KSBD Handout and Powerpoint

A Brief History of Web Comics 

Webcomics as a medium began in the early 90s, and in many ways mirrors the growth of the Internet itself. Early webcomics were mostly newspaper style gag-a-days, with a three to four panel “page” reading from right to left based around some form of humor. These early comics tended to be very niche, based more towards specific groups, mostly Usenet groups.  

This began to change in the late 90s, when creators began to post away from Usenet boards and forums and began to create their own sites. With this came more readers and attention. In this morass emerged a comic called Sluggy Freelance. Its first strip in 1997, what began as a comic about two strange roommates dealing with strange happenings, usually parodies of famous works of fiction, became an operatic dramedy involving demons, clones, and love triangles. Its success set off a wave that peaked in the late 2000s-early 2010s but seems to be still going strong.  

The Creation of Kill Six Billion Demons 

At some point in the early 2010s, a burgeoning artist/writer going by the name Abaddon (real name Tom Parkisnon-Morgan) began posting on the Homestuck Fan Adventure Forums (long story). This story, called Kill Six Billion Demons ran for about a year before being cancelled. Unfortunately, the forums that once hosted this version of the story went down in the mid-2010s and Abaddon has expressed reluctance to post the old version anywhere due to finding its contents “embarrassing”. 

Abaddon would instead, take the idea, discard most of it, and instead continue with the central concept and a few recycled characters and names. In 2013, he would begin posting Kill Six Billion Demons on its own website, https://killsixbilliondemons.com/. 

Setting and Plot 

Kills Six Billion Demons takes place in a multiversal setting, a version of the universe incorporating alternate dimensions and parallel universes. In this setting, the multiverse, called The Wheel, was created by the Unified God, Yis-Un. Yis-Un comprises all things within themselves. Light and Dark. Chaos and Order. Masculine and Feminine. But since Yis-Un is everything, they are alone. This isolation drives them close to madness and they choose to rip themselves apart, an act called Holy Suicide. From their corpse rise the gods Yis and Un, who are based around the concept of Yin-and Yang. They war for seven years and make love for seven days, creating a race of Gods who build a city at the beginning point of Creation, Throne along with three different races to serve them: Angels to uphold divine law, Servitors to tend to Throne, and Humans because the goddess Aesma got jealous.  

The Gods eventually fall to their own cycle of violence and struggle and decide to reenact the Holy Suicide, their deaths creating the 777,777 universes that make up the Multiverse. Throne is left empty, protected by an army of Angels. Billions of years later, a man by the name of Zoss comes to Throne seeking to commune with the gods. Seeing they are dead, he seizes the opportunity, defeats the Angels, and takes Throne for himself. Other mortals arrive, each having had the idea Zoss had but seeing him there, they bow before him and he becomes the Reigning King. These people harness the power of the Throne to create a Golden Age along with creating the fourth mortal race, Devils, as servants. This period of history ends when they embrace imperialism and begin to conquer the Multiverse. 

 This new class of conqueror, called Demiurges, eventually begin to fight amongst themselves for power, effectively destroying everything they built and sending the Multiverse into a Dark Age of constant warfare. Zoss disappears and seven Demiurges rise to the top on the corpses of their fellows. The Seven Black Emperors, as they become known, become horrific tyrants of varying stripes and the Multiverse begins to stagnate under their rule.  

Meanwhile, a young LA-native Allison Ruth is trying to lose her virginity to her boyfriend, a random frat boy she’s not particularly fond of by the name of Zaid. A strange man appears in their room, pursued by renegade Angels, who proceed to murder him and kidnap Zaid. The strnage man then implants Allison with the Key of Kings, one of the artifacts that give Demiurges their infinite Cosmic Power and sends her to Throne. To sum up an already long story, she now has to save Zaid.  

The reason this is all important is because Abaddon has not made a complex and intriguing setting, but he has made one that reinforces the themes of his story.  

Heroes 

Kill Six Billion Demons begins with three main heroes. Now, more characters get “added to the party” as time goes on but to avoid spoilers we’re going to keep it to the main three for now.  

The first is Allison Ruth. Among the cast she is “the normal one”, the one from our world who often needs things explained to her. She is also the only person in the Multiverse with the potential to overthrow the Seven Black Emperors before their neuroses can destroy the creation. However, her personal arc involves her leaving behind the trappings of her old self in order to become the person that, deep down, she’s always wanted to be.  

The second is 82 White Chain Born from Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil, White Chain for short. She is an Angel and shown to be the only Angel that still believes in that “upholding the divine law” shtick, as the Angel community has fallen to nihilism in the period since the Zoss. Her arc thus far involves coming to terms with her gender identity and her role in the multiverse now that the Angels fallen to corruption and apathy.  

The third is Ciocie Cioelle Estrella Von Maximus the Third, a Devil who is running from her past.  

Each of the protagonists have a personal arc based around self-deception and the need to forsake their comfortable but miserable present built around those lies and forge a new life and point-of view with which they can embrace who they truly are.  

