In this third and final installment of our discussion with Martian Comics creator and Sequart Organization founder Julian Darius, we discuss characters’ vs. readers’ vs. believers’ perspectives on Jesus and Paul, as well as the future of his series and any relationship it might have to real-world religions dealing with extraterrestrials.

S&S: I wonder: Of all the stories in this issue, “What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?” features the titular Martians the least, perhaps only in reference to the Athenians “Unknown god […] a placeholder the Athenians use, knowing their knowledge of the gods to be limited.” Do readers know from “Ezekiel” (and “The Galilean” and “Lazarus”) what it is the Athenians don’t, namely that aliens have had an influence in the spiritual affairs of humankind? Is this the manner of answer that Lazarus is seeking?

JD: I love that you saw a connection between the Unknown God and the Martians. That’s not my own primary reading, but it’s there. It follows, once you connect this story with “Ezekiel” — the Martians are, in a sense, an unknown god to the Greeks. And you’re right that they don’t know about Martians, any more than the ancient Jews did. There are other Martian stories to come that kind of play with this same sort of thing, in which humans sort of realize there are forces or divinities out there, beyond their ability to understand. So that’s definitely there, and you’re smart to pick up on it, but to me, that’s a layer, rather than the primary meaning.

Paul cites the “Unknown God” in Acts. There’s a historical dispute as to whether it really existed or not, or to what extent. Was there a temple to the Unknown God? Was there a statue or monument? From what I’ve read, some think yes, some think no. If I remember correctly, Paul only mentions an inscription to the Unknown God, and there’s some ambiguity about what he’s referring to. But it’s a wonderful concept, this polytheistic statement of humility. I suppose you could see it as a parody of polytheism — “We hope we didn’t leave anyone out!” And it is that. But it’s also this wonderful admission, by the smartest city around, that yeah, we don’t know anything. Here’s a monument to that idea. Wow.

I was always fascinated by the Unknown God. As a kid, I thought it was funny that Paul said he was going to tell people about it, because this frames his god in the context of Greek polytheism. Saying that, you’re essentially saying that you’re going to add a god to the Greek pantheon. You can’t say this and then preach monotheism, really. It’s at least very disingenuous. It wasn’t until studying Greek history in college that I began really appreciating the humility of the concept and how it fit into the Greek philosophical outlook. So I love the Unknown God concept and this story from Acts, and I included it on that basis. It illustrates more the difference between Paul’s arrogant “you’re ignorant!” preaching and the nuances of Athenian philosophy.

But yeah, you’re totally right: you can look at the Unknown God and think, “Yeah, they don’t know about the Martians, who played the role of God to Ezekiel.” And who were behind Jesus in the series.

It occurs to me that probably more people will read the story and think I’m on loose historical ground about how Paul failed in Athens, or in the claim that he was changing stuff, or that he was doing this “you’re ignorant” refrain that sounds a lot more like contemporary Christianity than we’d perhaps think. But I’m on pretty firm historical ground on all of this. But every time I read the story, I get to that panel depicting the Unknown God, and I think it’s absolutely lovely, but I know there’s dispute over whether such a monument existed. Moreover, there’s no reason to think it was a statue like I requested Sergio to depict. I think Sergio did an absolutely brilliant job — this kind of incomplete statue, which actually has echoes of that kind of geometric prehistorical Greek sculpture, a form of art I absolutely love. But from a historical perspective, I’ve actually taken more poetic license there than in my depiction of Paul. Although I’m willing to be there aren’t nearly as many hardcore Greek polytheists to potentially object.

As far as Lazarus seeking answers, that’s essentially because he’s immortal and doesn’t totally understand what Jesus was. In “Lazarus” (from Martian Comics #2), Lazarus talks with Jesus, and Jesus levels with Lazarus as much as he’s able. But Lazarus has no framework to understand what another planet is, or what Martian civilization is like. Moreover, Jesus doesn’t understand the consequences of his own powers. So Lazarus knows as much about his own immortality as Jesus does. Lazarus leaves at the end of that story, so he’s looking for answers about what he is, what Jesus really was, and how to understand all of this. There’s no guidebook for immortality.

