Comic Book Religion: Which is your favorite?

[Jane_the_Bane]

There used to be a saying in superhero comic culture amounting to: "Nobody stays dead, except for Bucky, Uncle Ben and Jason Todd."

Well, guess they were wrong on that account after all!

 

[Gxg (G²)]

There used to be a saying in superhero comic culture amounting to: "Nobody stays dead, except for Bucky, Uncle Ben and Jason Todd."

Well, guess they were wrong on that account after all!

Didn't all three come back from the dead?

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Didn't all three come back from the dead?

Of course they did! (Although Uncle Ben stayed mostly dead, and the returned one was an evil version from a parallel universe. Comics are weird.)

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Of course they did! (Although Uncle Ben stayed mostly dead, and the returned one was an evil version from a parallel universe. Comics are weird.)

Wait - so that really DID happen with Uncle Ben? Had no idea - what was the name of that comic?

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

It was in "Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man", but don't ask me in which numbers.
This Ben from an alternate timeline came from a world where Aunt May had died in a freak accident, and he had raised Peter alone. Bringing him to Earth 616 was part of a future Hobgoblin's plan to destroy Spider-Men from different timelines.

 

[gord44]

Of course they did! (Although Uncle Ben stayed mostly dead, and the returned one was an evil version from a parallel universe. Comics are weird.)

Comics are weird. I don't really follow comics that much, but when I do look into them they don't make a lot of sense with all their different storylines.

 

[Supreme]

It was in "Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man", but don't ask me in which numbers.
This Ben from an alternate timeline came from a world where Aunt May had died in a freak accident, and he had raised Peter alone. Bringing him to Earth 616 was part of a future Hobgoblin's plan to destroy Spider-Men from different timelines.

Is it canon?

I do question the purpose of comics killing off characters if they're able to bring them back at later dates. Sort of takes away from the shock factor.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Change is a natural part of Thor's universe. And again, if not even Odin can lift Thor's hammer (even though it was his enchantment that made it what it was), then you already know that perhaps other beings higher than him are involved. As it is, within the world of Thor, we've already seen it where there were other beings greater than the Asgardians who were able to change the rules of the game with regards to the power of weapons - and we know that there are newer dynamics introduced all the time within the world of Thor. At one point, the Asgardians were seen as the ones who made the universe and were eternal - and then it shifted in regards to those known as those who live in Shadow - the gods who actually made the Norse Gods... the beings who sit above the gods of Asgard and who are the authors of the endless Ragnarok cycle being experienced by the Asgardians in the Marvel U, as those Who Sit Above In Shadow' absorb the energies produced by the 'Ragnarok Cycles - but prior to them, no one had any idea of an entire cycle that existed before the Asgardians or of other gods who had the universe in a constant cycle of rebirth/death.

And of course, to introduce those called "Those who Sit Above in Shadow" was not a new concept. It existed earlier in the 80s when a plot from the X-Men was involved:

​

Speaking of the character of Thor, I came across an excellent review on the issue which really stood out to me - in regards to how Thor had extensive African roots that many are not aware of...in addition to parallels. For further reference:

• https://embervoices.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/why-im-putting-john-henry-on-my-thor-shrine/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiQXXAw5Rk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04xJCwV65PA

 

[Gxg (G²)]

As it concerns represenatives of the "gods", I don't know if you've ever heard of Black Panther. But he's one of the most interesting to consider in regards to his devotion to what's known as the Panther-God and his loyalty to the god he serves....from a perspective of Aminism and an African perspective. Serving that specific god was a matter of not walking in fear since fear was what was not respected - as well as not taking ownership:

​

...

Forgot to mention earlier... as it concerns the concept of the Panther God, one thing that stands out to me which was not mentioned earlier was the fact that it is a portrayal of Deity which is not set on seeing only those who happen to be presented as "heroes" as always being good....and that is always interesting to me since even the Black Panther has experienced it where the God he was serving was able to bless enemies/say they were correct rather than simply being loyal to people from one ethnic group.

This can be seen, for example, in what occurred with Dr. Doom and how even he was able to find blessing from the Panther God ..

​

One of the best twists ever on the subject of theism and where the allegiance of Deities can be....

​

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

That Dr. Doom plotline is SO fantastic! The best villains are always those who believe themselves to be the heroes of their own stories.

