Category Archives: online

levity, online

Hugh Jackman Is Not a Mohel

Maybe, perhaps this is sort of a religion & comics topic? That is, it could be…in a way.

Universal Press International (UPI) is carrying the story of Hugh Jackman’s likeness as the superhero comics and film character Wolverine being used to advertise a circumcision service in the Philippines.

“The advertisement went viral,” reports UPI,  “after a photo was shared online by Joey deVilla, a blogger and self-styled ‘rock accordionist.'”

The service, which does not seem to carry the spiritual and covenantal authority of a Jewish bris per se, costs just $28 USD.

The odd and likely unauthorized advertising campaign was joked about on this past week’s episode of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me from NPR.

Whether Wolverine, with his regenerative healing factor, could convert to Judaism and be the recipient of a bris is an entirely different, though amusing, question.

academic, online

Elizabeth Coody and Christine Hoff Kraemer, Unquestionably “Women Write About Comics”

Women Write About ComicsOver at Women Write About Comics, two of S&S’s founding members, Elizabeth Coody and Chiristine Hoff Kraemer, engaged in a marvelous discussion about Kraemer’s role in the 2010 Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels and her subsequent work. Their interview lauds not only Carla Speed McNeil, the groundbreaking comic creator behind Finder, but also Jill Lapore’s work on the originator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston.

His Wonder Woman stories from the 1940s demonstrate distinctively different values, including a commitment to nonviolence. After his death, later writers took the character apart, until by the early 1960s Wonder Woman had been demoted to Secretary of the Justice League and would stay behind while the male superheroes left on missions. Wonder Woman has had a few interesting rewrites since then, some more sophisticated than others, but I don’t think she’s ever been as revolutionary a character as she was in those early days.

Read more on this and their views on Blankets, on Y the Last Man, and on Promethea here.

http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2017/01/25/comics-academe-christine-hoff-kraemer-on-graven-images/

online

Got Comics? “Golem” Found, Always Seeking More!

Here at Sacred and Sequential, we always welcome individuals interested in the study of religion and comics to write original pieces or review works for us, so long as they’re scholarly in nature or approach. But we also invite people simply to tip us off about new works or trends they’re seeing, even if there’s no analysis yet formed.

THE GOLEM OF SOUTH FLORIDATo that end, we want to thank stalwart colleague Steve Bergson for signaling us about a new series, The Golem of South Florida (available now from Comixology). From independent Pittsburgh comics publisher Punch Press comes a story of the legendary Jewish golem, planted now in modern-day Florida, having to “protect the local Jewish community from all new adversities: inclement weather, voting recalls and the high cost of prescription drugs.”

If you have or know of a new comics series that might benefit from the scholarly analysis of religion and comics scholars — or if you think religion and comics scholars would, conversely, benefit from analyzing such a work — don’t hesitate to contact our Sacred and Sequential team via the Contact link in our masthead.

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!
Continue reading Cloning Enchantment: Jesuses After Climate Change →

academic, online

Washington University Podcast Covers Religion and Comics

WUSTL's WUSTL’s “Hold That Thought” podcast featured an episode this week on “Religion and Comic Books: A Tangled Web.” Based at Washington University in St. Lewis, “Hold That Thought” spoke with Assistant Professor of Classics and Religious Studies Roshan Abraham on what they initially considered the odd pairing of topic and medium. Abraham assured them that the linkages are numerous, from mythology to canonicity to Christology.

After the podcast, Abraham was kind enough to give a shout out to some of S&S’s own contributors:

https://twitter.com/roshabra/status/715266027513364480