Category Archives: articles and essays

articles and essays, from the Internet

Easter Treasure – The Catholic “Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact”

[This article first appeared in the Catholic University of America’s “Archivist’s Nook” by William J. Shepherd. It is reproduced here with permission.]

Iconic painting of ‘The Last Supper’ by Hans Holbein the Younger, ca. 1520. Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact, v. 18, n. 15, March 28, 1963.

Readers of The Archivist’s Nook blog well know the popularity of the Catholic comic book, the Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact, published for most of its history, 1946-1972, by George Pflaum of Dayton, Ohio. The digital version of the collection is especially popular and has been highlighted in three previous blog posts, the first reviewing the origin of Catholic University’s digital collections, ‘Hark! The Digital Angel Comes!’;  the second examining issue covers featuring Jesus Christ,‘Treasure Chest – Your Own Virtual Jesus’; and the third an exposition of covers related to the celebration of Christmas, ‘A Merry Treasure Chest Christmas to All!’.

The Last Easter cover, silhouette of Christ’s profile while on the Cross,Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact, v. 21, n. 16, April 7, 1966.

It will therefore be no surprise The Archivist’s Nook returns to the Treasure Chest’s remarkable treasure trove to commemorate Easter, past, present, and future. From the first volume of the Treasure Chest in 1946, through the next twenty years, there was usually an annual issue with a cover marking an Easter related event. Occasionally, the Treasure Chest skipped a year, while other years had two Easter related covers. Overall, the most popular were scenes of the empty tomb with the resurrected Jesus Christ announcing his presence (6 occasions) or an angel or angels (3 times) proclaiming the good news to Christ’s followers. Also, there were usually no Easter related stories therein to march the covers, though there were sometimes short features such as ‘Easter Eggs You Can Make’ (April 1, 1947) and ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’ (April 8, 1954).

The first Easter cover, presumably the scene from the Book of Mathew, Chapter 28, Verses 1-2, with the Angel of the Lord at Christ’s empty tomb proclaiming the Good News to Mary Magdalene, and another Mary,Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact, v. 1, n. 4, April 23, 1946.

Other covers depict the removal of Christ’s body from the Cross by family and friends (3 issues), including one of Michelangelo’s celebrated Pieta; Stations of the Cross (twice); and certain more singular events, including the triumphal Palm Sunday entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the inspirational and iconic Last Supper, the stunning betrayal of Christ by disciple Judas Iscariot in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the heart wrenching scene of Christ’s brutal execution by the Romans via the process of Crucifixion.

The Treasure Chest of the post Second Vatican Council era became more secular in outlook and appearance so that few religious scenes, including any depicting Easter related events, appeared in its last five years, 1967-1972. Sadly, this change of direction was perhaps a harbinger of the Treasure Chest’s ending. Gone, but most certainly not forgotten!

articles and essays, contributors, online

Cloning Enchantment: Jesuses After Climate Change

[This article first appeared in the Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing, vol 8, no. 3. It is reproduced here with permission.]

Elizabeth Rae Coody
Elizabeth Rae Coody (PhD) is a biblical scholar with a professional interest in comic books. She is the Director of the Writing Lab and adjunct faculty for the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.

When I found one comic with a Jesus that scientists had cloned from relics, I chuckled at its clever premise. When I found the third Jesus Clone comic, I realized that something had to be going on. As a biblical scholar with professional interests in comics, I had come upon one of those ideas that will not let me go.[1]

I find that Jesus Clone reflects an anxiety about human control and biblical promises in a underexplored corner of U.S. popular culture. There are other thinkers who linger over questions about the worth of popular culture and comics in addressing such ideas, but I am convinced that these comics, and others like them, offer insight into how people conceive of and combine elements from science, religion, and imagination to make sense of our world. These comics bring emotion and narrative to our effort to sort our identity as a species.

Human beings are having a geological effect on the planet we inhabit.[2] Once we allow ourselves to conceive of our role in climate change, we humans have to make sense of the control we have on the planet. Control that was once seen as solely divine is all too human, often with stomach-churning consequences. We have agency, but what have we done with it? What’s there to do when science pronounces planetary doom and religion is seen to falter when asked to answer? Why, combine the two! Bring the Second Coming with Science!
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articles and essays, from the Internet

“This is the Avengers, not the God Squad!” (Sequart.org)

(The following article by Mario Ribeiro first appeared at Sequart.org on 5/5/2016 as “They Were Lost in Space-Time and Then They Found God.” It is presented here with his permission.)

