About Malakhim
The title "Malakhim" seems on its surface to reference two major religions-- Judaism and Islam. The strip itself does not strictly derive from nor adhere to either, and we apologize for any confusion. The word is important to us because like most words for "Angel" it centers around the idea which define the Malakhim-- messengers, bringing pieces of the divine into the world of men. Avatars, ten no tsukai, angelos, all of these flow into the concept of the Malakhim depicted here. Malakhim can be used to designate ALL of the divine creatures, or to designate the Images and Aspects which bear the name specifically, so pardon any confusion.
The lore of Malakhim is not so much derived from the legends of mankind as it is touched by them all. Our incarnate Malakhim are as Devas in some respect, and Kami in others. The suffering estranged walking amongst humanity call in our minds to the saints of Hindu fable suffering under the pressure of the divine within them and begging to be freed of ill-fitting mortality. The towering giants of Canaan and the curious but wickedly clever djinn, the seelies and the changelings and the skinwalkers; all stem in our eyes from the same brush of heaven against the face of the earth we know. We stretch back into history, touched by each permutation we have found of man's interaction with the message of the divine, and place it lovingly into the framework of our own understanding of the universe. Egypt, Babylon, Ur, India, Greece, Rome, even modern-day America have all found some piece of the divine in our eyes and so our legend reflects them all.
The message is simple: You are not abandoned to this world alone, you are not dumped in it by a removed god and left to fend for yourselves.
The idea of strangers walking amongst living men is something that it seems all cultures have sensed in some way, and placed in their stories. Even when mankind tries to depict them as purely good, however, some element of ancient savagery bleeds through. These are creatures removed from human experience in many ways, removed from the concepts humanity comforts itself with in order to justify its actions or protect its vulnerabilities. The eternal has a different perspective than humanity and thus its idea of goodness can often be different in shocking or seemingly cruel ways. Good and evil have very different definitions in the realm of the divine, and it may surprise the reader how individual these definitions can be amongst God's own messengers.
We believe that if God meant to send a message of what was good and what was evil, there would be no confusion. Like the message of 'you are not alone', it would be clear and difficult to avoid no matter where you looked, except in the hearts of those most determined to reject the idea. (and even the most devout atheists can often be caught observing some piece of the legend we depict) The Malakhim bring the many views of good, evil, right, wrong, virtuous and sinful with them and reflect against mankind's own understanding of these concepts. Rather than the Malakhim being responsible for mankind's belief (as some Malakhim may believe they are) it is more true to say that they have influenced the shape and form of many of these concepts-- and in turn their history has been shaped and formed in many ways by what they have been forced to confront upon the changing face of Vuwn (Earth).
Many cultures believe that these messengers have no free will of their own-- treating them as instruments of God's own voice. In our legend, this is because of many factors-- in some cases because the Malakhim tried to discourage the tendencies of their vanity to lead them into becoming gods in the eyes of men. In other cases, because many of the Malakhim became convinced of their place of servitude on earth, and subjugated their own wills to the service of God. The reasons why form a key element in the plot as it develops, and we will slowly take you through the tale of our own beliefs in the process. The views expressed by the characters in our stories do not reflect the views of Malakh Studios. They are the views of fictional characters and nothing more. They depict our observation of what exists in the world, and we illustrate our beliefs in the context of that view of the universe as we see it. We apologize if it offends many of yours, but it is not our intention to offend. To create a story simply to aggravate, offend, and infuriate is a childish thing-- amusing to some, but not what we're after here. What we are doing here is taking you bit by bit through our own understanding of the universe.
We see the Malakhim as children of God as much as anyone else, children of a different nature with a different realm of native existence. We don't believe in anything created with the simple destiny of servitude, anything created as an accessory to another thing. To us that seems cruel beyond the reasonable expectation of anything which could call itself God. Many of our Malakhim believe in this idea of servitude and suffer deeply the heartbreak which comes of such a self-image, so you will see some who take this position in the story. We see the Malakhim as perfect, but take a more literal definition of this word-- perfection in the simple nature of being complete, eternal, all they will ever be contained somewhere within them. This includes every capacity for horror and every capacity for shattering beauty each could ever achieve, none of which is truly able to overpower any other against the will of the creature. Whereas humanity begins as a clean blank slate, Malakhim begin as an untouched equilibrium. Humanity builds and grows itself from nothing, and the divine creatures shift and explore their natures. Their existence becomes choosing what within that perfect nature will express, control, and direct their being.
