Æon Flux: The Herodotus File

From 1991 to 1995, the animated femme fatale Æon Flux appeared on MTV (of all places), at first in shorts that appeared on the variety program Liquid Television. She was created by Korean animator Peter Chung, storyboard artist for Transformers: The Movie (1986), and veteran of cartoon shows like Rugrats and Ring Raiders.

Æon Flux was the story of a cold war between two nations, Bregna and Monica, in either a distant future or another universe. Bregna, a thriving yet totalitarian society, is ruled by the perverse autocrat Trevor Goodchild. Bregna exists at the expense of “disrecognized space”, i.e. Monica, a culture thrown into chaos after the erection of a giant border wall. The origins and purpose of the wall are shrouded in mystery, as is Æon Flux, a sinister female agent ostensibly fighting for freedom. Flux and Goodchild have a tangled history, and over the course of the series, they use each other for varying agendas. This game of cat-and-mouse is only interrupted when Æon Flux dies, which happens in every episode of the second series.

Believe it or not, MTV was a bastion of independent animation in the early 1990s. Liquid Television (theme by Mark Mothersbaugh) also debuted a cartoon short featuring an unknown pair of frog-abusers named “Beavis & Butthead”, and Sam Kieth’s excellent series The Maxx kicked off there as well. Brilliant artists like Charles Burns and Richard Sala submitted segments and sketches. Even when MTV started to lose their way with MTV’s Oddities, the DIY spirit was still firmly in front. And for better or worse, no other network would have allowed The Brothers Grunt to see the light of day, and without that turd, we’d never have gotten Ed, Edd & Eddy.

However,  Æon Flux was heavy stuff for your average ’90s slacker. Continuity was non-existent, and Æon dies (brutally) more often than she survives, before returning unscathed at the start of the next episode. Pre-internet, this could be daunting in its complexity. But I’m not defending early-90s MTV here for nothing. They had an imprint of hint manuals to help you out: MTV Books.

Today, MTV Books is mostly banal young-adult novels with glossy photo covers. But in 1995, they published The Herodotus Files, a loose dossier of “classified intelligence” regarding Ms. Flux. It’s long out of print, which is a shame, because if you like Æon Flux, you’re undoubtedly wondering: does it explain everything?

Yes. Yes it does.

Not only that, in 2016, it is eerily prescient.

The Herodotus Files was written by Mark Mars & Eric Singer, with a “created by” credit for Peter Chung. Through memos and transcripts, it details the first time Trevor Goodchild hired foot-fetish model/Monican spy Æon Flux. The lion’s share of the art is animation cels from the TV shorts and series, and the design is appropriately brutalist. Paging through it calls to mind Drew Neumann’s creepy soundtrack (highly recommended), and conceptually, it evokes an era in fiction when “parallel universe” meant bizarre and intriguing variations on the familiar.

A century ago, Bregna and Monica were one nation; Berognica.

It was a time of socio-economic harmony. Brotherhood, understanding, community. Folks got along. People worked together. But this was not to remain the case forever. As developments were to have it, the country would be ripped apart. By the time people realized it was really going to happen, and that it really was happening, it was too late to halt the momentum of forces that had grown too great to stop. And then, before anybody knew it, the country formerly known as Berognica was physically divided by walls that began to make up the Breen/Monican border we know today.

I’m guessing MTV Books paid by the word.

The border was fortified with weapons not simply to create a separation between the two countries but also to punish those who chose to defy this separation by crossing the wall.

Loquaciousness is a funny choice for the material, as Æon Flux barely speaks a sentence before the third series. Anyway, there’s a killer wall between two countries, Trevor Goodchild seeks total control, and Æon Flux is a spy in demand because she can cross the wall no problem.

Chairman Goodchild is made aware of a structure in Monica, disguised as a necropolis, where a cabal of high-ranking archivists conspire to reveal his efforts to erase their history. Secretly he drafts “Operation Herodotus”, with the purpose of wiping out the Berognican Reunification Movement entirely. He is presented with a portfolio of prospective assassins: a ventriloquist arsonist, a murderer of photographers, a one-ton woman who hides weapons in her folds, a master of disguise, and Æon Flux.

Æon Flux’s weird frame gets Trevor all boned up, and he chooses her out of the motley crew. Thus begins a saga of “treachery, domination and betrayal, of love and hate so perverse, it could only spring from the otherworld of Æon Flux.”

In memos, a back-and-forth begins between Chairman Goodchild and the unseen Principal Agent Euphemia, Directorate of Black Operations. State of mind is inferred through font selection; Goodchild’s is all orderly OCRB, and Euphemia’s is like a broken typewriter, suggesting his/her fractured mien. Each memo from Euphemia is literally sealed with a kiss. Gender and sexuality are vague in Æon Flux’s universe, which makes these messages extra creepy.

Euphemia speaks highly of Æon, and with good reason; she annihilates almost the entire BRM in short order, and burns the Necropolis to the ground. Euphemia communicates to Æon that she is a rising star in the assassin world, and Trevor Goodchild continues to amass information about her. This includes her centerfold for FOOZWAK, which a man is seen purchasing from a newsstand in the final episode of the first series.

When I originally purchased this book off the shelf at Media Play (RIP), it was mutilated. Some punk jerkoff had actually taken a razor blade and carefully sliced out the above pages, and any others that featured Ms. Flux in a state of undress (there are many). After I got it home, it took me a half-hour to realize that the book was incomplete, due to the obtuse nature of the material. Upon close inspection, the spine was stripped of half its pages. I returned it to the store, and I had to wait over a week for a replacement to arrive. Whoever cut my book up in 1995, I hope you eat a swarm of bullets at a relative’s wedding.

