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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2018 7:53:53 GMT -5
Wasn't Colossal Boy from LSH Jewish? It seems like I remember a Christmas special from 1979 or so where he and his family were celebrating Hanukkah.
Also way back in New Teen Titans maybe around issue 20 or 21....when they infiltrate the church of Brother Blood, Robin and Kid Flash had a quick conversation about religion.
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Post by beccabear67 on Sept 1, 2018 13:26:51 GMT -5
Just reading the 2005 series of Legion and in #14 Colossal Boy's brother's bedside table shows a star of david necklace on it.
I was actually exposed to some anti-comic book stuff through a Christian school I went to for grades 9 and 10. We were sometimes shown 700 Club videos and one was about comic books being a tool of the devil with one of the hosts saying how someone gave his son a Batman wall hang-up figure and they'd noticed sinister forces moving underneath it so threw it in the garbage. I think they showed that because myself and another girl were known to read comics. The pastor husband of one of the teachers came in with a turntable one day and played us Beatles and other records backwards a couple times to show how rock music is evil, even Abba. So comic books shouldn't feel singled out. This was a very U.S. kind of Christianity. The Bible study classes my parents had been warned about that they had to agree to were the most normal class actually, the stuff we didn't know was coming like listening to Pat Robertson describe Santa Claus as a sly trick (thus making all the little kids cry) mostly just made me feel a lot more normal than I'd ever realized I was. One girl had an Epic Illustrated and was told she was possessed though. On the other hand there was a very flamboyant gay boy and they never said a thing against him that I ever saw, and even encouraged his fashion designing. Go figure. Like anything there's positive and negative.
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Post by badwolf on Sept 1, 2018 15:03:42 GMT -5
That's the sort of thing I had in mind in this thread. "The Vicar of Dibly" (1994-98 then sporadically through 2007) was a fun BBC show on those lines, casting notoriously funny Dawn French as the "straight man" whose job requires her to bite her tongue as people around her do outrageous things. There was another show called Bless Me, Father, that I really enjoyed. IIRC it was based on the autobiographical writings of a real young man's initiation into the priesthood. |
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Post by badwolf on Sept 1, 2018 15:10:09 GMT -5
And, if Shooter was objecting to religious themes in Marvel Comics (not sure I buy that), we should probably also discuss this:  I don't think he (or whoever) was objecting to religious themes -- there was certainly a lot of that in other Marvel comics at the time -- but specifically to the acknowledgement of Jesus as a real figure in their universe. I've never read the Ghost Rider story so I don't know if it reads okay the way they changed it, but I think in principle they made the right call.
To add to the list, Steve Englehart made Firebird (of the Texas Rangers) into a Christian fundamentalist in his WCA run.
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 1, 2018 15:57:07 GMT -5
That's the sort of thing I had in mind in this thread. "The Vicar of Dibly" (1994-98 then sporadically through 2007) was a fun BBC show on those lines, casting notoriously funny Dawn French as the "straight man" whose job requires her to bite her tongue as people around her do outrageous things. There was another show called Bless Me, Father, that I really enjoyed. IIRC it was based on the autobiographical writings of a real young man's initiation into the priesthood. Check out Ballykissangel if you ever have the chance, particularly the first three seasons, with Peter Clifford, the English priest gone to Ireland. Superb in so many ways.  |
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Post by rberman on Sept 2, 2018 19:33:43 GMT -5
American comic books have typically not shared the British appreciation for the clergy. Anne Nocenti's 1988 graphic novel "Someplace Strange" (originally published by Epic) exemplifies the "God is good, organized religion is bad" theme which is frequently seen:   I'll have more to say about this work in the future, after I finish my current X-Men and New Mutants reviews. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 2, 2018 20:01:39 GMT -5
Ragman, despite his Irish-sounding name (Rory Regan) was portrayed as being Jewish in his second go-round, IIRC. Was Nick Fury at some point revealed to be Jewish?Izzy Cohen definitely was. I think Ray Palmer was depicted as being Jewish... long after the Silver Age, of course. So was Wild Man of Easy Company fame...and Nuklon of Infinity, Inc. Also one of Cap's girlfriends, Bernie Rosenthal. Fury might have been, given Lee and Kirby’s upbringing... but for some non-canonical and unexplained reason, I always thought Fury was Italian. Niccolo Furioso! (The same thing went for Tony Stark, too, maybe because of the links his cousin had to the maggia). |
