Jokes involving wildlife and the earth and people who somehow get the energy from radiation, rather than health problems. But the jokes just come off difficult when you look at the characters who have found their power in actual religious figures. How do demonic bikers and spirits of divine vengeance live with Norse gods and the Olympics?
Comedy history is full of simple events that made Marvel and DC of Hell's Hell and Hell such a wonderful place. An attitude of misuse of the basis of the use of religious motives entered into the study sections of the industry, and the authors and artists were left in charge of the pieces, with the task of impersonating and inventing them so that we could proceed.
At first …
When the Golden Age of Comics debuted in 1938, using Heaven and Hell was a completely fair game. The first character to use the name "Black Widow" was renamed the devil himself after his execution, and was given the task of returning to Earth to take on sinners. When police officer Jim Corrigan dies, his spirit experiences a radiant light and a voice that tells him that he will return to Earth as a Revengeant. In another case, a young boy died prematurely because of a clergyman's mistake by Mr. Keeper, in charge of the transfer of souls to heaven. To rectify the mistake, St Peter told Mr. Keeper to guide his boy to his new role as a hero named Eternal Kid. At that time, Shami wizards were receiving power from both the Jewish image of Solomon and the gods from the Pagan Pagans.
But it's the taste of the audience for putting real beliefs aside from the elements of wonder. After World War II, US society had a growing belief that society was weak and vulnerable to terrorism, and that meant that the mainstream media was being closely monitored. In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was created to monitor comics before being brought to the public. There is nothing illegal about publishing comics without the Code & # 39; s seal, but many newsstands and printers will not be in danger of getting involved, fearing angry parents.
The Satan stand-ins
Under the Code, criminals were not to be sympathetic or glamorous, official governmental authority should not have been illuminated, and "intellectual" prohibited sexual conduct was prohibited. The Code also prohibits the display of demon worship, witchcraft, and "walking dead, torture, compasses and vampirism, ghosts, cannibalism and werewolfism." However, who should decide what was unacceptable at times depended on who was working in the Comics Code Authority's office that day, and some creators realized that as long as you didn't offend the employees of the Code staff, you could get your Story.
Wonderful Thought # 15, the same anthology documentary that introduced Spider-Man in 1962, in which is "The Bell-Ringer," a short story by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in which an elderly man was saved from a painful death by a shack of celestial light. The following story, "The Man in the Mummy Case," shows a mother seducing a thief. The mother of this story may be an illiterate beast or simply a human, in disguise. That understanding was key to passing this Code.
That same year, Lee and Jack Kirby wrote the first Dr. Doom story, showing that the visitor had two books: Demons and Science and Witchcraft. Later, we are told of her long love for “black magic.” But since Doom was a bad guy, it was good for him to be interested in these topics.
Kirby liked Arthur C. Clarke's idea that any technology developed sufficiently is incomprehensible to magic, and he enjoyed presenting the gods as science fiction rather than magic. Stan Lee has agreed with this approach, choosing the Marvel Universe not to strongly endorse any particular theory. In a college interview, Lee said he had no problem showing that Tor encountered creatures from the Olympics and Egyptian mythology because the atmosphere was large enough to hold many such entities and their servants. If some of those things are believed to have helped the creation of humanity, well, maybe they did and maybe they didn't.
And then Lee and his collaborators covered the entire Marvel universe with a wealth of Satan-ins. Dr. Strange's first stories involved the creatures Nightmare and Dormammu, who seemed to be demonic in nature, but lived on other dimensions than post-natal life. And Lee and John Buscema create Marvel's most famous "devil" on the pages of Silver Silver in the year 1968. Mephisto was named after a Demon dealmaker from whom Dr. Faustus, and his place, when souls were tortured, was said to exist beyond the physical realm. Lee noted that this helped in Surfer's painting as a science fiction novel of the Messiah who had the error of resisting temptation. Mephisto was the devil of the New Testament by every name.