Written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Al Milgrom, the Lost in Space-Time saga ran from West Coast Avengers #17 to 24. The real meat is between 18-23, with the others serving as a prologue and an epilogue. Now, before we go any further, keep in mind that this was published in 1987. For modern readers, mainstream superhero comics from the eighties, with very few exceptions (Moore, Miller, Morrison) are old-fashioned and childish with terrible writing (exclamation points, thought balloons, tons of exposition, obvious plots, unrealistic dialogue) and crude, ugly, lazy art. Vanilla heroes fighting cardboard villains, with no depth or subtlety. They are silly, I get it, that’s exactly how we felt back in the eighties about Silver Age comics and that’s how readers in 2046 will feel about today’s comics. But, whenever they come from, if we accept them on their terms we can often find incredible beauty in execution and ideas.

Accepting them on their own terms doesn’t mean accepting them unconditionally. Lost in Space-Time has many flaws, and I won’t enumerate them all. Suffice to say that the first issue (17) is pretty bad, even for its time. The text clashes with the art more than once, one of the villains is Cactus (“he causes fear in every other living thing”) and the main plot is basically filling till the last three pages, when the real story actually begins.

But, before we move forward, we must provide some context. The West Coast Avengers, lovingly called Whackos, consisted of newlyweds Hawkeye (the group’s chairman) and Mockingbird, plus Iron Man, Tigra and Wonder Man. Hank Pym, looking for redemption after the Trial of Yellowjacket storyline, didn’t join the team, but lived in the compound in civilian capacity, doing scientific research and some house-keeping. The Thing and Espirita (then still called Firebird) were candidates for the sixth slot, but neither joined the team.

What is missing from the first 16 issues is the big concept. It is a good read, but the fights against uneventful villains like Ultron, Master Pandemonium and Graviton are not that exciting. Still, Englehart and Milgrom do wonders with their characters, particularly Wonder Man, Tigra and Hank Pym. Wonder Man finds the confidence to be a real hero when he overcomes his fear of death; Tigra finds confidence and a tail as her personalities are merged and she regains control of herself; and Hank sees no other choice but to kill himself. And then it’s time for the big concept.

Continue reading “This is the Avengers, not the God Squad!” (Sequart.org) →

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Sacred Texts: Lovecraft, Alan Moore, and Religion in PROVIDENCE

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(Facts in the Case of Providence is a collaborative blog by Joe Linton, Alexx Kay, and Bobby Derie dedicated to annotating Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’s Providence and Neonomicon from Avatar Press. In what follows, Derie gives S&S readers a sense of the works’ layers and linkages to the study of religion.)

The seeker of truth for its own sake is chained to no conventional system, but always shapes his philosophical opinions upon what seems to him the best evidence at hand. Changes, therefore, are constantly possible; and occur whenever new or revalued evidence makes them logical.
– H. P. Lovecraft, “A Confession of Unfaith” (1922) [Lovecraft 2010, 1]

neonomiconHoward Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an atheist materialist, who in light of reflection and the discoveries of science dismissed the orthodoxies and mythologies of the world’s religions, saying such beliefs “could not possibly arise from a close and impartial survey of nature and the cosmos today[.]” (Lovecraft 2010, 89) While he may have lacked belief in God or the supernatural, Lovecraft at least appreciated  the importance of the religious feeling, as he expressed in his seminal essay “Supernatural Horror  in Literature” (1927):

Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore.

Lovecraft’s own mythos, inspired by that of Lord Dunsany and Arthur Machen, was filled with indifferent, alien entities that satisfied both his materialism and his cosmicism; these were not airy spiritual beings, but creatures of matter—yet possessed too of tremendous capabilities and knowledge, and were subjects of worship by strange cults, some of which predated humanity, and their scriptures were terrible tomes like the Necronomicon, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Cultes des Goules, and Livre d’Eibon.

