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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Apr 23, 2016 20:28:16 GMT -5
I recently thought about how the three main religions in the world (Islam, Judaism and Christianity - not neceserly in numbers but in power and cultural influence) all deal with images and words. All of those are messianic religions. Their followers are supposed to be waiting for the messiah, hence the tragedy of life etc... Because of the unknown and uncertain nature of the messiah, the concept of images have often been an uneasy one for those religions. Well, except for Christianity haveing long embraced religious iconography and such. Christianity is currently a religion of images. Judaism as well to a certain degree, but that is only until very recently. Islam is still completly a religion of words. What is common to those three is that the worlds of image and words remain separated, both disciplines alocated to different specialists. The magic of comics is that with great cartoonists, the words and the pictures both come from the same mind, but also literaly from the same pen! That is uturly fantastic in my opinion. So I guess that the act of cartooning and the act of "understanding comics" is the absolute best way to cope with this tragedy that life is. Religions are about building a perceptions of the world and life, and puting faith in those. Well... In that regard, I don't find the idea of the potential of comics being as transcendental that ludicrous. Therefore, Comics is now my religion, in the most gnostic way possible  |
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Post by realjla on Apr 24, 2016 1:38:50 GMT -5
Gnarly.
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Apr 24, 2016 5:13:30 GMT -5
Well, I don't know what you mean, but it seriously works for me. I'm just sorry my english isn't a tad better so I could explain this in finer terms |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 24, 2016 9:01:17 GMT -5
Well, when it comes to returning from the dead, comics have all the other religions beat.
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Post by tolworthy on Apr 24, 2016 10:59:32 GMT -5
I recently thought about how the three main religions in the world (Islam, Judaism and Christianity - not neceserly in numbers but in power and cultural influence) all deal with images and words. All of those are messianic religions. Their followers are supposed to be waiting for the messiah, hence the tragedy of life etc... Because of the unknown and uncertain nature of the messiah, the concept of images have often been an uneasy one for those religions. Well, except for Christianity haveing long embraced religious iconography and such. Christianity is currently a religion of images. Judaism as well to a certain degree, but that is only until very recently. Islam is still completly a religion of words. What is common to those three is that the worlds of image and words remain separated, both disciplines allocated to different specialists. The magic of comics is that with great cartoonists, the words and the pictures both come from the same mind, but also literally from the same pen! That is uturly fantastic in my opinion. So I guess that the act of cartooning and the act of "understanding comics" is the absolute best way to cope with this tragedy that life is. Religions are about building a perceptions of the world and life, and puting faith in those. Well... In that regard, I don't find the idea of the potential of comics being as transcendental that ludicrous. Therefore, Comics is now my religion, in the most gnostic way possible That is literally true for me. Until aged 34 I was a devout Mormon, with a thousand page apologetics web site, I'd been a full time missionary, had published a book on the church, and was at the time running the local congregation. But I studied so much that I could no longer believe. However, this left a vacuum in my life. So I replaced the Book of Mormon with the Fantastic Four.* My comics web site treats the FF in exactly the same way that I treated the B of M: "let's start from the premise that it is real history about real people: what can we discover?" I just swapped holy texts. My new text has the advantage that even if you don't care for my interpretation, the holy text is still fun to read. I don't mean this facetiously. The power of scripture is its internal logic, not its historicity. The Fantastic Four makes an excellent religious text. It's all about: Idealism (Reed) Duty (Sue) Identity (Ben) The conflict between enthusiasm and the need to obey your elders (Johnny) Man defying the gods (Doom) etc. Of course, those of you who follow other comics are "whoring after strange gods".  tl;dr Mark Waid was right. Kirby is God.   * By FF I mean the original true and living gospel of Kirby. Before The Great Apostasy of the 1990s and the following schisms and abominations. |
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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 24, 2016 11:09:46 GMT -5
I have always been an intensely spiritual person, even though I don't necessarily believe in what most orthodox religions consider to be "God". I'm more of the belief that if there is some sort of master creator out there, he certainly can't be explained away as a self-righteous, vindictive asshole like he is in the New & Old Testament. Through my own investigations into the matter, I've become intrigued by what both the Neil Degrasse Tyson version of Cosmos and Classic Marvel Cosmic present as sort of this unknowable infinity of worlds and star clusters where we're so indescribably insignificant, that we don't even really register as being any sort of potential threat to unidentified visitors
Sort of like a slightly more optimistic H.P. Lovecraft
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Post by tingramretro on Apr 24, 2016 11:15:59 GMT -5
I have always been an intensely spiritual person, even though I don't necessarily believe in what most orthodox religions consider to be "God". I'm more of the belief that if there is some sort of master creator out there, he certainly can't be explained away as a self-righteous, vindictive asshole like he is in the New & Old Testament. Personally, I believe that in the unlikely event that there's some force out there which creates everything, it's unlikely to be sentient in any way that we would understand, and even if it is, it's probably completely unaware of our existence as individual entities, and wouldn't care about us even if it wasn't. It would be operating on far too large a scale for that. |
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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 24, 2016 11:30:35 GMT -5
I have always been an intensely spiritual person, even though I don't necessarily believe in what most orthodox religions consider to be "God". I'm more of the belief that if there is some sort of master creator out there, he certainly can't be explained away as a self-righteous, vindictive asshole like he is in the New & Old Testament. Personally, I believe that in the unlikely event that there's some force out there which creates everything, it's unlikely to be sentient in any way that we would understand, and even if it is, it's probably completely unaware of our existence as individual entities, and wouldn't care about us even if it wasn't. It would be operating on far too large a scale for that. True, but a lot of people can't really stomach the idea that we were created by pure happenstance. Especially when, if you'll pardon a joke in bad taste, the majority of them were created purely by accident themselves |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Apr 24, 2016 13:35:35 GMT -5
I love you guys, your takes on this, hahaha. I was merely talking about comics ability to craft pictures and words from the same pen, which has always been a problem for those aford mentioned religions. A gnostic-like approach also is very dynamic if you are to put spiritual qualities behind the medium.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Apr 24, 2016 22:46:14 GMT -5
Favorite comics that deal with spiritual themes/ideas:
One! Hundred! Demons!
Tales of the Beanworld
The Zabime Sisters
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Post by dupersuper on Apr 27, 2016 7:30:39 GMT -5
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