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Neil Brauer
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Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged | 1  

Isn't this very similar the the movie "The Seventh Sign"?
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 08 October 2012 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | 2  

Christianity has long been DC's official backstop religion. Unlike Marvel which routinely visits its various pantheons, de-mystifying them to a large extent, DC has the Roman gods, sometimes the Greek ones, and not much else, aside from, say, Rama Kushna.

Roy Thomas's JSA stories were largely predicated on the conceit that Hitler possessed the Spear of Destiny which pierced Christ's side while he was on the cross. In Thomas's continuity, it created a shield around Europe during WWII that effectively prevented the heroes from simply going in and ending the conflict.

The stories of Robert Kanigher often had a Judeo-Christian overtone to them, with Batman and Ragman praying in an issue of Brave and Bold or the soldiers who crucified Christ lamenting their involvement. An issue of Wonder Woman had a scene of a Jewish man praying over the body of a deceased Wonder Woman impersonator. One of the Sgt. Rock team-ups strongly implied that not only was Adolf Hitler still alive in the mid-70's, he was so because he was actually Satan.

Joe Orlando and Joe Kubert adapted stories from the Bible for an oversized Treasury edition. DC Christmas issues often smacked of religious themes, such as the Legion story where they set out to find the star that led Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. Denny O'Neil strapped a would-be martyr to the prop of an airplane in his GL/GA run, with some strong Christian sentiments in that story.

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing visited both Heaven and Hell and specified the God of the Spectre series as being the Judeo-Christian one. Rick Veich tried to further entrench this idea with his Christ as a White Magician tale which did not see publication. Moore's Phantom Stranger was a consciencious objector to the War in Heaven. Grant Morrison's Zauriel was an angel who, as Kip points out, fought alongside the JLA in a Second War in Heaven, God help us... :-)

Of course over at Marvel, Angels were a part of Wolfman and Colan's Tomb of Dracula series, as was the Power of Christ as shown in the Silver Surfer guest appearance.

And yes, Mark Waid did establish that Jack Kirby was literally Marvel's God, with the power to restore a deceased Ben Grimm to life in a particularly ill-conceived series of issues of the FF. (All the more so because Moore had already rung this bell in his run on Supreme and Morrison has already pulled the "omniscient narrator restores dead characters" trick in Animal Man. By the time Waid got there, this story was already twice chewed...)

For real, full-on, all-out Christianity however, nothing beats the Dennis the Menace religious comics or the Archie Spire series. Man, Betty would get so enthusiastic about witnessing and finding salvation in those stories...!

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Mike Norris
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Posted: 08 October 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | 3  

I recall a Thor storyline that involved various pantheons.Mostly ones no longer "active" in the real world. But they also used the Hindu pantheon from a pretty active religion. 
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Marc M. Woolman
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Posted: 08 October 2012 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | 4  

I think maybe you could make the case for Judeo/Christian (what do they call it when you include Muslim also?)being DC's religion, but not Christianity alone. Those three religions all use the same god and angels so for example Grant Morrison's JLA Angel character and the whole war in heaven story-line doesn't automatically mean Christian.



Edited by Marc M. Woolman on 08 October 2012 at 9:15pm
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 08 October 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | 5  

I think maybe you could make the case for Judeo/Christian (what do they call it when you include Muslim also?)

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For all three collectively, you can refer to them as the Abrahamic faiths or religions. 


Edited by Michael Roberts on 08 October 2012 at 9:30pm
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David Plunkert
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 6:49am | IP Logged | 6  

Brian Hague wrote: For real, full-on, all-out Christianity however, nothing beats the Dennis the Menace religious comics or the Archie Spire series. Man, Betty would get so enthusiastic about witnessing and finding salvation in those stories...!

iiii

Those Christian Archie comics made the choice between Betty and Veronica much clearer. 
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Neil Brauer
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 7:03am | IP Logged | 7  

It was surprising how good some of the art was in those Christian comics back in the 70's.
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Ben Mcvay
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | 8  

What about those Rob Liefeld drawn "Jesus" comic? That thing looked terrible.
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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 8:09am | IP Logged | 9  


The only religious comic book I ever read was BATTLE POPE, which I thought was very funny.  Did that book get any religious backlash, even though it was clearly a comedy?

Will there be any backlash from religious groups with this Phantom Stranger reveal?



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Ben Mcvay
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged | 10  

Will there be any backlash from religious groups with this Phantom Stranger reveal?

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I personally doubt it. The audience for comics is too small unless some news org. runs an article on it, which I doubt because this character isn't very well known.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 8:58am | IP Logged | 11  

The movies thread reminded me that this is not really so new after all. When I was a kid there was a Superboy story in which Lana Lang's archeologist father proved the story of Ben Hur was TRUE.
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Lars Johansson
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Posted: 09 October 2012 at 9:22am | IP Logged | 12  

I know all Christian storylines, a guy has served the devil for 40 years and now he "finds God" who gives him retirement pension after hard work. A socialistic comic/movie is like this: Ten kids or more travel away to faraway island and have to cooperate to stay alive, but everyone alone is a retard and can't open a bottle or anything. So I stick to non propaganda comics. I don't think you can write a comic based on somehing that abstract "salvation" or communism or whatever. More likely, from what I have seen they take what they want from regular comics and put togehter something that's not so good.
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