Parashah Recap: Po
All About Po: Cerebus has had encounters several times with Po. Here is a converstation about who all these different pos are. Anyone with page number references who wants to keep track of them, please email me. Thanks!
Anthony P: And the 1st mention of Po? I think we'd heard of Illusionists before..had we? Is he 180 or so? In MIND GAMES, Po says, "Most people 182 years old are Dead..." Or, as implied in other issues, are there more than 1 of him?
Lenny: Yes- but the question is: is the Po who claims to be 182 in Mind Games, the original, or a follower?
Rainmandu: I think the Po in 'Flight' and 'Reads' is the 'Essential Po,' the 'Mind Game' Pos are aspects of Po, and all of the other Pos, including the one in 'High Society' (pp. 433-434 (revealed to be a Po on p. 435), 512) are followers.
Lenny: As to my (admitedly gapfilled) recollection- I sort of got the impression that the Po in the jail cell was the Po in mindgames was the Po we see later. My initial quesiton though was how old is he? We know there are several Po's. SO was the one we meet in Mind Games really 182? Or just claiming to be such.
SSWR: The Po in the jail cell was not the same one. It was Po the Anarcho-Romantic, the "narrator" of the campaign and PM career section of High Society. Definatly human, definately foppish.
Rainmandu: I'm guessing he really was 182 (at the time). Considering how old Cerebus is (in his 70s, at least), and how young he looks (except for the white hair, he's aging remarkably well), I think that aardvarks (like Po, and probably Cirin) live a very long time. And the Po in the jail cell couldn't be the Po we see later, ecause the Po in the jail cell has four fingers and a thumb, and the Po we see later has three and a thumb. Also, the Po in the jail cell is the Po who wrote 'The Six Crises,' and that's the Po that Cerebus met earlier in the book.
Lenny: Well..I'm sure it'll be clearer as we get to those future issues, but how do you know that the aardvarkian Po isn't the Po of Mind Games? Also...perhaps those finger you thought you saw were the products of Illusion?? :^)
Rainmandu: I didn't say that the Po in 'Mind Games' wasn't an aardvark. I said that the Po in the jail cell (at the end of 'High Society') wasn't an aardvark. And it's not just the fingers, it's the whole guy. We see him talking to Cerebus on pages 433-434, and he explains, in the text piece on page 435, that he's just one of those guys, like so many other guys, who took the name Po.
Lenny: you said that the jail cell Po was human and that the jail cell Po was the one that Cerebus met earlier in the book (I assumed you meant Mind Games, right?). So I infered from that that the Mind Games Po wasn't an aardvark. Invalid logic?
Rainmandu: I should have been more clear. I meant the Po that he met on the pages mentioned above, not the Po that he talked to during Mind Game. The Pos that he's met during the various Mind Games are, I believe, lesser aspects of the Essential Po, who we meet for the first time in 'Flight.'
Lenny: Same one as whom? As mentioned, there's a few "Po"s mentioned throughout the series. But as of Issue 25, where we are today, the only Po's we know of are:
- One or more that was/were active during the 182 years prior to Mind Games I
- The Po of Mind Games I
- The Po who wrote the fables that are spells.
mitch: I believe someone else mentioned earlier that you usually can tell which Po we're talking about by tone of voice. Be it the stoner/illusionist/wannabe or the chess playing reincarnate.
Lenny: (From the reading of issue 26 to 28) Po has been meditated for the last 57 yrs or so and another reference to his age of 182 (I think that's it).