508 RELIGION IN COMICS
Knight. Raised Jewish, Spector pledged himself to this deity in exchange for saving his
mortal life. Complicating this, however, is Spector’s own tenuous sanity, putting such
devotion in a suspect light. Conversely, only in recent years has the Fantastic Four’s Ben
“Th e Th ing” Grimm acknowledged his Jewish identity, something he quashed as a youth
on the mean streets of New York; and the late Boston Brand’s posthumous dedication
to Hinduism as Deadman is also questionable, given no evidence that he was a believer
until after he died and was reconstituted as a ghost. Further, while the Savage Dragon is
a self-professed atheist, he has apparently met the Devil and God personally.
Th e supernatural is often folded into religion as a dogma-less, fl exible theology with
overt visual/physical results. Th is likely occurs due to the perceived overlap between
demonic magic and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of Satan and fallen angels. In
addition to Gaiman’s Lucifer, most of the major superhero publishers have a multitude
of Satan-like or Hell-linked characters (e.g., Mephisto, Neron, Blaze, Satannish, Hades,
Satanus, Malebolgia, Hela, etc.), all of whom occupy a realm not unlike Hell; some-
times these kingdoms even overlap and the “Satans” go to battle against each other, such
as in the series Underworld Unleashed or Reign in Hell. Angels themselves play a variety
of roles in the superhero genre, from adversaries (e.g. Th e Saint of Killers in Preacher )
to allies (Zauriel in JLA ) to weapons ( Th e Punisher , briefl y). Most often, though, this
manner of religion is characterized more as supernatural sorcery or witchcraft, empow-
ering would-be heroes like Ghost Rider , Zatanna, Hellstrom, Jason Blood, Brother
Voodoo, Th e Doctor of Th e Authority , and Dark Horse Comics’ eponymous Hellboy.
In fact, in the case of the latter Hellboy, his native infernal realm is conceived little in
the way of Christian soteriology, but instead his Hell is a Cthonic, Lovecraftian portal
to the supernatural. Th ese other portrayals sometimes further reduce the supernatural/
religious into a form of super-science: rational, tamable energies just beyond the ken of
modern investigation. Image Comics’ Th e Atheist was predicated on the idea that stoic
logic can investigate and defeat infernal possession. Alternately, Kurt Busiek’s Astro
City particularly plays with comics’ religious/supernatural overlap in the Confessor, a
vampire /priest hero. Th rough this brand of over-encompassing inclusion, a Norse god
such as Th or can fi ght alongside a magic practitioner such as the Scarlet Witch, a tech-
nological Iron Man , and a devout Catholic such as Dagger all against an emissary of a
monotheistic divinity (e.g., Th e Living Tribunal).
Th e superhero genre has also fashioned a large number of fi ctional religions for its
storytelling purposes. Whether these faiths are being created as analogies to real-world
denominations, as politically-correct straw men, as serious refl ections on the concept of
organized religion, or as easy targets for vilifying is to be determined on a case-by-case
basis. In many estimations, the Triune Understanding depicted in Busiek’s Avengers
series is a riff on the Church of Scientology. Th ough they were responsible for the em-
powerment of the Avengers’ ally Triathlon, the Triune Understanding was also linked
to a pernicious alien race, making their motives dubious. Decades earlier, Jim Starlin
further developed a malevolent incarnation of his Christ-fi gure Adam Warlock — who
had died and resurrected for Counter-Earth — into the leader of the Universal Church
