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The Flashback Saga

by Mars N. Gorrinot

The conterversial Flashback Saga was Penned by a "Mars N. Gorrinot", often speculated to be a nom de-plume of a prominent comics writer whose name, due to a cease and desist demand by his lawyers, may not be mentioned, in writing or verbally, in the proximity of "ELotH", "Elemenstors", "Hierarchs" or "Epic". Though it does officially belong to the ELotH canon, the Flashback Saga is highly idiosyncratic and many fans will not acknowledge it.

Taking place entirely within the Starborn Gem, or the Oculus Omnipotens as it is called throughout the Saga, its twenty issues portrayed a single conversation taking place within the Oculus Omnipotens, objectively in the fifteen seconds previous to the gem's discovery by Harbinger Portent, yet over an eternity within the subjective time of the gem.

Advocating the usage of hallucinogenic drugs and containing scenes of extreme violence and explicit sex, the saga utilized the grief of the entities within the gem for their prodigal brother, Aklom Reklats, to create a string of monologues forming a layered system of Lacanian, Quantum-Mechanical, and Cabalistic metaphors - all subtly alluding to the idea that the Gem is in fact the mind of the Gnostic Demiurge, who is both the reader and the writer. The Demiurge-Reader-Writer-Gem is weaving his sorrow into a Gem made of words that is both contained within the fiction, contains the fiction itself, and is the genesis of the world from within which the fiction is being woven.

Laden with references to the works of Alain Robbe Grillet, The Heart Sutra, and various Britpop bands, it is often crowned "More Epic Than 'Finnegans Wake'".