LINK TO FREE WEB COMIC VERSION OF TESTAMENT #11 (NSFW)
Quick reminder that TESTAMENT can get pretty explicit!
Original solicitation copy for TESTAMENT #11:
“A special standalone story featuring guest art by Peter Gross (LUCIFER) and
Gary Erskine (THE FILTH) reveals the hidden history of the most cryptic
character in The Temple. Tyrone was once a beloved humanitarian who
ran a profitable enterprise — until his own god turned against him. Is he
reliving the story of the Biblical Job? Or does Job still live today?”
Rushkoff’s Chapter Eleven (#11) Notes are available here.
(We’ve moved on to the second half of Rushkoff’s annotations)
We’ve reached the halfway point! And have entered the third of four volumes :)))
I need to get caught up a bit, but that’s the beauty of an asynchronous reading group,
plenty of SLACK!
And we’ll be back on March 22nd, for issue #12
same TESTAMENT time, same Jechidah channel :)))
Also, for my own part:
New Comic! Agnosis! #3 EP. 1 "BEFORE THE LAW"
https://weirdcomix.com/OKEY-DOKEY/AGNOSIS_03-WIP.html
- Bobby Campbell, Wilson's Illuminator
Once again, the real-life parallels with this reading group appear particularly spooky. On the very first page: “America had made a mess of Iraq and was about to invade Iran.”
ReplyDeleteQuite a few things make me uneasy in this story. For instance, the viewpoint that Job/Tyrone became wealthy because he was righteous, supporting the idea that being a millionaire is good in and of itself, and that it is in the order of things for this to happen to a God-loving person. He is also a nice guy because he shares some of his money through charity. Charity is typically favored by the very rich because it gives them a good name (Bill & Melinda, cough-cough), but the same people usually rage like crazy at the idea of paying taxes for a better distribution of wealth.
Then there is also this small scene: “I was celebrating the sabbath with the many friends we had made.”
So Tyrone is Jewish Unistatian, alright. Because he’s helping out in fixing the mess that his compatriots have made of Iraq, does that mean that the local Iraqi Muslims should now abide to the religious traditions of the Jewish faith? Yo, wtf? This to me reeks of the very colonialist mindset that made the US invade Iraq to begin with.
I won’t even get too much into God’s psychology here, because although Atum-Ra is having a field day in spreading evil destruction and misery, it’s clearly Melchizedek whom I’m seeing as a most douchy of deities. He’s not even ‘all too human’, but in my view seems to exemplify some of the worst aspects of humanity.
This comic book series is bringing into me a profound hatred of Abrahamic monotheism that I had not felt since my mid-teens. Is there any part of the Torah or the Old Testament that features even a glimpse of ethical value at all? No wonder the Jews ganged up against Jesus when he popped up and starting talking about ‘Love’ a few centuries down the road.
What I liked the most in this issue were the crazy remote viewing experiments from the mad scientists of the military-industrial complex, devoid of any sense of humanity: “once this trial is complete, we can continue the morphine drip.” It harks back both to MK-Ultra, and to the way veterans have been dealt with at least since WWII.
I wonder which of the Arthurian knights this one is supposed to be?
Before reading Doug’s notes, I had not understood that Elijah’s intrusion “is what has set this particular story in motion.”
I now regret using such strong vocabulary as 'hatred' in my previous post, 'repulsion' might have been more accurate. I wouldn't want to fall into such a negative mindset. But in retrospect, I find it interesting to see how much of a potent emotional reaction the Bible stories provoke in me. I'm afraid I might find it easier to stay tolerant toward these religions by keeping ignorant of the contents of their 'holy books'...
DeleteIf we posit a particularly anal-retentive deity that asks of you all sorts of elaborate behaviors that you absolutely need to follow to the letter or else, and you make a point of being perfect at it, and still get tortured to no end for no reason at all, it seems to me that the psychological seeds have been planted for wife or child-beating, or any sort of abuse toward others. And that would only be for the ones you 'love'...
Part of me feels tempted to see these civilizational foundations as one of the main reasons for what Reich's termed 'the emotional plague'. Ultimately, it seems to me that the end point can only be self-annihilation.
I was born during a brief but prodigious lapse in my mom's catholicism, so did not grow up with a Christian belief system, but rather was encouraged to create my own pantheon, and ended up with an amalgamation of Santa Claus and Atman as my idea of the Godhead.
ReplyDeleteLater when my mom's Catholicism kicked back in along with her schizophrenia and alcoholism I got dragged briefly to Sunday school, but it was far too late. All that drink my blood and eat my body talk!? Never mind the horror of the crucifix! Thanks but no thanks!
All that to say that the story of Job doesn't hit me that deeply.
God's betrayal of Job as part of a bet with the devil doesn't really phase me, bc that dude was never my god to begin with.
Instead it strikes me as merely people struggling to deal with the reality of bad things happening to good people.
I totally forgot that Tyrone was a Job analogue, this issue really cinches up his previously random seeming role in the story.
The remote viewing experiments leading to a 4th wall breaking visionary experience that changes the nature of the story is pretty fun.
The idea that the crazy people on the street are wrestling with real metaphysical troubles has always appealed to me. The struggle is real, but they don't have the ability to articulate it, nor separate it from their personal delusions.
Sir Isumbras appears to be the Knight of the Roundtable version of Job. Can't say that I'd heard of him previously!
I remember feeling really shaken up by watching the Challenger explode on live TV and asked my Uncle BJ, the smartest and coolest guy I knew, why things like that happen. He grew up a very tuned in 60's activist, who became a lawyer, a gay man living in Reagan's America who had just received an HIV diagnosis. A Job figure himself it would seem, well prepared to discuss with me why bad things happen to good people. We landed upon a reasonable suspicion, there ain't no sanity clause!
Job being saved by a sympathetic scribe's retcon is pretty cool, and it makes sense for him to speak the comic's thesis statement aloud: "This story... this bible... it is still being written."