TESTAMENT #4 - The Valley of Siddim

 

LINK TO FREE WEB COMIC VERSION OF TESTAMENT #4 (NSFW)

Quick reminder that TESTAMENT can get pretty explicit!

Original solicitation copy for TESTAMENT #4:

“Abraham's epic war with the Anakim giants reverberates through time,

as Alan Stern steels himself to do battle with an army of gargantuan

war machines. But his true enemy is a force more powerful than any robot.”

As expected, Rushkoff’s Chapter Four (#4) Notes help illuminate the biblical details!

Liam Sharp’s art is especially great in this issue. The visual language of the world has,

at this point, been well established, and he’s wielding it very effectively.

I especially enjoy the stylistic tweaks that make the biblical scenes feel ancient and the cyberpunk scenes feel modern, but also that the split is not so extreme that the resonances are lost.

This is such a great image!

I’m reminded of Jack Kirby’s Granny Goodness from New Gods and the wild organic tech from Frank Miller’s Ronin.

Also, the recurring christo-fascist imagery of a plasticine blonde woman advocating

for heartless cruelty with a gold cross dangling just above her cleavage. 

We’re starting to get into the plot elements that inspired this group re-reading,

where you can see the emergent prescience of the work.

Weaponized robotics, data tracking, neuroscience, and soon digital currency,

“coin of the realm.”

Our villain is revealed as a decadent tech bro billionaire, really kinda before

that archetype was well established, I think?

I feel like we mostly still had Kingpin/Lex Luther style business magnate/industrialist villains

back in 2006. (Both of whom had specific and intentional DJT inspired make

overs in the mid 80’s.)

Maybe Bill Gates inspired villains started popping up, but Fallow seems more

in the contemporary mold of a Peter Thiel character type.

Dr. Green and Alan Stern both speak of control, which reminded me of the

Law of Eristic Escalation: Imposition of Order = Escalation of Disorder.

Though both order and disorder represent a false dichotomy of pure chaos :))) 

It would be interesting to ask the creators, and maybe I will at some point,

to what degree do they consider this work expository vs. visionary?

Certainly sometimes they give us specific opinionated messaging,

but other times it seems like maybe the story takes on a life of its own, and

things emerge organically.

There’s an interesting tension between the early vision of the internet/digital

technology as a tool of decentralized empowerment and the current mood

of authoritarian control. Underneath both of these trends the

McLuhanesque/physical biases of these devices continues to reshape reality

in ways too ubiquitous for us to reasonably perceive:

THE DISSOLUTION OF BOUNDARIES.

I like this line:

“They are slaves-- they fight against the strength of their own will, and cannot win.”

And we’ll be back on August 22nd, for issue #5

same TESTAMENT time, same Jechidah channel :)))

And don’t forget, tomorrow is MAYBE DAY 2025!