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<\/a>Assassin’s Creed 2007<\/p><\/div>\n
X<\/em>\u00a0was part of the Comics’ Greatest World revival of Dark Horse comics in the early 90s. CGW was world building on a large scale; several new heroes and books were created in a shared universe that would hopefully propel Dark Horse into the mainstream along the mega-continuities of Marvel and DC. X<\/em>\u00a0was a one eyed vigilante with a padlocked mask that stalked the streets of Arcadia, enforcing the rule of X: criminals got one facial slash for a warning, two and they were dead. Steven Grant was at the helm, a writer who revived the Punisher in the mid-80s into an early 90’s tentpole of the Marvel U. \u00a0Steven brought a literary bent to the series, with\u00a0frequent references to classics and\u00a0characters that regularly quoted Shakespeare.<\/p>\n X – Dark Horse (Saltares)<\/p><\/div>\n THE MASTER OF ASSASSINS, ALAMUT, AND WILLIAM S BURROUGHS<\/strong><\/p>\n Starting with issue #6 of X<\/em>\u00a0from July 1994, Grant began a 2 issue arc\u00a0featuring an army of brainwashed assassin warriors led by Lord Alamout, the modern disguise for historical figure Hassan-ibn Sabbah, credited by Grant as the “Old Man of the Mountain” and the undying leader of the Persian Hashashin since the time of the crusades. The arc was based on a legend of Hassan propagated through several books and stories: that he used drugs and a fake garden of paradise to trick his disciples into believing he had special religious powers, thus acquiring their undying loyalty.<\/p>\n In the 1936 French book, The Master of the Assassins,\u00a0<\/em>Betty Bouthoul tells the story of Hassan and may originate the legend. Bouthoul was heavily championed by famous beat writer\u00a0William S Burroughs, who frequently mentioned Bouthoul’s descriptions of Hassan, the assassins, and elements of their legend in interviews and his books. Burroughs often refers to “Alamout”, an alternative spelling for the name of the Assassin’s home base. According to Steven Grant, “I did crib the Lord Alamout name from Burroughs, but I’d been reading Hassan ibn Sabbah lore since I was little, which drew me to Burroughs rather than vice versa. \u00a0Ibn Sabbah is in fact the villain (one of them) of the Black Knight in the Crusades mini-series I did for Marvel c. 1979 that finally saw print some decade plus later in Marvel Feature #52-54. Burroughs does the most jagged version of the legend, though, and the most entertaining.”<\/p>\n X #6 – Devils Cover – Dark Horse 1994<\/p><\/div>\n The ‘Hassan as Master Manipulator’ legend also appeared in Alamut<\/em>, a 1938 Slovinian novel by Vladimir Bartol that shares some similarities with Bouthoul’s book from two years earlier. Alamut<\/em> was finally released in English in 2004, and the Assassin’s Creed franchise, especially the first game, directly credits the novel for story inspiration.<\/p>\n “NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED”<\/strong><\/p>\n Although sometimes attributed to Hassan ibn-Sabbah, the assassins left no written records, and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)<\/em>\u00a0is the first published reference that reads “Nothing is true, all is permitted” in German. \u00a0The phrase next appears in French in Bouthoul’s\u00a0The Master of the Assassins (1936)<\/em>, in its more common form “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, as the last words of Hassan ibn-Sabbah. \u00a0It is unclear whether Bouthoul adapted the line from Nietzsche, or they are both referencing an earlier source. 1938’s\u00a0Alamut\u00a0<\/em>also includes a version of the maxim in Slovinian, possibly influenced by Bouthoul’s recent publishing.\u00a0William S Burroughs finally translated the phrase to English in the form we recognize after he was introduced to Bouthoul’s book in 1959, and frequently used this phrase in interviews and his books.<\/p>\n In X #6<\/em>, Steven Grant finally brings it all back together and is the first to recombine elements of \u00a0modern sci-fi, the legends of Hassan, character traits of\u00a0The Master of the Assassins <\/em>and\u00a0<\/em>Alamut, <\/em>and\u00a0Burroughs’s translation of the famous\u00a0motto: “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted”. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n X #6 – ‘Devils’ Intro – Dark Horse 1994 (Russell, Wagner, Palmiotti, Rambo, and Rosas)<\/p><\/div>\n Assassin’s Creed – Nothing is True…<\/p><\/div>\n Grant’s mashup of sinister technology and ancient Hashashin later became a massive success when Assassin’s Creed took this concept and ran with it in 2007; \u00a0the phrase “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” famously became the “Creed” referenced in the title of the franchise, and some of Grant’s new sci-fi plot devices became pillars of the series.<\/p>\n The Assassin’s Creed franchise features “Apples of Eden” or “Pieces of Eden”; devices of great power left over from a previous civilization. \u00a0The idea of the Apple is fundamental to the story of the Garden of Eden, this symbolism also featured in the work of Grant and team in X<\/em>:<\/p>\n X #6 – ‘Devils’ Intro – Dark Horse 1994 (Russell, Wagner, Palmiotti, Rambo, and Rosas)<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Assassin’s Creed – Al Mualim’s Apple<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n ANIMA \/ ANIMUS<\/strong><\/p>\n Where X\u00a0<\/em>wildly departed from its influences was in the introduction of the Anima, a device that Lord Alamout and his technicians used to insert his assassins into a virtual reality world representing paradise. \u00a0This device was a full body connection harness that transfers the user’s mind into a simulated world. It is referred to as “the Anima” in X #7<\/em>, when X\u00a0is captured and placed in the device in order to brainwash him to Alamout’s wishes.<\/p>\n X #7 – The Anima – Dark Horse 1994 (Wagner, Fosco, Palmiotti, and Rosas)<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>