Anti-competence porn: Gargoyles (Vol. 3) #3

Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment

Story: Greg Weisman

Art: George Kambadais

Cover Artist for my copy: Jae Lee

Release Date (Physical): February 22, 2022

Gargoyles has a Xanatos problem. By which I mean Greg Weisman has a Xanatos problem, and arguably, that Gargoyles has a Greg Weisman problem.

Xanatos remains one of the most enduringly popular elements of the Gargoyles mythos. He’s quite fun. He felt competent the way his contemporaries in other children’s cartoons of the early nineties did not. Whole sections of TV Tropes were named after him and his strategies. He fucked, literally and figuratively.

I’ve noted, though, that there are indications that Xanatos may have begun becoming a liability to the narrative, which had increasingly seemed to have bought into the hype surrounding the character while ignoring the implications of his place within the story—especially after the gargoyles began living under his protection. While these fears hadn’t quite been borne out—he didn’t appear that much in the first revival comic—we now see it causing acting direct harm to the story.