Case in point: Wilson Fisk in the new small screen adaptation of Daredevil. Without him, the series would be little more than a "Batman: Year One"-ripoff, right down to the choice of costume and the rhetoric ("I am the hero this city needs").
But instead, the authors took Miller's crypto-fascist ideology and showed us just how dangerously close the villain's and the hero's motivation and justification are to each other. Fisk and Murdoch are perfect foils for each other, and the "Kingpin" truly becomes something other than your typical "I am evil because I am evil"-kind of antagonist.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

That Dr. Doom plotline is SO fantastic! The best villains are always those who believe themselves to be the heroes of their own stories.

Very true - and for myself, I thought it was interesting how it is indeed the case that the villains are truly the "hero" of the story when it comes to their goals being what will truly make the difference...even if they are wrong. And Doom is definitely a very interesting person for plot lines around good vs. evil.

As another noted on his background:

Both of Doom's parents were Roma (Gypsy). Although Doom rarely talks about his Roma religious/ethnic background, it is clear that his upbringing has had a significant influence on his persona.

Victor Von Doom was staying in a monastery in Tibet and studying with Tibetan Buddhist monks when he first constructed his iconic suit of armor and face mask and became the super-villain known as Doctor Doom. The monks made his first suit of armor and the face mask that he wore continuously from that time forward. Although Tibetan Buddhist monks played this pivotal role in his origin, Doctor Doom has never demonstrated any particular affinity for Tibetan Buddhism (or any form of Buddhism, for that matter). Tibetan Buddhists generally and its monks in particular tend toward pacifism, seemingly making them Doom's polar opposite. Doom seems to have been influenced very little in his overall philosophy by his time at the Tibetan monastery. Either that, or the Tibetan monks he studied with were atypical and unorthodox in their tradition.

Despite being an enemy of the Fantastic Four and being considered by the world at large as a "villain," Doom does not see himself as evil. Even his most frequent enemies recognize that Doom is a man or honor and a man of his word. There are many principles and virtues which he values and strives to live by, although he is not bound by the ethical system of any organized religion. Furthermore, Doom has always sincerely strived to be a benign dictator for his beloved Latveria. Unlike many despots and national leaders throughout history, Doom does not amuse himself by abusing his people. Doom has indeed been an enemy of the Fantastic Four, other superheroes, and the world at large. But while Doom has reigned over Latveria, the people there have generally lived in peace and prosperity (as long as they do nothing to oppose his rule). Although Doom has been a believer in mysticism and a practitioner of magic throughout his adult life, and he is Roma (or Rroma) by birth and upbringing, these influences do not really constitute his "religion" in the sense of what is most important to him or what forms his core belief system. In a practical sense, Doctor Doom's "religion" could be said to be accomplishing the three goals he set for himself early in adulthood: rescuing his deceased mother, proving himself superior to Reed Richards, and conquering the world. Doom has now accomplished the first of these goals, but he continues to focus his energies on the last two. Doom has always maintained values and ideals (such as his personal honor, his beloved Latveria, interest in universal cosmic power, and his general intellectual curiosity and thirst for knowledge) apart from these goals. In this way, Doom is considerably less obsessive and monmaniacal than many "super-villains."​

Doom (whose religion makes things all the more interesting when considering how he is Gypsy/Roma and for magic/mysticism) has always been a fascinating character but to see how he is truly complex and in many ways an anti-hero is stellar....or to be more specific, an anti-villian

• Metamagician and The Hellfire Club: Sunday supervillainy - is Doctor Doom a villain?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]Ae4M1w

​

Case in point: Wilson Fisk in the new small screen adaptation of Daredevil. Without him, the series would be little more than a "Batman: Year One"-ripoff, right down to the choice of costume and the rhetoric ("I am the hero this city needs").

But instead, the authors took Miller's crypto-fascist ideology and showed us just how dangerously close the villain's and the hero's motivation and justification are to each other. Fisk and Murdoch are perfect foils for each other, and the "Kingpin" truly becomes something other than your typical "I am evil because I am evil"-kind of antagonist.

I was surprised to see the new Daredevil series take on the presentation that it did - I've heard a lot of great things on it...

 

[gord44]

Dr Doom! I don't know much about him but in a strategy game I play I crushed Hitler using his army of Doombots!

 

[Gxg (G²)]

That Dr. Doom plotline is SO fantastic! The best villains are always those who believe themselves to be the heroes of their own stories.

