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Found today entirely by accident:
Loose Pages » Blog Archive » Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels conference - Draft
You know, I totally forgot about Kingdom Come when I was writing the article. Not sure what I would have done with it, but I clearly should have remembered to include it; it's patently about superheroes as a surrogate for something to believe in. I've never read Preacher or Hellblazer. In fact, I consciously decided to leave the Vertigo titles that I have read off the list. I think American Virgin really is meant to be a study of one young man's faith being tested by extreme circumstances; that said, it's turning somewhat into a catalog of bad things happening to him and people around him, and it's not really saying anything about faith at all at this point. Not that it's not interesting, but I think it hasn't quite made most of its connections yet. As for Testament ... eh. That's not really about faith at all, so much as a recasting of Torah stories as a battle of pantheons through terrestrial agents. I also consciously excluded Hellboy, Promethea and The Invisibles. It is clear that belief matters in Hellboy -- though what seems to matter the most is belief in the devil and his agents; those people seem to be the only ones able to invoke visible results. I'm not at all sure that anyone in the Hellboy books even believes in God or heaven. Promethea ... I'm not at all sure what anyone in that believes; it's not as simple as heaven and hell, despite the fact that the middle third of the series is spent wandering around heaven's various precincts (or, more precisely, the afterlife's various precincts). The Invisibles is only very indirectly about creating a new religion; that Jack is the new buddha winds up being oddly beside the point.
Hmm. Maybe in a few columns, I should come back and revisit the previously untouched things in a later (much later) column. Except that I'm not sure how I can do that without Preacher, Hellblazer, and Lucifer, and I haven't read any of them, and really don't plan to read any of them. I mean, Lucifer sounds interesting, but I can deal without having my religious allegory slathered in Preacher/Hellblazer levels of blood and violence.
Loose Pages » Blog Archive » Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels conference - Draft
You know, I totally forgot about Kingdom Come when I was writing the article. Not sure what I would have done with it, but I clearly should have remembered to include it; it's patently about superheroes as a surrogate for something to believe in. I've never read Preacher or Hellblazer. In fact, I consciously decided to leave the Vertigo titles that I have read off the list. I think American Virgin really is meant to be a study of one young man's faith being tested by extreme circumstances; that said, it's turning somewhat into a catalog of bad things happening to him and people around him, and it's not really saying anything about faith at all at this point. Not that it's not interesting, but I think it hasn't quite made most of its connections yet. As for Testament ... eh. That's not really about faith at all, so much as a recasting of Torah stories as a battle of pantheons through terrestrial agents. I also consciously excluded Hellboy, Promethea and The Invisibles. It is clear that belief matters in Hellboy -- though what seems to matter the most is belief in the devil and his agents; those people seem to be the only ones able to invoke visible results. I'm not at all sure that anyone in the Hellboy books even believes in God or heaven. Promethea ... I'm not at all sure what anyone in that believes; it's not as simple as heaven and hell, despite the fact that the middle third of the series is spent wandering around heaven's various precincts (or, more precisely, the afterlife's various precincts). The Invisibles is only very indirectly about creating a new religion; that Jack is the new buddha winds up being oddly beside the point.
Hmm. Maybe in a few columns, I should come back and revisit the previously untouched things in a later (much later) column. Except that I'm not sure how I can do that without Preacher, Hellblazer, and Lucifer, and I haven't read any of them, and really don't plan to read any of them. I mean, Lucifer sounds interesting, but I can deal without having my religious allegory slathered in Preacher/Hellblazer levels of blood and violence.