Villains 

The main villains in KSBD are the seven tyrants of the multiverse, The Seven Black Emperors. However, in spite of how they are introduced, they prove to be surprisingly human in their histories and motivations. Much of their tragedies find their origins in the “Golden Age” of the older demiurges which shows that there were already serious problems even when things were good. Some of them even show a shocking degree of self-awareness. But they are all trapped in self-destructive cycles that doom not only themselves, but the cosmos to inevitable destruction. 

The other set of main villains are the Knights of Thorns, a renegade group of angels who believe mankind is the source of all disorder in the cosmos and seek to purge the cosmos of the human race. They are portrayed as bloodthirsty, authoritarian, and intolerant of anything they deem as deviant. But it’s also shown that some of them are “deviant” themselves and desperate to keep their true selves hidden from even themselves. They are also portrayed as misled and brainwashed by their leader, an ancient angel with a petty vendetta against mankind.  

Themes: Existentialism and a Godless Universe 

The setting of KSBD is a setting where the gods are no longer an active force within the universe and the mortal races have to figure out what to do without them. Each segment of society is in its own way trying to wrestle with the question of “what do we do now?” This is what has led to the current age of “God-Kings”, mortals who have usurped the power of the gods to rule over entire worlds. It has also been one of the reasons the Angels have become a shell of their former selves.  

This helps blend into the existentialism of the setting which is also reflected in the arcs of the main characters, heroes and villains alike. These people have had expectations and labels foist upon them and it is only when they act authentically that they can access true power and achieve KSBD’s version of enlightenment, a state called ROYALTY. 

This is underlined by a reoccurring statement in the comic, “The first Universal Art is Violence. But the second and greatest is Lying.” In a world without God, essentially without Truth, it is up to us to define who we are. And within the world of KSBD, that understanding and free expression of the self is the key to forging enough power to strike down gods. 

Theme: Violence and Change 

Much of KSBD’s ideas and themes come from borrowing (or as Abaddon refers to it, stealing) ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism. One of these ideas is the Buddhist idea of “Suffering is Inescapable” twisted and changed into “Violence is Inescapable”. Indeed, the words “Reach Heaven Through Violence” is often heard. Now, I’ve seen people misinterpret this obsession with violence as literal, but there are multiple examples in the short stories that accompany the comic of people committing “violence of the tongue” or “violence of the mind”. This shows that violence in KSBD is not literal, in spite of what people think both in-story and out.  

What I think violence refers to in KSBD, is something that causes sudden shocking change. The Buddha was exposed to sickness, old age, and death and had his entire worldview changed in the course of an afternoon. A man goes in front of a group of disgruntled citizens and compels them to riot. While there are many moments of physical violence, the philosophy of KSBD talks the most about is change.  

Theme: Stasis as Rot 

This brings us to the subject of changelessness. Stasis in KSBD is shown to be a bad thing and people who try to avoid change as courting disaster. Part of why the Multiverse is in such a bad state is that the Seven Black Emperors are trapped in cycles of personal stagnation. This in part motivates the evil they do cause they can’t see the way out of their situations, instead reveling in self-pity, petty grievances, and other delusions that force them into cycles they can’t escape out of. This lack of ability to escape or even recognize their situations makes the horrifying status quo they exist in possible, overwhelming their higher natures and turning them into monsters. This stagnancy has rippled out into the multiverse at large. The Multiverse is constantly referred to be rotting under the Seven’s rule and it is often asked how possible it is. To reverse the course.  

This stagnancy is often exposed or outright destroyed by Allison, whose interactions with both the villains and minor characters often serve to break them out of cycles of stagnancy, for both good and ill.  

Feminist and LGBT Themes 

A huge contingent of fans for Kill Six Billion Demons is the LGBT community, as KSBD is one of many webcomics that tries to represent LGBT people in a sympathetic and non-stereotypical light. The greatest example of this is in the character of White Chain. This is because she is one of the few angels who present in a feminine manner. Angels, being formed out of the corpse of the god of masculinity and order, identify as masculine and in fact are shown to be subtly misogynistic, mistreating White Chain and trying to manipulate her to stand against Allison. While White Chain has moments of rebellion, by and large she allows her “brothers” to stand in judgement of her and it is implied that part of the reason she clings to the Order of Angels is the shame A part of her personal arc is coming to terms with the fact that in order to follow her beliefs in true justice and embrace her identity, that she will need to break from the rest of the angels and embrace the other heroes as companions.  

There is also much in the way of feminist thought in KSBD. Allison is a person who has been haunted all of her life by the specter of what society wanted her to be. It is revealed early on, that when Allison was young, she was a chubby nerdy girl who loved Sailor Moon more than anything else. But it’s hinted that she was miserable throughout her teens until college. Then she “reinvented” herself into an athletic blonde hoping to be more accepted. But she was still miserable. It’s only when the events of the comic begin to change her, for both good and ill, that she begins to embrace who she is deep down and live a more authentic existence.  

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SmTOMENcCiGftZFcwI6Bxg5fITARCDfY