academic, contributors

Martin Lund Reconstructs Superman’s Judaism

Superman puzzleThis Fall, Palgrave Pivot is releasing Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection by S&S’s own Martin Lund. The super-sized title only hints at the herculean task Lund has taken on: To objectively explore the Judaic origins to the Last Son of Krypton’s publications, too often a site of distortion an mythicism. Rather than discard Superman’s Jewishness wholly, Lund “offers a new understanding of the Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the mid-1930s, presenting him as an authentically Jewish American character in his own time, for good and ill.”

The book is due out this October and is available now for preorder. It is the second title in Palgrave Pivot’s “Contemporary Religion and Popular Culture” series.

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 →

events

Brooklyn’s Jewish Comic Con & Gentiles

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This November, Congregation Kol Israel, in conjunction with The Brooklyn Jewish Art Gallery at CKI will be running the first Jewish Comic Con, “a place to explore how Jewish identity has influenced comics both on the page and behind the scenes.”

Jewish Comic Con

Both programming and guests have yet to be announced, but their open call for interested artists to reserve free tables (provided they donate a piece of their art to CKI) raises an intriguing point: In their FAQ, the organizers note that one needn’t be Jewish to exhibit:

You have to have somewhat of a connection to Jewish characters or have Jewish themes in your body of work. If you’re from another minority and you feel we have a lot in common, please come too, we’d love to have you!

These inclusive, interfaith sentiments are quite laudable, though it will be interesting to see, when programming is released to their sign-up list, whether this proves to be an insular event or one in more of an pluralistic vein.

controversy, cultural

New Charlie Hebdo Threats, Outrage

Image by Osama Hajjaj (@osamacartoons)

Just two weeks ago, the online English-language French news site The Local reported on a new “series of death threats” aimed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo via their Facebook page. The French satirical magazine made worldwide headlines when nine of its editorial staff were killed in 2015 in a terrorist attack spurred on by their portrayal of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Sacred & Sequential explored this event in previous posts.

These latest threats, though, serve not only as reminders of an ongoing peril but also highlight the more recent content from Charlie Hebdo, including the disturbing cartoon of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy, growing up to be a lech (also covered by The Local). Has Charlie Hebdo remained on task and undeterred by their tragedy or, conversely, are they continuing to engage in objectionable, detestable cartooning?

Queen Raina of Jordan had her own response to Charlie Hebdo‘s depiction of Aylan:

@ the intersection of religion and comics: Graphic Religion