Anyway, Euphemia interrogates key associates of Flux’s, and here is one of many places the book gets a bit silly, presumably to fill space. If you’re dazzled by non sequiturs, it’s good for a few laughs, as random prose is laid on pretty thick. This is actually consistent with the TV show, where the dialogue hewed purple (“You’re just a dirty carbuncle, festering in the corner!”). In any case, the book is essentially a glorified prop, and it works well enough.

Æon is conscripted to assassinate Serafin Escelon, leader of the BRM, who maintains an asylum in the Wall staffed by bumpy-headed women wearing chastity belts. Her work is recorded on a camera mounted inside her mouth, which means nobody thought it was suspicious when she walked in with her gob hanging open.

Again Æon completes the task with deadly efficiency, and Chairman Goodchild is offered priceless information about her from another mysterious source. Agents invade her apartment and catalog everything, including her shopping lists and fan letters. They find a scab that links to murdered BRM nationalists, and one of her eyelashes, which yields microscopic traces of fly excrement. This is a reference to the classic intro of Æon Flux, where she snares a housefly with her prehensile lashes.

Goodchild decides it’s time to tie up loose ends, and assigns Euphemia with the honorable task of liquidating Æon Flux. Over the course of the book, Goodchild dictates flowery little asides that illuminate his fascist ideas and motivations. Clippings of his appearances in media are included. He poses with tongue out for a Roach Larvae Caviar advertisement, and grants a pompous interview to “PLUGBUN” that could easily pass for Donald Trump.

The “Relical”, a mega-zeppelin housing Berognican history, becomes a midair holocaust. The explosion showers the two countries with pro-BRM literature. It’s time to get serious about killing Æon Flux, so Principal Agent Euphemia and Trevor Goodchild hatch a plan. A seriously fucked-up, David Cronenberg, body horror kind of plan.

Trevor gets Nanorobotic Assassins, or NRAs, implanted in his balls. These are designed to “eat [their] target from the inside out. NRAs can be implanted through various forms of injection– the most effective and, in this case, relevant of which is an ejaculation during sexual intercourse.” Speed of mortality is determined by the number injected. The maximum payload, 10,000 units, is recommended. The performance of the NRAs can be monitored on a standard-issue “Watchmon” wrist-television, transmitted from a microscopic “Urethra-Cam”.

So basically he’s gonna bang her, and shoot deadly microscopic robots out of his balls, and we’re gonna see it all through a camera in his dick. Ready?

They meet at the abandoned Last Raptor’s Aviary & Motel in F-Section, just within disrecognized space. Surveillance cameras around the city provide a storyboard of the foreplay. She demands payment for services rendered, he shoots at her, and she stabs him to death. Too easy.

Or so Æon thought; the real Trevor appears, revealing that she’d killed the master of disguise in his place. He pays her fee at last, before they begin heavy petting, and take the elevator to the honeymoon suite. Surveillance watches as they disrobe and start to get it on.

Æon is no fool, though. She came prepared, with an even nastier nano-monster nestled in her birth canal.

Naked Trevor summons a platoon of Breen guard, before Æon delivers a parting quip and makes an explosive escape. So begins a syzygy of romance and danger, and cloning, cloning, cloning.

The dossier concludes with a memo from Chief Archivist Grisk to the researcher who found it misplaced among old crop parasite reports.

Dear Fellow,

These pages are clearly nothing but the fabrications of some feverish and disordered mind. I have to share with you my own amusement at their contents. Can you really imagine Chairman Goodchild engaging in such outrageous and spurious acts? Rest in peace, my young friend. Be comfortable. There is nothing to be concerned about here. Let’s put the matter aside and get on to our more serious work.

Best wishes to your wife and children.

Grisk

P.S. Looking forward to the lemming expedition on the 15th.

I’m sure you can guess how things worked out for Researcher Dilling. If not, the postscript of the book is a torn photo of Æon Flux from FOOZWAK, next to a memo stamped “Code Black”:

MEMO TO: ALL RESEARCH STAFF
RE: DILLING’S DEATH

Dear Fellows,

Needless to say, I share your grief over the unexpected and untimely passing of our respected colleague, Researcher Dilling. He served this department and the Breen nation with the utmost dedication and efficiency, and his contributions will be missed. I’m sure the sympathy and good wishes of all of us go out to his family.

On the same subject, please be advised that I have ordered a thorough probe into the apparently faulty book-stacking procedures which resulted in this terrible accident.

Grisk

The Herodotus Files features a folding cover, like an envelope, that keeps the edges tight and clean. It’s held up remarkably well over the past twenty years. The pages are thick, glossy stock, and the layout is varied and engaging. This is something you’d want to hunt down if you’re a fan of the original Peter Chung series; it serves well as a companion to it.

When she did speak in the cartoon, Æon Flux’s sultry voice was provided by Denise Poirier. I have no doubt that when Charlize Theron was cast as a live-action Æon Flux, she studied Poirier’s version to get it just right. Theron is the only positive I can offer regarding that misguided adaptation from 2005. After a public screening of Æon Flux, Peter Chung called it “a travesty”, and said it made him feel “helpless, humiliated and sad.”

“Ms. Flux does not actually appear in the movie,” he said.