So in a way, the answers Lazarus is seeking lie on Mars. But in another way, he’s searching for answers that really aren’t there, or that are right in front of him and he doesn’t know it. He’s interested, especially in response to Attic drama, in this concept of patterns in history. And he imagines, like the Greeks did, that these patterns are a consequence of divinities — that there’s this higher level of reality, from which everything makes sense. Mars sort of is that higher level of reality, but it’s from a human point of view that we see it that way. But Mars is just another planet, albeit a very technologically advanced one, relative to Earth. It’s not a place of gods, except compared to Earth. As humans, we want to see patterns, and we imagine that there’s some God perspective from which everything is clear. But what if we met our gods, and they said that an awful lot we don’t know is settled fact to them, and they’re capable of technological miracles, but they don’t have all the answers? Lazarus wants answers, but he’s kind of learning that there aren’t any — or at least that admitting one’s own ignorance is a kind of wisdom. In fact, these Martian “gods” don’t have all the answers either, and they’re not of one mind. They’re as culturally differentiated as humans are.

But there’s an added irony, in that we can see some of the patterns that Lazarus can’t. For one, we know more about the Martians than he does. For another, we can see the place of this story in history, because we know Paul won’t just disappear into history. In fact, the Christianity he’s inventing, which seems to have suffered a setback in the story, is going to become the sole religion of the empire and will dominate European thought for more than a millennium. Lazarus is at a crux point in history, a point where the shape of history pivots, and he doesn’t even know it. And of course, no one at this point knows it. They’re just humans, living out their lives an their agendas, with no idea how they fit into this larger shape of history. To the extent that they think they know, they’re wrong. History pivots in the story, and nobody notices, even while Lazarus is thinking about this very subject.

Of course, Lazarus is immortal. And he says he hopes to at least see something of the shape of history. It occurs to me that this is something about immortality that’s rarely been explored — that an immortal would be able to see how things change, and while he wouldn’t have a divine or objective perspective, he’d at least be able to see how unintended consequences play themselves out, and how people have no idea they’re at a crux point when they’re at it.

S&S: With three issues now complete — and more to come, hopefully — how prominent is the theme of religion in this series? On a related note, what’s your view on Raelism or even Scientology, with extraterrestrials featuring as they do in these real-life 

JD: I don’t think religion is a major theme in the series. There are some other stories to come that address different religions, and it’s definitely a theme of sorts, but only largely because I’m kind of crafting a mythology here that weaves in and out of human history. But I don’t think this is a comic that’s focused on religion.

It just so happens that the back-up in issue #1 was about Jesus — riffing on a comment in the main story. And then the second story in issue #2 (“Lazarus”) was a follow-up. Issue #3 has “Ezekiel” — which is really short — and the second Lazarus story. I’d long had the idea for that second Lazarus story, but I only wrote it for issue #3 because I wanted continuity with the previous two issues. I was worried that, with all the stories in issue #3, people would feel jarred by this sudden dive into larger Martian history, and another Lazarus story would help lessen this jarring effect — and also smooth out the issue, so “Ezekiel” doesn’t jump to another very short story set over two millennia later. So it just kind of worked out that the first three issues have religious stories.

I did write these stories pretty early on, and that might reflect my own tendency to write about Biblical stuff, as I’ve already confessed. But this isn’t something that continues. At least, there aren’t a slew of Biblical stories to come in Martian Comics. However, issue #5 does give us a glimpse into Martian religion!

And I do plan more Lazarus stories. Religion’s definitely a theme in those, although not in every single Lazarus story. I’ve got several more Lazarus stories planned, and at least one totally scripted. There’s a long-term plan there, in which Lazarus winds his way through history. In fact, I’m planning on spinning Lazarus into his own comic, with issue #0 reprinting the first two Lazarus stories, plus a new one, at which point we’re past the New Testament period. I’m hoping that’ll drop at the end of this year, by which time I think Martian Comics #7 will be out. The plan is to follow up with Lazarus issue #1, likely late in 2017, which will be a crazy story that means a lot to me and that I hope will really interest people. It’s kind of the culmination of the first act of Lazarus’s life. I’d like to publish at least one issue a year, alongside Martian Comics.

I’ve also got a couple other series underway. Kimot Ren is another spin-off of Martian Comics, starring a Martian android and set in the Old West. Then there’s Necropolitan, which doesn’t occur in the same universe as Martian Comics and which… is set in Hell.

S&S: In Hell?

