RELIGION IN COMICS 507
the incursion of fundamentalist rule and her wider encounters with a disappointing
world. Satrapi’s studio-mate, Joann Sfar, has also had his French series Th e Rabbi’s Cat
translated into English and brought to American audiences by Pantheon. Th e Rabbi’s
Cat tells the story of a local Algerian rabbi who, along with his pet cat, must cope with
the threatening arrival of a council- appointed rabbi from France and foreign suitors for
the rabbi’s daughter. Outside incursion also frames the majority of Joe Sacco’s Pales-
tine , a Fantagraphics book-length collection of comics journalism reporting on modern
Palestinians’ turmoil and faith. While Sacco may be a Christian American presenting
an international readership with a particular people’s perspectives, Craig Th omson, cre-
ator of Blankets , depicted his own childhood in an evangelical Christian community
for a wider comic book reading audience through the publisher Top Shelf Productions.
Th omson’s own sexual awakening fi rst confl icts then negotiates with the agapic love of
Christianity through his fi rst girlfriend, Raina. Th e relationship ultimately falters as
does Th omson’s faith.
Many comics are critical of religion and suspicious of faith’s pernicious eff ects. For
instance, Th omson’s work on Blankets would not have been possible without Justin
Green’s pioneering underground work, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.
In it, the title character, Green’s autobiographical alter ego, faces his confl ict with
the church in the wake of his sexual and compulsive obsessions. Other underground
innovators, such as Jaxon and Frank Stack, produced titles like God Nose and Th e
New Adventures of Jesus that have been considered blasphemous in their casual and
even crass depictions of Christian divinity. More recently, creators such as Robert
Kirkman and Tony Moore have published the irreverent Battle Pope series featuring
a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, super-powered, philandering Pope John Paul II and
his sidekick Jesus fi ghting demons in a post-Rapture landscape. James Munroe and
Salgood Sam also leverage a post-Rapture landscape in their graphic novel Th erefore,
Repent! , turning the remaining human population into the fortunate ones, free of false
belief. Even the 1998 Stan Lee/ Moebius collaboration on the cosmic Silver Surfer :
Parable has been seen as a staunch critique of religion and morality, returning the
world-eating Galactus character to the role in which Lee and Kirby fi rst imagined
him for Fantastic Four #48: a God surrogate.
Such stand-ins for religious fi gures are not always necessary. A number of fi ctional
comic-book characters, even those featured in mainstream superhero titles, exhibit — to
varying degrees, largely determined by their current writers — dedication to specifi c
real-world faiths. When popularized by Frank Miller , the vigilante Daredevil had his
Catholicism emphasized throughout the “Born Again” storyline. His alter ego, Matt
Murdoch, had his life dismantled by the Kingpin of Crime, only to fi nd his long-lost
mother had become a nun. Similarly, as a member of Marvel’s X-Men , the demonic-
looking Nightcrawler became engaged for a time in studying for the priesthood, despite
his Roma upbringing. Much of that involvement, though, was written away by sub-
sequent inheritors of the X-Men books. More consistent has been the dedication of
the Marvel character Marc Spector to his Egyptian god Khonsu as the vigilante Moon
