Spoilers: This article discusses the complete Atlantis story in Poetry of Madness.
BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness #1 is an Atlantis story told through the memories of Zubatai, a chronicler who follows B through the rise and destruction of a city that later generations will know only as legend. The one-shot places B in a court ruled by the young King Azaes, surrounds him with a royal household that sees him as protector and omen, and then brings the city to its end through Vizane's attempt to open a gateway for Cthulhu.
The issue expands BRZRKR's historical world without turning Atlantis into a simple explanation for every mystery. It is a city with a harbor, a palace, a reliquary, a tower, armies, rituals, and competing ideas about what B means. Zubatai's narration gives the story the shape of a preserved history, but the images also show where memory, prophecy, and political self-interest begin to overlap.
Zubatai's account
Zubatai is both participant and recorder. He has followed B through years of service and understands that the immortal's presence changes the fortunes of every court that claims him. His narration treats B as a figure larger than one man, yet it retains the practical details of daily life: the king's fear, the movement of guards, the objects kept in the reliquary, and the decisions made by people who believe they can use the supernatural for political ends.
The chronicler's position matters because the story is not narrated by B himself. Zubatai remembers what B did, but he also interprets it. He sees a protector, a veteran, and a sign of the city's destiny. The reader can accept the events as real within the comic while recognizing that the meaning attached to them belongs partly to the witness. Later accounts may preserve B's actions and describe them differently.
Azaes and the royal line
King Azaes is a young ruler whose reign begins under threat. His parents are killed during a coup attempt, and B intervenes before the attackers can take the child as well. B remains in Atlantis as Azaes's protector, creating a relationship that is part guardianship, part military service, and part political necessity.
Azaes does not possess the authority of an old king who can command a stable court. He inherits a city that needs an image of continuity. B supplies that image. The immortal's presence reassures soldiers and subjects that the royal line has a champion who cannot be easily killed. At the same time, B's existence reminds the court that its survival depends on a person it cannot truly own.
The relationship between Azaes and B is not identical to the relationship between B and the rulers of Olos or the modern government. Azaes is shaped by gratitude and fear, and B sees in him a child whose future can still be changed by the choices of adults. The issue's tenderness comes from the possibility that B might protect a young ruler without turning him into another instrument of war.
Atlantis as a living city
Atlantis is not presented as a single palace floating outside history. Its harbor connects it to trade and military movement. The palace concentrates royal authority. The reliquary holds objects whose value is cultural, spiritual, and political. A northeastern tower becomes the site of Vizane's gateway ritual. The city feels powerful because these spaces work together.
The issue also shows that a civilization can be sophisticated without being morally secure. Atlantis has institutions, records, guards, and rituals, yet it remains vulnerable to a conspiracy that persuades people to treat forbidden knowledge as a route to salvation or dominion. The city's strength makes the fall more devastating. The reader sees what is lost: architecture, courtly life, families, and the accumulated memory of a people.
Vizane and the language of madness
Vizane is the architect of the catastrophe. He surrounds himself with followers who accept his belief that the city can reach something beyond the human world. His name gives the one-shot its connection to madness, but the issue does not reduce him to a person who has simply lost reason. Vizane is strategic. He acquires artifacts, manipulates the court, and turns B's blood into one component of a larger design.
His danger comes from the way he makes destruction sound like revelation. If the gateway opens, he promises access to a power that can change the conditions of life. The language resembles the promises made by Caldwell in the modern series: accurate evidence is placed inside a story of destiny, and the people closest to the experiment are asked to accept risk on behalf of a future they cannot verify.
The gateway set
The ritual uses several objects and conditions together. B's blood, a primordial-ore sword, the Atlantean obelisk, Aklo texts, ritual vessels, and the northeastern tower form a system rather than a single magic item. The comic shows the set working, but it does not explain the maker, age, or complete history of each component.
The presence of B's blood makes the ritual especially disturbing. His body has been used by kings and governments as a weapon; in Atlantis it becomes a key to a gateway. The issue expands the ways institutions can instrumentalize him. B does not volunteer to serve as a bridge to Cthulhu. Vizane treats the property of his blood as something that can be extracted and redirected.
Cthulhu's arrival
Cthulhu appears through the gateway as a power beyond the city's ability to contain. The issue does not make Cthulhu another form of the Source. The visual and narrative language is different, and the event belongs to a distinct supernatural branch. Similar scale does not establish identical origin.
The arrival changes the meaning of every earlier political conflict. Atlantis's court, Vizane's followers, and the invading warriors have been acting as though power can be possessed by one faction. Cthulhu's presence reveals the limits of that assumption. The gateway does not create a controllable ally. It opens a passage through which a force with its own scale and indifference enters the city.
B's role in the fall
B fights to protect Azaes and the people around him. His combat skill and regeneration allow him to confront enemies who would overwhelm an ordinary guard, but he cannot defeat the event by force alone. The city is endangered by the gateway and by the choices that made the gateway possible. B can kill followers and invading warriors; he cannot simply punch the ritual's consequences back into the other world.
The fight therefore resembles the later destruction of Olos and Washukanni. B can survive an institution's collapse, but survival does not equal rescue. His body returns while the city disappears. The issue uses Atlantis to show that an immortal protector can be sincere and still fail to preserve the world he is trying to defend.
The destruction of Atlantis
Atlantis falls through a combination of ritual catastrophe, invasion, and the inability of the court to respond to a threat larger than its own political imagination. The city is not destroyed because one soldier makes a tactical mistake. It is destroyed because leaders allow a gateway to become more important than the lives around it.
