitiveness is the trigger for Dane's encounter with his future self the Last Knight.

Then he falls under Nebula/Ravonna/Terminatrix/whoever's control. She plays upon his natural sense of superiority, giving him dreams of superheroic feats performed for adoring masses. Is Druid feeling perhaps just a little intimidated in a team with a thunder god, a woman of pure energy, and the Hulk's cousin in it? She plays upon his natural leadership ability, encouraging him to exercise it inappropriately. She fosters his existing ambition. Finally she manages to blur his already shaky ethics about the appropriate use of his powers so that he manipulates the team that trusted him, with, as they say, disastrous consequences.

Druid escaped from the strange time effect he and "Nebula" fell into at the end of Avengers #297 in one of the latter issues of Avengers Spotlight (circa #40, but I don't have it to hand at the moment). Marvel's writers, and Gruenwald in particular, seem to have felt a collective guilt about him because he begins to make "rehabilitative" appearances as guest star in several books. He even meets up with the Avengers in the Infinity War and the Citizen Kang annuals. He is written as a sort of "Druid-lite", still a somewhat superior character, but subdued in a penitent "I know I crossed the line pretty badly" way. Then Druid fakes his death in Secret Defenders, clearly still uncomfortable with his role and his past.

Then Druid faces his greatest foe: Warren Ellis. Actually, that's not very fair. Ellis at least treats Druid - oops, that's Ludgate, don't call him Druid - seriously, although depicting him as a man very much on the further edge of sanity. Warren's Ludgate is a rather unpleasant figure, a sad shell of a once-great man, broken now by the various knocks life has given him. This Druid is disillusioned with his origins (although previously depicted as reconciled to being Dr Strange's "John the Baptist") and hides in a penthouse gained through mesmerism surrounded by even more unlikeable parasite followers.

In Druid #1, Ludgate summarises himself as follows: "Walk back for twenty years or more, to find me as Antony Ludgate, and English scholar of Celtic antiquity. Named for the place where London's St Paul's Cathedral now stands... where men and animals would be burned to the sun god Lud... driven to near-breaking by the insoluble knot in which knowledge of pre-Christian Celtic druidism lies hidden. [...] Ludgate's obsession with this knot's solution brought him to Tibet. The diaries of Julius Caesar state that the Celtic magic system was so fantastically complex and pure that all other magic systems in the world may probably have emiinated from the Celtic territories."

So far so good. We finally have an explanation of how Eastern mysticism awakens Celtic psionic abilities. Ludgate continues:

"And the mystics of high Tibet still held an oral tradition. Might it have been an aged, bastardised form of druid lore? Might the true word be reconstructed from its echo? The man Ludgate sought within the mountain monastery cared nothing for Ludgate's small, human, aspiration. The filthy, ageless intellect called the Ancient One sought only live meat from foreign climes to experiment upon. He wanted to know if he could empower a foreigner, to succeed himas this planet's prime magician. His opium-stained fingers tore Ludgate's mind, releasing ancestral memories."

Now we begin to see Druid's latter state of mind. We know from other sources that the Ancient One is a great force for good, Stephen Strange's beloved, almost saintly, mentor. Here Druid twists the facts of his oriign, betraying his bitterness at where he has got to. He has clawed his way back from oblivion only to dwell in ignominy. The man who aspired to be an Avenger, the man who saved the world from "Nebula", is now hiding out, incontinent and weary, surrounded by the dregs of occult society. Ludgate continues:

"Ludgate held the secrets all along, for his ancestral line traced back to days when Lud's Gate was lit by the glare of men and cattle burning together in great wicker men. Ludgate's back brain rose and spoke in lightning. Only part of the terrible druid truth imprinted itself on the modern man's lost hungry memory. Enough to leave him with one foot forever in screaming, voiding, frothing madness."

Now here we have an interesting question of interpretation. Remember that this is a quote not from an omniscient narrator but from Druid himself, summarising his career in his own words at the time of his greatest desperation. We can either choose to believe that Druid really was immensely damaged by the experience which gave him his gifts and that all that came afterwards was because of the inherent flaw that left him with, or we can assume that Druid is seeking to rationalise his failure by passing the blame on to others - mainly the Ancient One who set him on a path which he has found not to his liking and from which he has digressed several times with distressing result. I prefer the latter possibility, as I find it hard to see the Ancient One being so callous.

Ludgate continues: "He came to America, gifted with minor mystic skills. Seeking to integrate himself with the colonials, he adopted the name Anthony Druid, concocting a P.T. Barnum version of his experiences. And was eclipsed by a later foreigner exposed to the Ancient One's machinations - Stephen Strange. Dr Druid took up a costume, emulating the gaudy pantomime supermen of the new world. A career of failure and humiliation resulted; not at all the salve to ego the man had sought. He made a small living giving inane lectures to credulous students with bad skin..."

At this lowest ebb, Druid encounters Satan in the form of Daimon Hellstrom (fresh from Warren Ellis' last cancelled book). Humiliated again by this encounter, Ludgate finally delves to retrieve the remainder of his Celtic legacy, undergoing a bizarre and gruesome transformation as the Celtic triple-goddess claims him for her own, making him "a true druid".

Now on the letters page of Druid #1, Ellis outlines his take on druidism: "The treatment [of druidism in comics] was too... nice. Listen, druids burned more people than Torquemada, stabbed more people than Ted Bundy, had more politico-religious clout than the Pope and Ayotollah Khomeni combined, and did not go in for crystals and New Age stuff in a big way. Druids scared the living spit out of people." Hence this regenerated (thin, hairy) Anthony Ludgate killed without remorse, starting with a New York cab driver who committed the crime of speaking bad English, and plotted the destruction of Western civilisation. Oh, yes, this latter Druid had also become a racist (Anglocentric) snob.

There is a question here about the nature of the "triple-goddess" who so empowers and destroys Druid here. Is she really the deity of the druids? Has Ludgate really unlocked the secret power that the Ancient One intended him to have? Or has he failed the test of keeping Pandora's box shut and finally succumbed to the arrogance and prejudice which have dogged him all his career? These questions are not implicit in the story; but they should have been.

Three issues later, Ludgate is dead. Nekra shoots him at the behest of Daimon Hellstrom after Druid attempts to uncover "the truth about the world", destroying the force which wraps us in the illusion of normality and keeps us from going insane by seeing the reality. The quester into the unknown has found the things he was looking for; and they have led to his destruction. Druid's last words, "I... just didn't want... to be HURT anymore..." Hellstrom's epitaph, "And in the end, you're a failure. You're a lunatic, a religious maniac, a bad idea. You should have been stamped on at birth. And now you're dead. And it's no loss at all." Ellis' final words on the subject: "And, later, they burned his body in a garbage can."

Ellis' work is very powerful, but the jump in character is just a little too difficult to be totally compelling. If we had seen any really strong previous interpretation of Druid the final limited series wouldn't have worked at all. But we hadn't, so the story stands, if uncomfortably, a downbeat end to a much abused character.

Ian Watson

(Better post this before another incoherent Druid thought comes into my head)