Broken Frontier

At a glance, Celesto Morgan resembles what we’d expect an evil, Earth-2, Mirror Universe Dominic Deegan to look like. He even has a goatee for goodness sake! But one way or another, Celesto Morgan is Michael Terracciano’s first and best anti-hero and, as of this week, he’s back!

Celesto Morgan is a rival seer who blames Dominic for the death of his lover, Luna’s duplicitous sister Amelia Sturtz, whose own backfiring manipulations resulted in her own death. Recruited by the big baddie, the Storm of Souls, to be its champion, Celesto ultimately teamed up with Dominic in the final hour but abandoned his beaten and wounded adversary at the last minute. Celesto was then dispatched by Dominic’s mentor, the walking deux-ex-machina Klo Tark, but was later released after an explosion in Hell. He appears this week aiming to make amends with Dominic – by killing a mercenary “seer hunter” who has slain several of their colleagues. Too bad the seer hunter is the Barnet Travoria, sister of both Luna and Amelia.

Thus far, the conflict between Celesto and Dominic isn’t physical, but instead philosophical, as the ideologies of both seers propel them to decide Barnet’s future – if she has one. The contrast is significant and archetypal, like the mental battle between the knight and Death on the chessboard or Daniel Webster and the Devil in the courtroom. Terracciano has matured in the medium of dreamscapes, and many of his one-panel updates produce some of the most momentous innovations to webcomic storytelling.

Celesto was a breakthrough for Terracciano in a morally ambiguous anti-hero. Unlike pure villains, Celesto believes in doing the right thing, which now seems split into two separate paths – making amends with Dominic and killing Barnet before she kills again. The two, unfortunately, may be mutually exclusive, as Dominic holds that Barnet can be saved from the path of bloodshed. How can he convince Celesto of that? This riddle has offered one of the most compelling Deegan storylines in recent memory.