Behold.....The Memetic Horror of the LIVING CORPORATION!
Author: Ink-Stained Wretch
meme (noun) - a unit of cultural information that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another...
corporation (noun) - A corporation is a legal entity which has a separate legal personality from its members...
sigil (see also: diabolical signature) (noun) - A symbol created for a specific magical purpose. A sigil is usually made up of a complex combination of several specific symbols or geometric figures each with a specific meaning or intent.
Grant Morrison: POP! MAGICK
The viral sigil also known as the BRAND or LOGO is not of recent development (see ‘the Nazis’ 20c. 20s-40s) but has become an inescapable global phenomenon in recent years... The McDonald’s Golden Arches, the Nike swish and the Virgin autograph are all corporate viral sigils.
HEXUS -- Foe of Marvel Boy
ALIAS: "Brand Hex," "the Living Corporation"
FIRST APPEARANCE: Marvel Boy #1 - #3 (Marvel Comics, Aug.-0ct., 2000)
IDENTITY/CLASS: Extradimensional (EarthN) parasitic entity
POWERS/ABILITIES: Hexus was a living idea that turned into a ferocious parasite. It grew by hiring new employees and by devouring its rivals. It adapted quickly to the needs of its target world and imitated what people wanted. It hypnotized them with advertising and then turned them into employees... Hexus would then continue to replicate and consume everything and itself, leaving behind mass extinction.
Did you happen across a Marvel Boy storyline / foe or did Starbucks queer
your Frappacino again?
Seriously, good topic... what inspired this?
Randomly, I ended up explaining this concept to somebody the other day... and decided it might be interesting to share with the rest of the class. (Partly because my train of thought was spurred in part by that Rick Rubin article, and the difficulty of redirecting a corporate beast into a new direction, once its habitual and preferred feeding grounds were drying up.)
Marvel Boy, by the way, is a Grant Morrison comic -- it's his piss-take at the Marvel Universe and its chock-full of wonderful, semi-satirical sci-fi madness like Hexus, and one of my favorites, a weapon called "the Portable Battlefield" which alters physics in your immediate area to give you the advantage in a fight.