My Gods Wear their Underwear on the Outside

To say that I read a lot of comics is something of an understatement. I work in the industry, I draw comics on the side for pleasure, and I read them constantly. In my apartment, I have shelf after shelf of DC comics, Marvel comics, Dark Horse comics, independent stuff, and everything in between.

With this level of immersion, you’d think that I was around the top levels of Fanaticism. Ironically, I’m only about halfway there. There are people who consider themselves Jedi in spirit and live their lives according to the Jedi Code. Some Star Trek fans go as far as learning Klingon, or tlhIngan Hol, for those of you versed in the Klingon language, and go across state for yearly conventions which they attend dressed as Klingons.

Other types of fans, on the other hand, are slightly less direct about their worship, but no less ardent. While many catholic families have Sto. Nino and Mother Mary statues up for display, superhero fans have the 16” Batman: The Dark Knight statue, and/or the 20,000-peso worth Sandman and Death limited edition bookends.

Catholics may have their rosaries, but I have my Green Lantern collection of power rings. They may not allow me to wield the mystic light of Oa like in the comic books, but then again the last time I checked, rosaries and/or prayer couldn’t actually create miracles like in the bible, either. Imagine that!

I believe that when compared to mainstream religions, Superhero and Pop culture stands up fairly well. Jesus can walk on water, but Superman can fly. Moses turns Pharaoh’s staff into serpents, but Zatanna, Mistress of Magic, can turn Pharaoh himself into the serpent with a simple spell.

And unlike many of the mainstream religions, messages in comics continuously change with the times. There are many gay superheroes now, whereas in the 1940s when comics were still starting, it was completely unheard of.

Roman Gods, Greek Gods, the one and only true Christian God-- they all required scribes—writers, if you will. Now, writers are many things, but first and foremost, they are story-tellers. Maybe Jesus didn’t turn water into wine. Maybe he saw early on at the party that they were running out of wine, and he went out and ordered more! Maybe Jesus’ greatest miracle was that he was just a really, innately considerate guy.

And when he started getting popular for being a really nice guy, maybe his disciples, I don’t know, maybe they exaggerated his exploits a little. Add several hundred years of adaptations, footnotes, guesswork, and then you’ve got what we call the Bible.

The Bible that Christians have built a religion around. The Bible that calls homosexuality a sin, that says promiscuity is bad, that says women should obey their husbands, etc.

The greatest asset that comics (or pop culture in general) has is that they change. They adapt. They also entertain, but if you get at the core of each story in each comic, each movie, there is always the core belief: Do Good.

There are no footnotes like “But don’t be homosexual if you want to save the world”. No, no, there are no qualifications to Doing Good in the comic world. We’ve got ex-cons, gays, lesbians, playboy rich guys, crazy drug rehabilitated teenagers… when they discover their powers, when they don the costume, it doesn’t matter who they were before. All that matters is that now, they’re wearing their underwear on the outside, and they’re saving lives.

Obviously, it’s like receiving Christ into your life, but with far less baggage. At the core, most religions preach that we should be good people. Unfortunately, some mainstream religions preach that we should also dress a certain way, act a certain way, and of course—my favourite—not have sex until we’re married. Yeah… that’s going to happen.

Considering the amount of lays Batman has had since the 1940’s, I think it’s pretty safe to say that promiscuity is not an issue in comics. And because of the past two decades of new heroes, neither is homosexuality.

I have a running theory that in one or two thousand years, comics will be the new bible. While our successors are flying around in their spaceships and exploring the galaxy, future archaeologists are going to unearth my comic collection and take that as a primitive means of archiving history.

They are going to look at each other and say “Oh my gosh. There was once a man who did nothing but good, who came back from the dead, who helped the weak and the sickly, and saved peoples lives. And his name was Clark Kent.”

They’ll put together a Superman Bible and name the books after the writers and artists of today. So you’ve got the Book of Mark Waid and Leinil Yu, and the Book of Alex Ross, and several hundred other writer-artist teams who worked on these stories. Will that canonization make these stories any more real? No, it won’t.

As one of Star Trek’s main tenets goes: There is infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Change is inevitable, and resistance is futile.

My gods wear their underwear on the outside, and some of them are gay. And you know what? I’m okay with that.

**Reflection delivered at the Unitarian Universalists of Quezon City on February 8, 2009