Earlier this year, I reviewed Nick Marino and Daniel Arruda Massa’s miniseries Holy F*ck. Throughout the run, I consistently found the series to be missing that certain something. The artwork was consistent and the writing delivered several gags that were independently funny without fully meshing with each other. My final verdict was that the series as a whole seemed directionless, almost scattershot. But I also kept wanting more. I find myself in that same situation as fall starts creeping in.

Last week, Marino and Arruda Massa returned with the first issue of Holy F*cked. With that, we are cast once more into the lives of Jesus, Satan, and the nun Maria, who have all found happiness in Los Angeles. Jesus has gotten real big into skateboarding (I am certain that although this hasn’t really been explained, it will eventually play a big role). Jesus and Satan are living together, and pretty early on we find out that the devil is pregnant. For her part, Maria works in a soup kitchen, regaling the homeless with old war stories.

Of course, we know that their bliss can’t last. Anansi, the African spirit that most often takes the form of a spider and is connected with knowledge, overhears the news and reports it to Hercules. Hercules is thirsting for revenge: after Jesus and his cohorts defeated Zeus, Mount Olympus deteriorated from a prosperous, “grand utopian metropolis” to a wasteland. And so, out of rage and jealousy that the man who took away his family is about to start his own, Hercules resolves to murder Jesus Christ. Setting his plan in motion, he goes to Earth and, disguised as Thanatos Kostas (a play on the Greek personification of death and a word meaning roughly “constant”), a newcomer to town who is passionate about charity work, he infiltrates the soup kitchen.

That, more or less, is the story.

The rest of the issue, like most of the first series, is taken up by gags that fall under the rubrics juvenilia or provocation. Most of these gags are either obvious or entirely tactless. The issue’s title is presented with a dick joke: accompanied by an illustration of Jesus showering, the words “Holy F*cked: The Big One” are broken so that Jesus’ penis hangs between the F and the C, letting the holy scrotum take the place of the asterisk (get it?). When we are taken to Mount Olympus, there’s a statue of the old god Priapus half-visible, showing a massive, erect penis (get it?). Just before Hercules shows up at the soup kitchen, Jesus tells Maria a story about one of his and Satan’s intimate moments that ends with the following punch line: “So I look over and I see Satan yank a puke-drenched dildo out of the goddamn toilet bowl!!!” And Satan’s pregnancy cravings keep him hankering for spotted dick (get it?).

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with tactlessness. Some of this stuff made me laugh. But again, it seems like the whole issue is provocation for provocation’s sake. There’s still no discernible reason for why it should be Jesus and Satan starring in the book, aside from the giggling, blasphemous thrill it’s easy to get from Jesus-themed dick jokes.

Bill Hicks described himself as “Noam Chomsky with dick jokes” and he had a point; his jokes addressed a world outside the purple-veined world of the one-liner.

There is nothing stopping Marino and Arruda Massa from being “Hitchens with dick jokes” or “Dawkins with dick jokes” or whatever else they might want to be. Marino and Arruda Massa proved in the first series in places that they can do much more with their work. Instead of realizing that potential, however, Holy F*cked #1 winds up pushing its actually pretty interesting premise to the side, to make room for a series of disconnected, high shock-value gags.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Sacred & Sequential was provided with an advance copy of the issue for review.]