JD: Yes, another religious theme! It’s co-written by Sequart’s Mike Phillips. I’ve been working on all this stuff for years, and it looks like 2016 is the year it all comes out. And I have huge plans for all of these titles.

I’ve long read about some UFO-involved religions, but I don’t think I was familiar with Raelism until I just looked it up. There are some similarities with the Martian mythology, like Jesus and others being alien-influenced. Reading the religion’s Wikipedia entry, I like their emphasis on the spiritual aspect of sexuality, as well as some of their stated liberal values. There’s some other cool stuff there, like the idea of a meritocracy, and the idea of eternal life through cloning, rather than due to an immortal soul.

Apparently, they believe that aliens scientifically created life on Earth, which is something I don’t personally like. The idea that early, primitive organic life arrived from outer space is possible, although what I’ve read suggests that life probably occurs relatively easily under the right conditions, then takes an unfathomable amount of time to evolve past key thresholds. I really don’t like the idea, though, that humans were specifically planted here, as in some science fiction, because it violates the evolutionary record.

I know a lot more about Scientology. The thing people often miss, in talking about Scientology, is that the space opera stuff is limited to the most upper levels, and of course there’s no worship of an alien, despite a lot of jokes. We do know from court documents as well as testimonials about what happens at these higher levels, and there’s an audio recording of Hubbard talking about some of the space opera material, but it’s a very different thing from Raelism. It’s not a part of Scientology for the vast majority of Scientologists, and it’s not part of Scientology’s public pitch.

Incidentally, Mormonism also contains space opera elements at its higher levels. Then there’s the more sci-fi versions of Barbelo, which I mentioned earlier. Or the idea of the afterlife that’s taken up in The Fountain.

As for what I think about the involvement of extraterrestrial elements in religions, I think it’s unfairly mocked. Like I said earlier, I think it’s absurd to think we’re alone in the universe, but I don’t believe we’ve been visited. I don’t think anyone can deny there have been mass UFO sightings (some recorded), but I don’t know what people are seeing. And I tend to think that there’d be better proof by now, if these were extraterrestrial crafts. Also, the fact that aliens tend to differ based on one’s culture strongly suggests that they’re hallucinations, based on cultural images. Unless we think that different alien species have carved up the various nations of the world as their domain, which I find pretty improbable. I certainly don’t rule out the possibility of an alien visit, but I’m not convinced it’s currently happening. That said, I do think these UFO sightings and visitations, whether hallucinations or not, are a serious matter worthy of study.

Let’s assume that Earth isn’t being visited by multiple alien species who have divided up our planet, and that these visitations — which I assume are very real for some of those discussing them — are hallucinatory, or some combination of false memory and suggestion. Now, we know this is also true of religions experiences. People have visions of Jesus, or Mary, or beings corresponding to whatever religion they believe, and they look the way the person having the vision thinks they’re supposed to look. The details are culturally influenced. Of course, a believer can say that this is because these holy beings appear to people as people want to see them, but I think it’s a simpler and more likely explanation to say that people are hallucinating, and those hallucinations are informed by their biological brains. If we accept this, it’s clear that the distinction between an alien encounter and a religious experience isn’t necessarily as different as we might think.

I think there are a lot of reasons to suspect this is the case. Studies of faith healing are pretty conclusive about what’s going on, and that the effects have to do with the human brain. And we know that, whether with magic tricks or car accidents, people can sometimes not see what’s right in front of them.

I’ve personally had religious experiences. I’ve been moved spiritually by religious things, but I’ve also had a hallucinatory experience involving Hell and angels, and I mentioned I’ve experienced poltergeist-like effects — the most dramatic of which was a picture frame rotating left, then right, maybe thirty feet in front of me, again and again. I’ve sensed a presence. I’ve hallucinated without drugs, and I’ve hallucinated with drugs. As an atheist, I don’t pretend to totally understand these experiences, but I find these scientific studies more convincing than that these were “real” experiences of ghosts, demons, angels, and whatnot.

Incidentally, just because I don’t think these are “real” in the sense that they involve actual ghosts or spiritual beings doesn’t mean they’re not real to the person experiencing them. In studies where people have been given acid, they often report profound experiences, and many call them life-changing, even though they totally accept that these were hallucinations. Religious experience is real experience, even if it’s not “literally” a true encounter with something supernatural. In fact, it’s very natural to have religious experiences. Our brains may well be wired for them.