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 3, 2018 10:05:47 GMT -5
Ragman, despite his Irish-sounding name (Rory Regan) was portrayed as being Jewish in his second go-round, IIRC. Was Nick Fury at some point revealed to be Jewish?Izzy Cohen definitely was. I think Ray Palmer was depicted as being Jewish... long after the Silver Age, of course. So was Wild Man of Easy Company fame...and Nuklon of Infinity, Inc. Also one of Cap's girlfriends, Bernie Rosenthal. Fury might have been, given Lee and Kirby’s upbringing... but for some non-canonical and unexplained reason, I always thought Fury was Italian. Niccolo Furioso! (The same thing went for Tony Stark, too, maybe because of the links his cousin had to the maggia). I think I may have been grasping because his brother's name was Jacob (Jake) and his father's Jack. Of course, his mother's name was Katherine and his sister's Dawn, so maybe I was misreading the possible hints. Given the classic make-up of his original platoon, which included a Southerner, an African-American, a Boston Irishman, a Brooklyn Jew, an Italian, and an Ivy League WASP, Stan probably didn't need duplication. Fury just may be sui generis. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 3, 2018 10:07:44 GMT -5
Fury might have been, given Lee and Kirby’s upbringing... but for some non-canonical and unexplained reason, I always thought Fury was Italian. Niccolo Furioso! (The same thing went for Tony Stark, too, maybe because of the links his cousin had to the maggia). I think I may have been grasping because his brother's name was Jacob (Jake) and his father's Jack. Of course, his mother's name was Katherine and his sister's Dawn, so maybe I was misreading the possible hints. Given the classic make-up of his original platoon, which included a Southerner, an African-American, a Boston Irishman, a Brooklyn Jew, an Italian, and an Ivy League WASP, Stan probably didn't need duplication. Fury just may be sui generis. He’s a mutt! That would suit him well. E pluribus unum! |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 3, 2018 12:51:08 GMT -5
Ostrander and Mandrake's run on Spectre was pretty much a meditation on issues of faith.
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Post by rberman on Sept 3, 2018 18:42:35 GMT -5
Ostrander and Mandrake's run on Spectre was pretty much a meditation on issues of faith. This reminds me how Waid and Ross used Spectre as the guide for the sympathetic pastor who was the POV character in "Kingdom Come." We first meet him reading the Bible to the dying Golden Age Sandman, and then we see his church nearly empty, with just a few old fogeys left, as one of the evidences of the Dark Age upon us. By the end of the story, when goodness and truth have prevailed, the church is full again:    As its name implies, this series was rife with Biblical imagery, not least "Superman as Jesus." He's introduced as a bearded long-haired carpenter carrying a crossbeam on his shoulders as Spectre describes how this paragon came down to Earth from above.  |
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zilch
Full Member
Posts: 244 
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Post by zilch on Sept 8, 2018 20:28:16 GMT -5
Ostrander's Suicide Squad bounced occasionally on religion: Shrike's finding religion, Father Richard Craemer's doubts and ministering (which transferred to the Spectre series).
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Post by rberman on Sept 20, 2018 7:32:21 GMT -5
Daredevil is widely known as Roman Catholic, but it depends on the writer how heavily the stories lean into this. Frank Miller obviously was one of the writers who did, being Irish Catholic himself, and writing a story titled "Born Again" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, just a few verses before the famous John 3:16) and featuring Matt Murdock's mother, a nun. I'm just reading "Born Again" for the first time. All the issue titles are religious-themed (e.g. "Apocalypse," "Saved"). Here's Matt's mom praying over him in the hospital. Note the enclosing triangle, presumably representing the Trinity:  |
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Post by mikelmidnight on Sept 20, 2018 11:40:46 GMT -5
What's Bridwell's religious background? Anyone know? Because as someone of the tribe I can confirm this is 100% a Christian interpretation of Yom Kippur. No Jewish person would write the scene that way unless they were explicitly pandering to a Christian readership.
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Post by rberman on Sept 20, 2018 12:24:51 GMT -5
What's Bridwell's religious background? Anyone know? Because as someone of the tribe I can confirm this is 100% a Christian interpretation of Yom Kippur. No Jewish person would write the scene that way unless they were explicitly pandering to a Christian readership. Could be. Not that Christians think anything special happens on Yom Kippur; its function in the story (which I have not read! I'm just going from the one page reproduced in our thread) seems to be more symbolic than efficacious. |
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