The online webcomic The Oatmeal recently featured a string of strips entitled, “How to Suck at Your Religion,” two of which are excerpted below:
Check out all the rest at The Oatmeal site or preorder a print copy of their latest book How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You.
Fittingly enough, it was roughly six months ago that Jeff Jackson, ComicAttack.net writer of the “Comics Are My Religion” columns, discussed theological time — chronos and kairos, in terms of Jim McCann and Janet Lee’s Return of the Dapper Men graphic novel from Archaia Comics:
In the book, time has stopped, however, life goes on. Children have forgotten to grow up and robots have forgotten who built them. There is general dis-ease in the community, as these lack of understandings have driven the human children and the robots away from one another.
It’s not until the community is visited by a down-pouring of Dapper Men that things begin to change. One Dapper Man, designated “41,” brings about the epiphany of the importance of time to the characters, and they find that their destinies are even dependent on time.
Can comics as a medium escape a dependency on chronos, everyday chronological time? Or, does the medium already achieve this more readily than other media? Do comics actually operate in a hybrid between chronos and kairos, in aevum?
Over in the Comic Book Resources discussion forums, the poster dubbed “USERNAME TAKEN” questioned religious representation in superhero comics — “If comics are to truly represent an increasingly diverse society, why aren’t there more religious heroes in comics.” The prompt has triggered nearly 100 responses in just over one week, including those from both sides of the divide, whether there is or there is not adequate religious representation in superhero comics.
Are, as poster Kieran_Frost says, comics readers “much more accepting of race, gender and sexuality [and likely…] more accepting of religion in characters, at-least more tolerant than many are assuming?”
On his blog, Rabbi Yair Robinson attempts to compile an initial list of comics and comics works related to Judaism. While admittedly “incomplete” and “imperfectly” done, it merits mention for its construction by an active clergyman looking at portrayals of his own faith in the medium. In addition to comics titles, he cites prose works like Arie Kaplan’s From Krakow to Krypton as essential reading (though one can read Kaplan’s own version of this overview, as well).
Other sites, such as Jewish Comics, have made similar attempts, but few seem to give mentions to works like Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe run or American Flagg. It’s incomplete, imperfect, and worth your consideration.
According to the Gettysburgtimes.com,
The Lifelong Learning Academy will present a lecture on Thursday, June 21, at 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Village, 1075 Old Harrisburg Road, Gettysburg. Dr. Carey Moore, retired Professor of Religion at Gettysburg College, will speak about “Religion and Comic Strips.”
Dr. Moore was a major contributor to the Anchor Bible Series and is purportedly a lifelong reader of comic strips.