The great heroes of comic books had their demons, but also their angels, and their gods. The Marvel universal cosmic convention, the Living Tribunal, was launched in 1967. This is considered by the three faces as a judgment of various sizes and realities, in all probability, and will later call its composer and manager "the Most High." The same year the Living Tribunal appeared in Marvel, DC introduced a new hero known as Deadman. Boston Brand was a serial killer given the opportunity to return to Earth and fight evil. In her case, it was not the voice but the goddess called Rama Kushna (similar to the real Hindu goddess Krishna). Since Kushna was an original creation and her environment is flexible, and since Boston was a giant who acted almost like an angel and not a zombie or vampire, the Code had no problem with that. In later years, Boston said that he believed that Kushna was one of God's many people.
Image: Marvel Comics
Apocryphal, unite
In 1971, the Comics Code finally updated its law on certain demonic and illiterate characters with the following effective sentence: "vampires, ghouls and werewolves will be allowed to be used in the handling of such old traditions as Frankenstein, Dracula, etc. -Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected writers who wrote and worked in schools around the world. ”
As well as allowing vampires and others to return, this opened the door for DC Comics to look straight at Judeo-Christian ideas again. The demon Etrigan, created in 1972, did not come from the same place as Hell, he simply appeared Hell. But DC was terrified of making a joke about Jesus Christ. Large Into The Swamp The story arc was intended to end with a character character meeting by a Nazarene carpenter, but the editors decided later that the story would be more controversial, so it was never printed.
Marvel's atmosphere continued to disrupt the story. Originally, Ghost Rider – like Etrigan, created in 1972 – was a pact with Satan, but readers were later told that it was Mephisto in disguise. In time, however, it is alleged that Satan and Mephisto were rival in different places, who may not have been the Devil of the Christian position. But House of Thought felt the same way DC did in one respect: When Tony Isabella wrote a Ghost Rider story with a visual appearance of Jesus, it was rewritten by editor Jim Shooter at the last minute to say that it was just silly.
Image: Marvel Comics
By the 1990s, things were changing again. The Comics Code Authority had lost much of its teeth, and its logo now only meant that the story was no older man than the PG-13 movie. The A Tragedy in an Unending World The crossover had re-established the continuity of DC Comics, and the creators were debating what rules were and the canon was still in effect, allowing for many new and controversial ideas to emerge. Similar series Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and Sandman – where the dead are sent to different places according to personal belief than in the law and all the gods owe part of their existence to the protagonist's series, King of Dreams – revealed that readers can handle today's religious topics in the news unless you stumble. On the other end of the tonal spectrum, 1991 & # 39; s Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special a hunter of ten fines was hired by the Easter Bunny to kill Santa Claus. In 1997, an angel joined the Justice League.
And one of the oldest heroes connected by divine humor is more connected to Christian religious figures than ever before. The 1990s of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake continue Specter he was greatly drawn to morality and religious myth. Their scholar was the wrath of the god of the Old Testament, attached to man, and they suggested that Jesus was God’s form of forgiveness. Angels like Michael would appear, and change their forms, names, and personalities when they appeared in people with different beliefs.
Marvel has yet to come up with a scientific philosophy to explain its demons, even suggesting that Mephisto claims that his origin was the result of the cosmic inventor Infinite Gems. But as TV shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and later Natural The audience always indicated that they were willing to accept the myths associated with the religious symbol, and eventually Marvel followed suit. Spider-Man saved the Christmas angel from Mephisto, who later referred directly to the Anti-Christ in Daredevil's case. Angels, hell, Satan, and God were directly shown and presented in face value in various comics. In 2004, the Fantastic Four even went to heaven and met God – he looked like Jack Kirby.
Photo: Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo / Marvel Comics
But it's not twisted to be distorted: Marvel and DC comics can include angels and demons, but if you ask who created those universal objects, the answer is not "Abraham's god." Marvel's setting is full of shaggy religious stories, in which technologically advanced aliens and cosmic beings indirectly promote human myths. Over here in the DC Universe, we know that existence did not start with light on the first day – but with a big green hand holding the spot that will be the cosmos all – in part because an alien scientist he made a machine that made him see the first moment of time.
The cosmology of superhero universes is a non-existent black hole created by the contributions of many people over the years. But ask the historian how the great world religion came into being, and they can tell you the same thing.