Their search has its fingerprints all over the hearts of mankind, and mankind's fingerprints are thus all over the shape of their search. Some have bought into the legends about them, believing that in some way humanity has seen through their existence and named it for what it is. Their search for the true purpose and place of humanity in creation has led them in some ways to the same conclusions that humanity has come to about the Malakhim, under different perspectives. Some believe humanity stumbles upon truisms without realizing it, and a few of the fallen have become so lost in the accusatory legends of mankind that they adopt its punishments or take their adversarial roles.
The mixture of power and helplessness in many of the Malakhim is the cipher of their existence-- the natural product of anything which can be blinded into believing it knows all there is to know. In our legend they are there in many ways to personify struggles that one lifetime barely lets us grasp in ourselves, and spread the messages of these struggles beyond the ability of human memory. They pollinate cultures and spark human philosophy even as human change confounds and redirects their own searching.
Malakhim revolves in many ways around the painful estrangement of man from his angels, the rejection on both sides of an interaction that many on both sides have come to believe is dangerous and backwards. The Lion and the Unicorn have ceased to believe in one another, and both begin to struggle through existence as a result. "We hate you," says one angel in the concept lore, "because you make God look cruel." How many cultures echo this sentiment back to angels that can not fulfill every request, that kill without remorse, that do not understand the entirety of their effect upon mankind. As the Malakhim pull further and further away from what they see as a faithless world, humanity pulls further and further away from what they see as a world devoid of God's touch. Individuals from both sides reach out to each other in the only ways they know how, and perhaps in some ways this is a more pure interaction.
The reasons for this yearning and estrangement are in some ways obvious, but we have also attached a more sinister plot threading throughout the history of creation which will take us years to express properly. This is why we begin as we begin, as the rules all have come to understand are shattered. This is why we begin with the destruction of innocence in the form of a boy, and the unfathomable choice made by an angel to watch it unfold.
This is why we begin with this particular angel and this particular child. Ben, the abandoned child seeking desperately to matter, feeling drowned out and powerless, forgotten and overlooked by the world, led into his torment by the simple urge to connect somehow with something that will make him feel like he can matter to anyone. Nathan, the ancient messenger sent to those whose pain is too great even for his bretheren to accept, given within him the ability to accept these things and deal with them without the struggle of denial; yet watching his brothers suffer the shattering and denial of tragedy and haunted by the fact that these things do not come naturally to him, questioning what his acceptance of the unacceptable makes of him.
Both are caught in a web of betrayal beyond their capacity to understand. They face a foe whose capabilities go far beyond them, and whose nature is beyond their ability to comprehend. Neither fully understands that they are already deep in a trap which closes tighter around them with every step they take. The only hope for either lies in the estranged relationship between mankind and his elder brothers. The essential riddle of existence: Mankind must have faith. Malakhim are comprised of faith.
There are not always happy endings. There are not always tragic endings. As Akor would say, no hell would be hell without hope-- eventually one becomes inured to constant suffering. We do not come to bring you hell, but we do not promise you a fairy tale either. We promise you a search through our understanding of existence, in all its beauty and all its ugliness.
Perhaps the lore of angels is just the natural hope of a lonely and frightened mankind. Perhaps mankind created God and his messengers to stave off the loneliness of a world he saw as empty. But we believe that mankind feels this way because of a strangely reflected understanding that he is in many ways yet another name for, piece of, reflection of the divine. Mankind creates God in his image and paints his face on God because mankind is a piece of God and feels within him the drive to create. Sadly he creates for himself a heaven which feels as removed as he does.
If you look around the universe you see that nothing is isolated-- no thing, no event, no force in this world is truly disconnected from any other, though the steps between one and another may be difficult to detect. To believe in a heaven which is removed from earth is a mistake in our eyes, which angels and man have both made. In so many permutations of lore you see it-- the separation of the sky from the land, the separation of the spiritual from the divine as one of the essential steps of creation, the estrangement of the living from the unseen.
We believe in the more prevalent theme which writes itself in the careening dance of subatomic forces and the wheeling galaxies beyond our eyes, which flows from star to plant to herbivore to predator to to microbe to soil to plant and back through the cycle-- even someday back to star. From tide to satellite to star system to galaxy to the yet-unnamed dance of clusters of galaxies around one another. From the fullness of nothingness and the fact that we have not yet found a true emptiness in anything around us, no true vaccuum, no place where nothing is there.
We believe in the message.
We are not alone.
