Comics and Sacred Texts: Reimagining Religion and Graphic Narratives

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Contributions by Ofra Amihay, Madeline Backus, Samantha Baskind, Elizabeth Rae Coody, Scott S. Elliott, Assaf Gamzou, Susan Handelman, Leah Hochman, Leonard V. Kaplan, Ken Koltun-Fromm, Shiamin Kwa, Samantha Langsdale, A. David Lewis, Karline McLain, Ranen Omer-Sherman, Joshua Plencner, and Jeffrey L. Richey Comics and Sacred Texts explores how comics and notions of the sacred interweave new modes of seeing and understanding the sacral. Comics and graphic narratives help readers see religion in the everyday and in depictions of God, in transfigured, heroic selves as much as in the lives of saints and the meters of holy languages. Coeditors Assaf Gamzou and Ken Koltun-Fromm reveal the graphic character of sacred narratives, imagining new vistas for both comics and religious texts. In both visual and linguistic forms, graphic narratives reveal representational strategies to encounter the sacred in all its ambivalence. Through close readings and critical inquiry, these essays contemplate the intersections between religion and comics in ways that critically expand our ability to think about religious landscapes, rhetorical practices, pictorial representation, and the everyday experiences of the uncanny. Organized into four sections—Seeing the Sacred in Comics; Reimagining Sacred Texts through Comics; Transfigured Comic Selves, Monsters, and the Body; and The Everyday Sacred in Comics—the essays explore comics and graphic novels ranging from Craig Thompson’s Habibi and Marvel’s X-Men and Captain America to graphic adaptions of religious texts such as 1 Samuel and the Gospel of Mark. Comics and Sacred Texts shows how claims to the sacred are nourished and concealed in comic narratives. Covering many religions, not only Christianity and Judaism, this rare volume contests the profane/sacred divide and establishes the import of comics and graphic narratives in disclosing the presence of the sacred in everyday human experience. Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Comics and Sacred Texts I. Seeing the Sacred in Comics Chapter One: Writing the Sacred in Craig Thompson’s Habibi Chapter Two: God’s Comics: The Hebrew Alphabet as Graphic Narrative Chapter Three: The Ineffability of Form: Speaking and Seeing the Sacred in Tina’s Mouth and The Rabbi’s Cat Chapter Four: The Seven Traits of Fictoscripture and the Wormhole Sacred II. Reimagining Sacred Texts Through Comics Chapter Five: Many Comic Book Ramayanas: Idealizing and Opposing Rama as the Righteous God-King Chapter Six: The Ending of Mark as a Page-Turn Reveal Chapter Seven: Slaying a Biblical Archetype: 1 Samuel, Gauld’s Goliath, and the New Midrash Chapter Eight: Transrendering Biblical Bodies: Reading Sex in The Action Bible and Genesis Illustrated III. Transfigured Comic Selves, Monsters, and the Body Chapter Nine: The Dark Phoenix as “Promising Monster”: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Teaching Marvel’s X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga Chapter Ten: “Honor the Power Within”: Daoist Wizards, Popular Culture, and Contemporary Japan’s Spiritual Crisis Chapter Eleven: Joe Kubert’s Yossel: April 19, 1943: Faith and Art History’s Precedents IV. The Everyday Sacred in Comics Chapter Twelve: Urban Revelation in Paul Madonna’s Postsecular Comics Chapter Thirteen: The Common Place: The Poetics of the Pedestrian in Kevin Huizenga’s Walkin’ Chapter Fourteen: Marvel’s Fallen Son and Making the Ordinary Sacred Chapter Fifteen: Will Eisner: Master of Graphic Wisdom About the Contributors Index