What's amazing with that, of course, is that the best villains always have to be confronted with the fact that even they (noble as they are in their mindsets) are still incomplete - as I loved the way Doom was defeated by Black Panther when it came to Doom's stance on purity/honor being used against him essentially...

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Dr Doom! I don't know much about him but in a strategy game I play I crushed Hitler using his army of Doombots!

His Doombots are always intensive

But even outside of them, he still rocks...

 

[Gxg (G²)]

I think, with others like Captain America, that he's not truly a stereotype when it comes to anything Christian. Believing that there's a God doesn't mean one does all the other actions associated with Christian behavior.

As said earlier, I'm always shocked how many champion for the man and yet ignore how he has had a long history of showing anti-mutant behavioral tendencies when it comes to his patriosm....supporting the "good" mutants but not challenging governmental policies that harm them since he has supported locking them up on many occasions as if they were guilty whenever a problem arose.

And you never see him explictly doing any real fighting in the name of God - his religion is more so like the U.S. where it seems to be Deism in the same way the Founding Fathers had a patriotic Deism. And how often did you see Steve go out of the way to address other issues in his time like racism or the Holocaust explictly?

• Movies]"Movies" vs. "Films" in Oscar Speeches, 2005-2014 | Overthinking It | Captain America, the Holocaust, and Racism[/url]

[/LIST]

That said, I do think the character is still one of the most amazing characters ever...with a lot of powerful themes centering around who he is (including the Civil War arc when it came to government resistance to being signed up/registered rather than protecting the principle of privacy)...

It was powerful when seeing how Steve Rogers - imperfect as he is - saw the Superhero Registration Act (as a stand in for the Patriot Act) taking away due process, taking away Fourth Amendment rights, taking away a citizen’s right of who to associate with; all these and more, drove Captain America to oppose his government.

And there have been other things which I am glad Captain America has stood against as well...

And yet nonetheless, he is human enough to make mistakes/do things which make you wonder "Contradiction" - like his willingness to do torture ...letting others do it, of course, while he condemns it...

​

And due to the fact that he has grown up indoctrinated into the American ideal at multiple points, his humanity in not always seeing what's wrong is what makes him fascinating....

• Captain America (2011) – A Star-Spangled Slave? | Ruthless Culture

• Captain America punches faces, Pt. 2 | Arousing Grammar

​

In the event that anyone was wondering, the film "Avengers: Age of Ultron" was incredible!!! Loved every minute of it and thought it was amazing...especially seeing all of the spiritual allusions in it:

• A Brief Guide To Ultron's Crazy Comic History

• Age of Ultron May Be the Most Spiritual Superhero Movie Yet

• Avengers: Age of Ultron – Gods of the Rising Technocratic Aeon | Jay's Analysis

• ?Avengers: Age of Ultron? and the Risks of Artificial Intelligence - The Crux

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3h_PmaiKMM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zGFZzvdsJ0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzqnakAOtB4


As said there for a review:

Jarvis will never hog the spotlight. He is an ideal servant.
But some things not even Jarvis can manage, and when Tony comes across Loki’s mysterious scepter from the first movie, a woman named Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) puts a terrifying vision in his head: He sees his friends dead or dying on a chunk of rock floating in space, with the rest of humanity surely about to perish from some horrible, extraterrestrial fate. In the teeth of that vision, Tony decides that the best way to safeguard the world, and his friends, is not by stepping into his Iron Man suit, but by stepping out of it—and creating something to do the Avengers’ work for them. Something like Jarvis, only self-aware and with lots more firepower.
With the help of the scepter’s mysterious stone, he creates (somewhat accidentally) true, conscious artificial intelligence which quickly evolves into Ultron. Sure, Tony gave the thing a prime directive to make the world a safer place, but Ultron twists that directive into permission to destroy: The safest world is one in which humanity—at least humanity as we know it—is eradicated. Ultron wants to remake life into something closer to his own image.

Telling, that desire—that twisted echo of Genesis. I don’t know if there’s ever been a superhero villain so prone to tossing out spiritual allusions.
ultron ultron“When the earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it,” Ultron says, and he’s preparing to do a little earthly smiting of his own. He quotes Jesus from Matthew, saying “Upon this rock I will build my church.” He compares the impending cataclysm with Noah and the Flood—again fitting, given that Ultron sees humanity as wayward, self-destructive and in need of a good cleansing. The mechanical monster frames himself as a wrathful deity—a creative being who wants to work with a blank slate.

