Antichrist
Harry Potter (31 July 1980 - 2009) is a boy with hereditary magical abilities. He possessed a distinctive scar on his forehead, and was ducated in the "Invisible College", a secret academy which teaches teenage students advanced witchcraft. Ultimately, his adventures were revealed to have been staged to fulfil his destiny as the Antichrist, also known as the Moonchild. He appears in the final part of Volume III: Century.
History
Early Years
Potter was born to parents James and Lily Potter on July 31st, 1980. Due to the early death of his parents, he was raised by his aunt Petunia and her husband, Vernon Dursley, living at 12, Grumauld Place. He had a tormented childhood and was treated poorly by his aunt, uncle and their son, Dudley.
On his eleventh birthday, the Antichrist became aware of his magical powers. He was then contacted by practitioners of sorcery, and was taken to the Invisible College (aka Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry), a secret school for young wizards.
While at the College, the Antichrist had many adventures and faced off against many supposed adversaries, always emerging from his trials and tribulations unharmed and victorious. Many of these adventures involved battling a dark wizard known as Voldemort, who the Antichrist appeared to defeat, earning him hero status among his peers.
During his years as a student, the Antichrist was surrounded by friends and admirers, and he bloomed into a confident, funny, and kind student.
Revelation
As the Antichrist neared graduation (around the late '90s), he planned to pursue a career as an Auror (a law enforcement officer who fights the dark arts). These dreams came crashing down when he learned the terrible truth of his fate as the Antichrist, and his destiny to reign in the Apocalypse. It was then that the Antichrist learned many terrible truths, including:
- that the scar on his forehead was "the mark of the Beast"
- that his magical abilities were a result of his being the Antichrist
- that the villain, Voldemort, he thought he defeated was in fact the body of wizard Tom Riddle possessed by the spirit of arch-magician Oliver Haddo and that Oliver Haddo was alive, in charge of the wizarding world, and responsible for the birth and development of him (the Antichrist)
- that all his childhood adventures were staged to boost his confidence and prepare him for his role as the Antichrist
- that all his professors and peers were forced into fawning over him and hero-worshipping him, also to boost his confidence and prepare him for his role as the Antichrist
This knowledge was too much for the Antichrist, and he went on a killing rampage, massacring all the students and professors of Hogwarts, as well as all the residents of a nearby magical town.
He then decapitated Oliver Haddo/Voldemort and placed his still living head in a cage, which he took with him to the house in which he was raised, presumably killing his adoptive family.
The Antichrist then spent the next years of his life or so of his life taking antipsychotic medication and never leaving his house, trying to put-off the Apocalypse.
Foiled Apocalypse
In 2009 Mina Murray and Orlando, on instruction from Prospero, found the Antichrist at his house in London, and engaged him in combat. Allan Quatermain joined the battle, but was instantly killed by a lightning bolt from the Antichrist.
Orlando used Excalibur to send a signal to the Blazing World that she had located the Antichrist. Prospero received the signal and was able to commune with God, begging for the prevention of the Apocalypse, and the salvation of mankind.
A woman then intervened, confronted the Antichrist, and turned him into a chalk drawing which was washed away by the rain, preventing the Apocalypse.
Personality
As a boy, the Antichrist was congenial, friendly, happy, and outgoing, making friends with many students at the Invisible College.
Upon learning of his fate as the Antichrist, he became bitter, depressed, resentful, and addicted to antipsychotic medication. During his battle with Orlando, Mina Murray, and Alan Quatermain, the Antichrist displayed both a bitter acceptance of his fate, and lots of self-pity.
Source material
Although he is never directly named in any League of Extraordinary Gentlemen media, the Antichrist is clearly a twisted, parodic version of famous boy-wizard Harry Potter, as much as the Invisible College is a twisted version of Hogwarts, both from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Harry's appearance Century: 2009 is in great contrast to his personality and character from the source. The Independent reviewer Laura Sneddon said in her review of Century: 2009 that Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's portrayal of Potter as the Antichrist is a form of satirical commentary on the degradation of the publishing industry. "As the publishing industry takes fewer risks, originality is visibly dwindling, while major franchises and celebrity biographies are relentlessly pushed upon us," says Ms. Sneddon. "[Alan] Moore is always keen to point out that the League books are satire and that he has respect for all characters that he uses and hints at, expressing hope that people will look beyond the Harry Potter connection to appreciate the whole."
Because of the thin-veiling of the Antichrist's connection to the Harry Potter series, his appearance as a boy is never seen, though his wand and robe sleeves are recognizable. As an adult, Potter is disfigured to point that there is virtually no visual resemblance to his original counterpart, becoming a monstrously tall, bald creature with eyes growing around his distinctive scar (which is covered by a plaster due to his efforts to scrape it off).
It seems that other characters have also been worked into the portrayal of the Antichrist: most obviously, the concept of the "Moonchild" is lifted from Aleister Crowley's 1917 novel of that title. Meanwhile, some of the Antichrist's dialogue, such as the line "this is, like, so unfair", is reminiscent of Kevin the Teenager, a character played by comedian Harry Enfield.
As Orlando holds up a document clearly labeled "Will Stanton" (the name of an adolescent magician in Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence) while looking through the Antichrist's school records, some readers have speculated that the Antichrist is a combination of Stanton and Potter. However, she also mentions the Antichrist's name being burnt off his file, so Will Stanton was presumably a different student whose documents happened to be in the same pile as Potter's. Possibly this is meant to suggest that Stanton was, like Turner in Century: 1969, a prior candidate for Haddo's Antichrist.
Finally, the Antichrist bears a possibly coincidental resemblance to Tetsuo Shima, a character from Katsuhiro Otomo's comic and animated feature Akira. Tetsuo is a teenage boy who develops incredible psychic powers and initially uses them to destroy the building in which he is held captive and later a bar in which he used to hang out, paralleling the Antichrist's destruction of his school. Both dress similarly, with Tetsuo wearing a white vest and jeans for the climax to Akira, although he also dons a red cape. The most iconic moment in Akira comes when Tetsuo mutates into a giant mass of flesh after attempting to regrow a lost arm; this is echoed when the Antichrist undergoes grotesque transformations when Orlando attacks him with Excalibur. The Antichrist's monstrous final form also appears to take influence from H.P. Lovecraft's works; particularly the titular monster described in The Dunwich Horror.
The otherwise whimsical Harry Potter lore is presumably deformed in the comic to reflect the normalization of violence in media and its often-presumed relation to American mass shootings, with Potter's massacre of Hogwarts resembling real-life events such as the 1999 Columbine massacre. A contributor on Jess Nevin's Annotations of Century: 2009 adds: "Since the main theme of [Volume III] is how entertainment, pop culture, and literature have gone to the dogs and this mirrors the deteriorating affairs of mankind [e.g.] the now not unusual American school shootings, it's very clever how the Antichrist's Hogwarts massacre is directed and viewed exactly like a first-person shooter video game. It's often claimed that violent video games contribute and occasionally are critical in real-life massacres: Anders Breivik even admitted he was playing them as practice".
Trivia
- It is also implied that several parodies of Harry Potter also exist in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe; the name "A. Button" is seen on a file in Hogwarts, a likely reference to Angelica Button, a parody of Harry Potter on an episode of The Simpsons.
- Coincidentally, co-creator Alan Moore featured a character of the name "Harold Potter" as the husband of Wendy Darling in his erotic graphic novel Lost Girls, which similarly crosses over characters and stories of literature. There is obviously no relation between the two characters since Harold Potter was created years before J. K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book.