The Disruption of Christian Patriarchy in The Gospel of Carol and Other Comic Books

Once again I tainted the hallowed halls of Luther Seminary and brought shame upon academic respectability by rambling about comic books at the Upper Midwest joint conference of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.  It was a really fun time had by all.  Or, at least had by me, since I was rambling about comic books.  Here, presented for your pleasure, or agony, is that paper.

Also, much gratitude to John S. Troutman for letting me bug him so much about The Gospel of Carol.  If you want a fun read, you can snag all the issues from comiXology on the cheap.

Christianity, Counterculture, and Comics

The other week I made an impulse buy at my local comic book shop. Those of you who know me well may not think this is surprising, but actually I usually hold a pretty strict shopping list when it comes to physical, individual issues. This is both due to financial and time restraints. The cost of buying comics seems to grow in an inverse relationship with the amount of free time I have to read my purchases. To illustrate the seriousness of the situation, I don't even include any Batman titles on my regular reading list (unless, of course, it is written by Grant Morrison).

But that day I saw on the shelf an issue of Occupy Comics about the Occupy movement and the financial crisis and bailouts that spurred it. Now, you, dear reader, likely have your own opinions on this social/political occurrence. I don't really care about that. What I was really interested in was the fact that this issue contains an essay by Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame and self proclaimed wizard who is not to be trifled with) about the history of comics as counterculture and a medium of protest.

Intellectually Subnormal People

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.

Comic Book Comics #5

by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey

How Time's Leveled Us

This disaffection. This is armageddon. Ah, Mary, how time's leveled us. We are made equal, both mere curios of our vanished epoch in this lustless world.
This world, where in comparison I am made ignorant, while you...
you are made virtuous.

- From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

Children Playing With Their Unfathomable Toys

Dear God, was is this Aethyr I am come upon?
What spirits are these, labouring in what heavenly light?
No...
No, this is dazzle, but not yet divinity. Nor are these heathen wraiths about me spirits lacking even that vitality.
What then? Am I, like Saint John the Divine, vouchsafed a glimpse of those last times?
Are these the days my death shall spare me?
It would seem we are to suffer an apocalypse of cockatoos...
Morose, barbaric children playing with their unfathomable toys.
Where comes this dullness in your eyes? How has your century numbed you so?
Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder?

- From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

It All Came True Anyway

I made it all up, and it all came true anyway.
That's the funny part.

- From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

No Less Potent, No Less Terrible

Scorn not the Gods: Despite their non-existence in material terms, they're no less potent, no less terrible.
The only place Gods inarguable exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.
What's Mars but mankind's violent attributes personified? Or Aphrodite, save mankind's desires? The Homeristic sages recognized all Gods as aspects of "The One" yet missed the greater truth.
"The One" is us, each with a pantheon of Gods in our Right Brain, whence inspiration and all instinct springs.
Athena gives us automobiles, Mars our Mahdi uprisings. Is that not plague and miracle enough to sate the God of Exodus?

From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

Our Lunatics Were Prophets Once

William: Born in the Eighteenth century, our greatest prophet, William Blake, experienced visions; spoke with Milton's ghost, or the Apostle Paul...
Netley: Sound barmy.
William: Possibly.
And yet, as Alexander Gilchrist, Blake's biographer, suggests, 'Tis but comparatively recently that seeing visions would call into doubt a person's sanity.
Why, Roman military logs describe divine encounters quite routinely; less remarkable than horse-shoes lost or Quartermaster's lists. Our brains were different then: The Gods seemed real.
..........
In Gilchrist's words, Blake's spiritually belonged to earlier ages of the world, since when, as Hazlitt has remarked "The Heavens have gone further off."
Our lunatics were prophets once, and had a prophet's power. Never forget that, Netley.

From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

A Task Most Difficult

Father: Think less on tomorrow's work, boy, and more upon today's.
The Lord has his own plans for each of us, and tis vanity to speculate.
The scriptures...ung...The scriptures say "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and hurp...to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Son: Yes, father.
You are right.
Father: Uwp.
Son: Father? Is it vanity to hope the Lord may choose for me a task most difficult?
Father: No, that would seem a worthy Christian attribute, so long as it were not for glory's sake.
Son: Oh no.
Though I should have a task most difficult, most necessary and severe, I should not care if none save I did hear of my achievement.
Only the Lord and I shall know.
And that shall be sufficient.

From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell 

Remember, Remember

Why, yes, of course I'm watching V for Vendetta today. The graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd have basically made today a geek holiday. Actually, the graphic novel, along with the 2006 movie adaptation, have transcended geek culture and infected the zeitgeist of today's youth.

Rarer Than a Quark

Dr. Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles...events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive, meeting, siring this precise son, that exact daughter...
...Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged.
To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold...
That is the crowning unlikelihood.
The thermodynamic miracle.
Laurie: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle...I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
Dr. Manhattan: Yes.
Anybody in the world.
...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...
I forget.
We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.
Come...dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

- Watchmen #9

by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Aren't they all?

This is an IMAGINARY STORY...         Aren't they all?

- Superman: Whatever Happened 

to the Man of Tomorrow?