And if you think about more primitive societies, it’s easy to see how a lot of religious encounters sound like alien encounters. That’s part of the point of “ancient astronaut” theories. Even in the Gospels, people misunderstand the star that led the wise men to Jesus. It wasn’t the way we picture it. The Biblical description is of a star that comes to Earth and leads the way. I imagine it as a floating ball of light, staying ahead of them, bouncing around. The description is very clear that it’s not in the heavens — how could that point the way anyway? And throughout human history, we have reports of spiritual beings in the sky, and things like “Ezekiel’s wheels.”

Now, some of these are convincingly explained by astrological occurrences. If you’ve never seen sun dogs, look it up on YouTube and ask yourself how primitive humans would have interpreted this sight of multiple suns in the sky, with arcs or a ring stretching from one to the next. To some, it must have seemed like the world was ending. The most famous European depiction of what look like spaceships battling in the sky was very likely an instance of sun dogs — the depiction was made by someone who wasn’t an eyewitness, using written accounts, fusing descriptions of events that weren’t simultaneous into a single image. When you read the description, I’m pretty convinced it’s a case of sun dogs.

However, there remains a remarkable similarity between a lot of religious encounters and alien encounters. I’d suggest that they’re likely related, and that where people once hallucinated religious encounters, or interpreted bizarre events from a religious point of view, some are now hallucinating extraterrestrials or interpreting bizarre things as the consequence of extraterrestrials. It’s not an especially sexy explanation, but there does seem to be a connection.

Even when I was a teenager, I never understood why religious people I knew would cite visionary experiences as proof of their religion, because I knew that lots of different religions reported similar experiences. They don’t prove anything. And it seems logical to expand this to include extraterrestrial experiences. Eyewitnesses have terrible accuracy, yet we so often still prize eyewitness accounts as if they’re proof — especially when we’re the eyewitness.

All of this, to me, seems to legitimate religions with extraterrestrial elements. I think it’s very patronizing to suggest that these aspects are ridiculous, yet this other category of religious experience is real. Is it really legitimate to believe that a god came down from the heavens, but illegitimate to believe an alien did? If anything, I think you could argue that the latter is more reasonable. Mind you, I don’t believe in either, but I think there’s a strange double standard here. Aliens are silly sci-fi stuff, but gods are terribly serious!

I also think we have a more general double standard, when it comes to what’s reasonable. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve heard mock Mormonism, or Scientology, or other more recent religions — who themselves believe older religions with equally bizarre aspects. It’s easy to mock Kolob, in the Mormon cosmology. But is this really more ridiculous than believing that the flood really happened, despite the archaeological and geological evidence, and that there was this massive evolutionary bottleneck that’s just not there in the evolutionary record?

Evolution itself is so indisputable – you can’t understand human physiology without it. Our bodies literally make no sense without it. Yet some deny evolution on religious grounds. I think that’s more absurd (and probably more dangerous) than these sci-fi religious elements. Not to put too fine a point on it, but are those elements really more ridiculous than believing we were born with sin we inherited by our ancestors (an evil concept, really), and that because of this we needed God’s son — who also is his own father — to be brutally murdered in order to absorb this sin from us? If you weren’t aware of this previously, and it were presented to you new, you’d think the person saying it was crazy.

Religions are filled with wacky stuff. I’ve heard people who believe in Jesus’s resurrection and bodily ascension into the afterlife say it is patently absurd to believe he also visited the Americas (in Mormon scripture). That’s a line too far! Obviously, what we think is wacky and absurd has little to do with logic and lots to do with culture. If you looked at a lot of religious belief objectively, you might be tempted to institutionalize people for a lot of mainstream views. But if someone says he’s Jesus, that’s nuts. And if someone hears messages from aliens, instead of from God, go directly to the loony bin.

Of course, I’m certainly not endorsing any specific religion(s). And I certainly don’t think any religion — whether new or old — should get away with abuse. Whether it’s the Catholic rape scandals or cults with poison Kool-Aid, it’s not cool. I’m simply saying that there’s a double-standard against these religions with sci-fi elements.

And really, most religions have some sort of sci-fi elements — we just don’t see them anymore, because we call outer space “heaven” and literally extraterrestrial visitors “gods,” so it’s not sci-fi. That’s like calling them “mutants” and saying they’re not superheroes.