Tony Stark made a god, and it was not good. Not good at all. That’s an encouraging message so far. That theme—that we shouldn’t make or worship our own manmade gods—is quite biblical. When we play God, or when we try to shove someone or something else into God’s place, the results are never pretty. Lots of movies have ruminated on these themes, too—particularly the idea of messing in the divine act of life-creation. You see it in Metropolis, Frankenstein, Jurassic Park, you name it. “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. Dr. Ian Malcom says in Jurassic Park. If only Tony would’ve cued that movie up. He didn’t, and the world suffers. “This could have been avoided if you hadn’t played with something you don’t understand!” Thor tells Stark after the deed is done. Once again, the hubris of humanity is exposed and laid low. Tony is dutifully chastised and promises to never play God ever again.​

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Frankenstein - like the original Faust myth - is at its very core a deeply reactionary tale: a renunciation of technological and societal progress centred around a fearful piety that'd penalize curiosity and the quest for knowledge. It revolves around the notion that the gods do not want man to reach upward, but to remain huddled in lightless depths, like mankind in Greek myth, prior to Prometheus's "crime" against divine order.

Echoes of this can clearly be found in "A2: Age of Ultron", yet these echoes are juxtaposed with the creation of Vision, which even involved a divine lightning bolt (as if the imagery couldn't possibly be more obvious). Unlike reactionary tales of hubris, A2 does not condemn progress, even if it leads beyond the current boundaries we find ourselves in. It is the *misguided* creation that causes mayhem, NOT the creative process as such.

The creation of Ultron was tainted by fear and despair - the creation of Vision was imbued with hope and a sense of purpose. Nowhere does this become more clear than in the final confrontation between the two artificial creatures, where Vision reveals that he sees exactly what Ultron sees - yet derives a different conclusion from it.

 

[Zoness]

Comics are weird. I don't really follow comics that much, but when I do look into them they don't make a lot of sense with all their different storylines.

Honestly I have this issue too; I'm a big fan of internally consistent canon (thanks to years of tabletop world-building) and that makes it hard for me to follow the various story lines of most popular comics.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Honestly I have this issue too; I'm a big fan of internally consistent canon (thanks to years of tabletop world-building) and that makes it hard for me to follow the various story lines of most popular comics.

There are various comics which do stay consistent in the canon. Of course, finding consistency depends on where exactly it is that you look...

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Frankenstein - like the original Faust myth - is at its very core a deeply reactionary tale: a renunciation of technological and societal progress centred around a fearful piety that'd penalize curiosity and the quest for knowledge. It revolves around the notion that the gods do not want man to reach upward, but to remain huddled in lightless depths, like mankind in Greek myth, prior to Prometheus's "crime" against divine order.

Echoes of this can clearly be found in "A2: Age of Ultron", yet these echoes are juxtaposed with the creation of Vision, which even involved a divine lightning bolt (as if the imagery couldn't possibly be more obvious). Unlike reactionary tales of hubris, A2 does not condemn progress, even if it leads beyond the current boundaries we find ourselves in. It is the *misguided* creation that causes mayhem, NOT the creative process as such.

The creation of Ultron was tainted by fear and despair - the creation of Vision was imbued with hope and a sense of purpose. Nowhere does this become more clear than in the final confrontation between the two artificial creatures, where Vision reveals that he sees exactly what Ultron sees - yet derives a different conclusion from it.

The way that Vision (As a sign of what happens when man pushes boundaries properly) was very much juxtaposed with the creation of Ultron (which shows what can happen when man tries to go past boundaries without learning mistakes) - and it was an interesting contrast to see how both agreed with each other but came at things from differing angles.

​

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Frankenstein - like the original Faust myth - is at its very core a deeply reactionary tale: a renunciation of technological and societal progress centred around a fearful piety that'd penalize curiosity and the quest for knowledge. It revolves around the notion that the gods do not want man to reach upward, but to remain huddled in lightless depths, like mankind in Greek myth, prior to Prometheus's "crime" against divine order.

Echoes of this can clearly be found in "A2: Age of Ultron", yet these echoes are juxtaposed with the creation of Vision, which even involved a divine lightning bolt (as if the imagery couldn't possibly be more obvious). Unlike reactionary tales of hubris, A2 does not condemn progress, even if it leads beyond the current boundaries we find ourselves in. It is the *misguided* creation that causes mayhem, NOT the creative process as such.

If Vision was one to turn out negatively, then it would have verified that creating itself is not a good action...