Velika tajna predstava

This is, according to Barker, the first book in a trilogy about Art. In this context, Art is a kind of boundless power that breaks down space-time barriers. Many have sensed it, but only a few initiates have always known the secret of Art and what lies beyond the horizon of Art – the otherworldly sea of ​​Quiddity. Quiddity is the source of magic, and Art is its lock and key. The secret occult society that transmitted the secret is called the Sijaset (a word that denotes an unspecified large quantity of objects, people, or phenomena) and today it has been reduced to one member (or two). Art opens the door to the "Otherworld", which Barker defines in several ways:

There is a sea of ​​the mind called Quiddity. And on this sea floats an island that appears in the dreams of each of us at least twice in our lives – at the beginning and at the end. The Greeks were the first to discover it. Plato wrote about it in code – he called it Atlantis.

Between this world – the Cosmos – and the Metacosmos, or Lonely Place, is a sea called Quiddity. And on that sea there is the island of Ephemeris. There you can find the Great Secret Performance that we see three times, at birth, death, and one night when we sleep next to the love of our life.

There is almost no character in the story who did not have some traumatic experience. The key two protagonists, the originators, of this story are Randolph Jaffe (an anonymous person who finds the key to the universe in the Undelivered Mail Office), then his original colleague, and later bitter rival, Richard Wesley Fletcher (a scientist, an evolutionary genius ruined by mescaline addiction). At first, the two represent individuals who represent the two eternal sides of the cosmic scale - the sides of good and evil. Jaffe is corrupted and can summon Terates, nightmares, fears, take the dark from people, while Fletcher summons Hallucigenia, the so-called. positive thoughts, dreams. As time goes by, their struggle continues for decades, and their newly created religions create successors who will become their right-hand men. Twins Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray are descendants of Jaffe, but a rift will arise between them due to differences in loyalty to good and evil. Tommy Ray becomes the evil Deadly Boy (The One Who Can Raise the Dead), ready to please his divine father in every way, while Jo-Beth's nature embraces good, as well as another of the descendants of the good Fletcher - Howard Katz.

Right at the beginning, we are introduced to the Shoal, a sect of initiates into the secret of the Art. Their only and last member is the mysterious Kissoon, whose intentions will remain unknown until the very end. Let's also mention the dark race from the metacosm called the Iad Uroboros, infinitely evil invaders who come from the other side of Quiddity. It is not difficult to guess what the name hides (Id – the dark part of our personality, responsible for our primal drives, Ouroboros – an ancient symbol of cyclicality and eternal self-renewal); that is, something powerful, amorphous, indestructible that has existed forever and will exist forever. They are visually depicted as an unimaginable amorphous mass of nightmare monsters. Two journalists are also involved in the story: Nathan Grillo and Tesla Bombeck.

The story was adapted by Chris Ryall (Zombies vs. Robots), and the drawings were made by Gabriel Rodriguez (George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead), while the collection itself represents the ultimate battle between good and evil that spans several decades and dimensions.