I explore the connection between theology and graphic literature (such as comic books). New comics are released every Wednesday. Hence, Wednesday Theology.
With the arrival of the first real-life global supervillain, the stage was set for the Free World's response. When the retort came, it was from the ranks of the underdogs; two shy, bespectacled, and imaginative young science fiction fans from Cleveland, who were revving up typewriter and bristol board to unleash a power greater than bombs, giving form to an ideal that would effortlessly outlast Hitler and his dreams of a Thousand Year Reich.
Some will say the following story should not be told... There will be those who argue that such events have no place in an entertainment magazine -- perhaps they are right! But we don't think so -- because we've seen these noble creatures, human beings, wrecked... Made less than animals... Plunged into hells of agonies! We've seen it -- we're angry... And this is our protest!
Alex: I don't like your type.
Adam: What do you mean?
Alex: Holier than thou. "God's my friend not yours."
And so it makes me very --
-- troubled to see that you have some kind of real human compassion.
Alex and I are on the same path, and it's not for those of us who've made it farther to put down those who are a few steps, many steps, or even miles behind us.
Because Alex reminds us, reminds me, that while my walk may be shorter than his...
We all have a walk to make --
-- Before we become the person we will be when we meet God.
Art Spiegelman: What happened in Maus was the absolute shock of an oxymoron: the Holocaust is absolutely the plast lace one would look for something to be made in the form of comics, which one associates with essentially trivial, simplified matter.
Boy: Hey! You got your comics in my Holocaust!
Girl: You got your Holocaust into my comics!
Alan Moore: I think there were a surprising number of people out there who secretly longed to keep up with the adventures of Green Lantern but who felt they would have been socially ostracized if they had been seen reading a comic book in a public place.
With the advent of books like Watchmen, I think these people were given license by the term graphic novel. Everybody knew that comics were for children and for intellectually subnormal people, whereas graphic novel sounds like a much more sophisticated proposition.
Winsor McCay[...]
...He began to vary panel sizes to give visual emphasis to his narrative!
Little panels to focus in on small, intimate actions...
...Big panels for dramatic actions or epic reveals!
Artists learned they could pace cartoon stories to their own internal rate just as writers could use different phrase and sentence length to set an internal cadence for their prose!
Judas: Don't you see, God has given us the task of rallying the people behind Jesus and that cannot be done while he maintains this pacifist charade.
We must convince him to publicly declare his true nature.
Zealot: But how? I don't understand?
Judas: When the Sanhedrin arrests Jesus under false charges, it will force him to reveal his true identity as the messiah.
This will incite the people to rise up in his defense and lead to the very thing the nobles and Pilate fear the most...a city-wide riot!
