Graven Images Religion in Comic Books & Graphic Novels [Paperback]

Comic books have increasingly become a vehicle for serious social commentary and, specifically, for innovative religious thought. Practitioners of both traditional religions and new religious movements have begun to employ comics as a missionary tool, while humanists and religious progressives use comics' unique fusion of text and image to criticize traditional theologies and to offer alternatives. Addressing the increasing fervor with which the public has come to view comics as an art form and Americans' fraught but passionate relationship with religion, Graven Images explores with real insight the roles of religion in comic books and graphic novels.

In essays by scholars and comics creators, Graven Images observes the frequency with which religious material-in devout, educational, satirical, or critical contexts-occurs in both independent and mainstream comics. Contributors identify the unique advantages of the comics medium for religious messages; analyze how comics communicate such messages; place the religious messages contained in comic books in appropriate cultural, social, and historical frameworks; and articulate the significance of the innovative theologies being developed in comics.

[&]the range and social-scientific sophistication of this collection makes it central to the current analysis of religion in comics/novels, of vernacular religion, and indeed of religion as such. I hope that anthropologists attend to this subject and bring our unique perspective to the fascinating and fertile topic. Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword: Looking for God in the GutterDouglas Rushkoff (Creator, Testament; The New School) IntroductionChristine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and A. David Lewis (Boston University), editors

NEW INTERPRETATIONS
The Devil's Reading: Revenge and Revelation in American ComicsAaron Ricker Parks (McGill University) London (& thlÃ-