What if God was one of us…
I am now a week behind with just about everything.
Well, not everything, but a lot of things. I had planned this week’s entry for the week of Xmas, and I had planned a lovely little bit of holiday artwork, but then the holidays and their own obligations stepped in.
Anyway, now I am wiser and better prepared for next year, where everything will be on time. On with the entry.
Perhaps as long as humanity has been able to ponder, we have considered the Powers That Be. And, in our quest to understand them, we are often led to attribute features to them that bring them into perspectives that we can more readily understand.
In other words, we anthromophize them, but without the social stigma.
In my last comic review (which seems like such a long time ago), we looked at how Casual Notice further humanized an already very down-to-earth pantheon. Namely, the Greco-Roman deities, a diverse group of divinely-powered individuals exhaustively documented as being possessed of what can only be politely referred to as very human failings, right alongside the very accessible (if not always commonplace) world of faerie.
This time, the portrayal of the powers of a slightly more ‘modern’ collection of beings gets a little scrutiny.
The Christian faith has long been providing writers and cartoonists with fuel for creativity, whether it shows the doctrine in a positive light, lampoons it, or simply means well, but doesn’t know any better. (I’m sure that there’s an actually religious webcomic out there somewhere, but I haven’t got a clue as to where.*)
While many look to expose flaws in the guidelines for life written some hundreds of years ago, others look to the major players in this heavenly game for material, Like J. Patrick Payne’s Bub’s World: A Tale of Damnation, or Chris VanGompel’s (and the name was soooo hard to find; I almost didn’t bother listing it,) Hockey Zombie.
Before you click through to Bub’s World, I will warn those of you out there in Readerland that the comic has some violent and maturish themes. Hockey Zombie’s not exactly ‘Rated E’ either, as it contains suggestive themes, and features substance abuse. I’ve read all of Bub’s to date, but only the first third (or maybe fifth) of Hockey Zombie.
I like them both, but I feel obliged to warn you that the two of these are definitely the most ‘grown-up’ of all the comics that I’ve talked about yet, but not the worst out there by a long shot. Just letting you know before you head off.
At any rate, Bub’s World isn’t exactly what you might think. I had originally assumed from the look of it (well, from the look of Patrick’s avatar on The Webcomic List’s forum, anyway) that it was something lighthearted and/or silly, possibly a gag strip. This is a far cry from the actuality of it.
The style is somewhat cartoonish, (bordering on the more realistic at times) and it does have its moments of levity. But, on the whole, the comic deals with things of a weighty matter mixed with a liberal dose of ‘what the hell is going on?’, seasoned liberally with the bodily effluvia of your choice.
The story follows a hapless minor(ish) devil named Bub Zeezle who has been cast out of Hell for reasons that happen to be ‘Classified.’ Stripped of much, if not all of his infernal powers (and even his demonic appearance), Bub’s World is actually our world, and boy does it take some getting used to.
Perhaps it is because that Bub is such a minor player in the scheme of things, but his intrepid meanderings through the Real World are more or less what one might expect from someone who has just made his way into our reality, until recently unbound by such mundane needs as eating’ and the aftermath.
The Divine does not play much of a role- yet, but there’s more than enough otherworldly characters from the Other End of the religious kiddie pool on stage at the present to satisfy just about anyone, and the storyline hints at the inclusion of much more as it is really only just starting to unfurl.
Without giving away much, there is a disturbance in the cosmos (to put it simply), and a fair number of supernatural and would-be supernatural beings are mixed up in it, our red-skinned protagonist among them, whether he likes it or not.
That’ and the natives are none too friendly.
Hockey Zombie on the other hand, is, in a word, irreverent, as the art style of the comic almost immediately suggests. Few things are sacred (Well, it’s sacred to me,) in a world where Hell is actually much like Earth, and even the offspring of seemingly powerful creatures of the Underworld are reduced to menial, if not downright humiliating, tasks.
Our ‘hero,’ Chris, the Hockey Zombie wrangles a deal with the Powers of Darkness (more or less) where he gets to return to (un)life in exchange for killing a SportCenter personality, one Chris Berman. The unholy contract is fulfilled, and a celebration of epic proportions ensues, where God, the Devil, and Charon all appear at Chris and his roommate Kurt’s apartment and throw down.
Well, in any other comic it might be epic, but in the strangely jaded world of Hockey Zombie, it could really be any other night where a bunch of guys get together to drink, and play Dance Dance Revolution…
Uhm, moving on.
The Powers that Be are as powerful as they have ever been, but they are driven by the same needs and desires that make us all work. They’re just able to act on them at will.
In closing, these two comics are as different in their presentation as they are in their subject matter, and with obvious reason. I don’t know if any other major theological figures take the stage in Hockey Zombie, but if they do, they will probably show up and challenge one of the characters to foozball or something. On the other hand, if Archangel So-and-So shows up in a new page of Bub’s World, then it should be pretty obvious that the proverbial scat has impacted with the ventilation device.
Assuming that it hasn’t been dumped over someone already.
Have a Happy New Year.
*About 10 minutes after completing this entry, I came across a link to Holy Bibble, but I’m not exactly sure what category it beloned in out of the three, or if it merited one entirely all its own, which is very possible. It’s an interesting comic, but I didn’t want to hastily add it in.
