Hate America "Superhero"?

You're thinking like a Kyle Rayner, when what we need are more Hal Jordans who aren't afraid to get done what needs to be done. The Green Lantern Corps are the US troops, Parallax is Saddam Hussein, and Kilowog is Donald Rumsfeld, trying to make things work even when Sinestro (Hans Blix) has been appointed by the Guardians of the United Nations to take over.

Hal Jordan died to reignite the sun, but you can't keep a good man down -- he'll be back in October, just in time for a Bush re-election.

I haven't given up reading comics but for budgetary reasons (cover prices have climed so high even for cheap paper comics from DC) and general lack of quality, I end up buying more material about comics than comics themselves these days.

I read The Comics Journal (and am quite aware of the politics of Fantagraphics/Gary Groth, yet somehow they aren't as offensive in their rants or comics are those at Marvel, like Peter David, are). I read Comic Art (and recently saw some things Carl Barks had to say against the Marxists who wrote a book slamming Barks' Uncle Scrooge over political ideology, good to see some conservativism out of CB).

Most of what I read is independent (and published on such a random schedule that I have no "pull" service at any store. Cerebus has ended after nearly 30 years (at the announced 300 issue). Only good thing is now I can sit and read the later "phone book" editions that collected the individual issues.

The DC comic that I eventually dropped was called Sweatshop. It was written (and sometimes drawn) by Peter Bagge but $2.75 was just too high for such a cheaply printed product.

Everything else I get: The Magic Whistle, Eightball, Black Hole, Zippy The Pinhead Annual (collects the year's previous strips), sometimes Love And Rockets or Hernandez Bros. work, and a slew of other things that maybe come out once or twice a year.

"????"

Let me explain...

Saw the character in an advertisement, bought a book on a whim.

Basic premise: Vatican's Babe Enforcer. Armed with faith, various artifacts.

So far, so good, from my point of view. Fantasy/adventure with a vaguely Catholic/Christian subtext. I like that. The heroine is RC. I like that. She's good lookin' and bad a$$. I like that.

So I go out, buy the limited series. Still cool. Buy her first appearance in 'The Darkness' series. Still cool, with some reservations (The Darkness is apparently a 'child of Satan kinda thang, and I tend to hold that, you know, God trumps Satan in the euchre hand of life. Still it was his series, so...)

About this time, I'm getting pretty psyched. Or as psyched as I ever get about a comic book.

So, finally, I see a graphic novel, "Blood Divine." Hmmm, says I, blood in the title, warrior-nun chick, vampires mentioned on the back cover... I buy it, thinking, you know, she'll kick some vampire butt, the art'll be pretty good (it was) and I'll be content.

Nope. The vamps appear only as misdirection, 'cause it seems the RC Church (and religion in general) is really a giant conspiracy/fraud disguising the fact that JC married Mary Magdalene, wasn't divine, wasn't resurrected, yadda yadda yadda...

I've never read the DaVinci Code, but the plotline (organized religion is disguising the non-divinity of Jesus while oppressing the women) sounded close enough to make the reference.

Needless to say, I'm somewhat dissappointed. Still, the graphic novel was the last product I acquired, but fell somewhere in the middle of the 'timeline'. The timeline seems chaotic, and unorganized, so if the character is going to be an ongoing thing, they may ditch the 'Code' subplot entirely. Hope so.

Nope. The vamps appear only as misdirection, 'cause it seems the RC Church (and religion in general) is really a giant conspiracy/fraud disguising the fact that JC married Mary Magdalene, wasn't divine, wasn't resurrected, yadda yadda yadda...

Hmm, not in The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, a standard smorgasbord of PC Xtian-bashing. (Sample line, in the entry for "Jesus": "But the Jesus who emulated Buddha in advocating poverty and humility eventually became the mythic figurehead for one of the world's pre-eminent money-making organizations.....it seems Christianity is based on the ubiquitous social phenomena [sic] of credulity", a charge with which, of course, the authoresses do not burden believers in other religions.

Anyway, these feminists relate, or claim, that various Apocrypha have Mary Magdalene traveling to Ephesus and living with Jesus's mother, and/or marrying John the Evangelist in the Gnostic gospels, not Jesus, and eventually moving to Massilia (Marseilles) and becoming the city's patron saint.

Sorry you got hosed by the Xtian-bashers lurking in a promising mag.

's not THAT bad.

I mean, I'm an illustrator (or at least a wanna be). I dig the 'good-girl' style of art (Danger Girl, most of the Image/Top Cow line). So the style of art was nice enough.

Not like some stuff I've seen recently. I mean, good grief, I actually bought the 'DK2' series by Frank Miller. Talk about distortion; does that man have a foot fetish or something?

It's just that... well, there aren't many 'religious' heroes or heroines in comic-dom. Not even 'quietly' so. If they're not gods/goddesses in their own right, they're usually agnostics of some stripe. I kind of thought, especially with the symbology (lots of roses, relating to the BVM, etc.), that this might be something cool.

I mean, I'll be honest, I EXPECTED some denigration of the Church (ragging on abuses by priests, or married clergy, or some such). But this mumbo jumbo craps on Christianity in toto.

I guess hopes were high, and I just liked the CONCEPT so much, their treatment of Christianity just peeved me all the more.

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