The ending gives Zubatai's record its tragic purpose. He is trying to preserve the story of a city that will otherwise become a myth. His account can name Azaes, Vizane, B, the artifacts, and the sequence of the fall, but it cannot restore the dead or make the ritual harmless. The chronicler survives long enough to carry the memory, while B carries the memory inside his own body for thousands of years.
B and the problem of legend
The one-shot shows how B becomes a legend without choosing to become one. Azaes's court sees a protector. Vizane's followers see a key. Invading warriors see an impossible opponent. Zubatai sees a historical figure whose presence connects one era to another. Each interpretation is based on something true, but none contains B completely.
This pattern connects Atlantis to the modern series. The government calls B an asset, Caldwell calls him a route to the Source, and Diana insists on seeing the person behind the terms. Poetry of Madness demonstrates that the conflict between identity and legend began long before the contemporary program.
Place in BRZRKR history
The publication expands the historical range of the universe while remaining distinct from the original twelve-issue plot. It gives B an ancient political relationship, an example of supernatural ritual, and a city whose destruction becomes one of the memories carried into later centuries. The issue also establishes that the BRZRKR world contains multiple systems of power. Atlantis's gateway, Cthulhu's arrival, and Vizane's ritual should not be collapsed into the Source, Protocol X, or B's regeneration.
The final image leaves the reader with a city gone and a witness still speaking. That is the one-shot's lasting idea: history can preserve the fact of a catastrophe while leaving its meaning contested. B survives Atlantis, but Atlantis survives only through stories like Zubatai's—and through the scars carried by the immortal who could not save it.
The city's last witnesses
Zubatai's record gives Atlantis a human aftermath. The city is not remembered only through the moment Cthulhu arrives or the image of B fighting. Azaes has to face the loss of his parents and the collapse of the court that raised him. Guards and courtiers become witnesses to a ritual they did not authorize. Vizane's followers learn that the power they invited cannot be ordered to distinguish between believer and enemy. The invading warriors encounter a city whose defenses have been broken from within.
These perspectives make the fall feel like a social catastrophe rather than a special-effects ending. Atlantis loses its ability to explain itself. Its reliquary is breached, its tower becomes a gateway, and its royal history is interrupted before a stable account can be written. Zubatai survives as a voice, but he cannot speak for every person who disappears. The one-shot's sense of madness comes partly from that silence: an entire civilization is forced into the shape of one witness's memory.
B's choice in the ruins
B's final decision is not to claim Atlantis as his own or to follow Vizane into the gateway. He chooses the people in front of him, especially Azaes, even though he knows that saving one life cannot restore the city. The choice echoes his later decisions with Keever, Diana, and Lugalṭur. B cannot undo the system that made him a weapon, but he can refuse to let another vulnerable person be reduced to a tool.
That refusal is the emotional reason the Atlantis story remains important long after the city has become a legend. B leaves carrying failure, loyalty, and memory together. Zubatai preserves the event as a history of madness, but the reader can also see a smaller act of care inside the catastrophe. B is not only the immortal who outlives Atlantis. He is the guardian who stays long enough to try to save someone.
The issue's final tension comes from the gap between saving a person and saving a civilization. B can reach Azaes, fight through the immediate threat, and carry the memory away. He cannot make the gateway harmless after it has been opened or rebuild the institutions that allowed Vizane to work. That limit keeps the story from turning B into a perfect guardian. His strength matters, but it cannot replace the choices of a city that has already accepted the risk.
The city's last witnesses
Zubatai's record gives Atlantis a human aftermath. The city is not remembered only through the moment Cthulhu arrives or the image of B fighting. Azaes has to face the loss of his parents and the collapse of the court that raised him. Guards and courtiers become witnesses to a ritual they did not authorize. Vizane's followers learn that the power they invited cannot be ordered to distinguish between believer and enemy. The invading warriors encounter a city whose defenses have been broken from within.
These perspectives make the fall feel like a social catastrophe rather than a special-effects ending. Atlantis loses its ability to explain itself. Its reliquary is breached, its tower becomes a gateway, and its royal history is interrupted before a stable account can be written. Zubatai survives as a voice, but he cannot speak for every person who disappears. The one-shot's sense of madness comes partly from that silence: an entire civilization is forced into the shape of one witness's memory.
B's choice in the ruins
B's final decision is not to claim Atlantis as his own or to follow Vizane into the gateway. He chooses the people in front of him, especially Azaes, even though he knows that saving one life cannot restore the city. The choice echoes his later decisions with Keever, Diana, and Lugalṭur. B cannot undo the system that made him a weapon, but he can refuse to let another vulnerable person be reduced to a tool.
That refusal is the emotional reason the Atlantis story remains important long after the city has become a legend. B leaves carrying failure, loyalty, and memory together. Zubatai preserves the event as a history of madness, but the reader can also see a smaller act of care inside the catastrophe. B is not only the immortal who outlives Atlantis. He is the guardian who stays long enough to try to save someone.
The issue's final tension comes from the gap between saving a person and saving a civilization. B can reach Azaes, fight through the immediate threat, and carry the memory away. He cannot make the gateway harmless after it has been opened or rebuild the institutions that allowed Vizane to work. That limit keeps the story from turning B into a perfect guardian. His strength matters, but it cannot replace the choices of a city that has already accepted the risk.
References
[1] Keanu Reeves and Steve Skroce, BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness #1 (BOOM! Studios, 2023), Zubatai's narration, Atlantis, Azaes, Vizane, Cthulhu, gateway ritual, and the city's destruction.
[2] Reeves and Skroce, Poetry of Madness #1, B's blood, primordial-ore sword, Atlantean obelisk, Aklo material, reliquary, and the northeastern tower sequence.