Alan Moore (1953-) is a ceremonial magician who works in a pantheistic cosmology, taking the ancient Roman god Glycon as his primary deity. (Doyle-White 29) Moore’s approach to Lovecraft is flavored by his interest in the occult, and by Moore’s careful study of the critical literature that has developed surrounding Lovecraft’s life and writings. (Derie) In part, this is an outgrowth of Moore’s continual interest in the blurring between fiction and reality, as expressed in works like From Hell by Moore and Eddie Campbell.

Continue reading Sacred Texts: Lovecraft, Alan Moore, and Religion in PROVIDENCE →

academic, articles and essays, contributors, from the Internet

Jews and Comics: The Decade in Review

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A little over 7 years ago, Aaron Passman wrote an excellent article for The Jewish Exponent, in which he discussed the growing interest in the topic of Jews and the comic book industry. At the time, the book From Krakow to Krypton (by Arie Kaplan) had just been published. In the article, Passman quoted Kaplan as well as the authors of 3 other similar books (Danny Fingeroth, Paul Buhle, and Simcha Weinstein). He also characterized the subject as “something of a cottage industry,” suggesting that the books, panels,and blogs dedicated to the topic were just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, Passman was rather prophetic in that regard.

Haaretz logoAlas, if one were to read Nirit Anderman’s article in last week’s Haaretz (“Supermensches: Comic Books’ Secret Jewish History“), one might think that research on “Jews and comics” mysteriously ended in 2008. None of the five books that have been published after Kaplan’s are mentioned (The Jewish Graphic Novel, edited by Samantha Baskind and Ranen Omer-Sherman; Jewish Images in the Comics by Fredrik Strömberg ; Superman Is Jewish? by Harry Brod; Graphic Details, edited by Sarah Lightman; and The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel by Stephen Tabachnick). If Anderman wanted a 2016 “hook” to introduce the article, she could have announced that the book “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?” by Tahneer Oksman (a study of Jewish women cartoonists’ autobiographical memoirs) is scheduled to be published this month. There is no mention of the travelling exhibitions which have helped to legitimize the field and to present the stories and artwork to the general public (e.g. Heroes, Freaks & Super-Rabbis; Graphic Details; Jomix). It would have been nice if the author had made reference to any of the academic courses on Jewish Graphic Novels which are now being taught (e.g. HUM113 at Union College; RELI217 at Wesleyan University; History 490Q at University of British Columbia).

HerevilleAnderman discusses several Jewish-content graphic books in the article. However, many of these are several years old. It is impossible to list off every Jewish graphic novel in such a short piece, but one would hope that the most recent publications would have been included. Hereville : How Mirka Caught a Fish recently won the 2015 Sydney Taylor Award (Older Readers Category), the second such win for its author Barry Deutsch. Although Haaretz is an Israeli publication, no graphic books about Israel (e.g. Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me; Jerusalem: A Family Portrait; Exit Wounds; Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City; Mike’s Place) are discussed.

Though not as troubling as the incompleteness of the research, it’s a bit off-putting that carelessness seems to have resulted in quite a few factual errors. Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27, not in Batman #1. Iron Man is misspelled as “Ironman.” The story in which Superman captured Stalin and Hitler wasn’t published in a comic book, but in the magazine Look. MAD didn’t start out as a magazine. It was a comic book, but the publisher switched formats to avoid the restrictions of the Comics Code.

To be fair, I don’t know to what extent the shortcomings of the article may be the fault of the editor assigned to the story. However, ultimately, it is the article’s author who gets the byline and is deemed responsible for it. As someone who enjoys reading about the work of Jewish comics professionals and Jewish comic stories, I was looking forward to reading Anderman’s article after Weinstein posted on Facebook about it. I was expecting the article to be more relevant and up-to-date, but instead came away feeling disappointed. Jews have a rich and centuries-old history, but the immediate history of scholarship on comics and Judaism cannot be glossed over so hastily by any reputable news or academic source.

Jewish Comix Anthology*****

Steven M. Bergson is a blogger at http://www.jewishcomics.blogspot.com and has reviewed several graphic books for AJL Reviews (Association of Jewish Libraries). He edited the first volume of  Jewish Comix Anthology (Oakville, ON : AH Comics, 2014).