LINK TO FREE WEB COMIC VERSION OF TESTAMENT #12 (NSFW)
Quick reminder that TESTAMENT can get pretty explicit!
Original solicitation copy for TESTAMENT #12:
A sexual tryst between warring gods alters the story itself into a new
permutation of the series Comic Buyer's Guide calls, "the most
assured and original project to emerge from Vertigo since SANDMAN."
With guest art from Peter Gross (LUCIFER) and Gary Erskine
(THE FILTH), this tale reveals how Biblical and modern storylines
diverge - as Dinah is attacked in one reality, and Miriam in the other.
Rushkoff’s Chapter Twelve (#12) Notes are available here.
I finally caught up with my commentary on issues 10 & 11, and am very
ready to jump into this month’s biblical mindfuck.
Also, just in case anyone has missed it, this convo between Grant Morrison and Douglas
Rushkoff appears very relevant to our interests here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzqCI_jwOQ&t=6s
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I find that the stories, from the different timelines as well as the meta-arc from the gutter, are now becoming highly convoluted, with everyone's motivations becoming more and more obscure to me.
ReplyDeleteI totally fail to understand Miriam's psychology, for instance.
The gratuitous massacre at Schechem seems to me yet another example of the Bible presenting us with completely immoral behavior and asking of us to think of it as the rightful thing to do.
For me the main takeaway this time comes from Doug's notes:
"Astarte attacks Krishna's alliance with the gods of language - the ones writing reality out of words. [...] She believes that a god of text will be separated from his or her true connection to nature."
I had never thought of that before. Instead of being "forces to be reckoned with" that are experientially felt at the C2 level of the 8 Circuits model, Gods now become pure abstractions lodged at C3, a place fit for sciences, but where religion might ultimately be doomed. Sure, theologians can discuss endlessly about unprovable points, but mostly this seems to open the door to completely empty rituals that bring nothing to people. Think of eating a piece of bread representing your 'savior' while in the midst of a mass said in a language you do not understand (the ultimate irony for a belief system claiming that 'in the beginning was the Word').
Hah, I have finally caught up. Thank you for setting all this up, Bob.
ReplyDeleteThere's an interesting breakdown of duality happening here, which I see echos of in real life too, where you have these tentative alliances forming across ideological divides.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, the aneristic (apparent order) and eristic (apparent disorder) unifying against true chaos.
I associate it too with the increasing usage of the political spectrum quadrants instead of just left and right.
Kind of like in Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" where Harvey Dent / Two-Face is weaned off of his heads or tails coin flips, working his way up to the 72 choice tarot card deck.
Inching our way towards a truly non-Euclidean perspective!
The sexual assault stuff here seems messy and iffy, though I think the intention is to deconstruct the biblical version, and the trope of using violence against women as inspiration for male revenge fantasies, but I don't know if that heavy stone is successfully turned over here.
@Spookah
I guess Miriam's thought process is that she is a "change the system from within" person, hence her inability to remove her chip, which puts the rest of the group in danger, because she makes them trackable by proxy, so she sacrifices herself for the benefit of the group?
Interesting observations about the intersection of ritual and language!
Joseph Campbell had a similar observations about changing the language of the Catholic Mass from Latin to English.
Ritual doesn't work as well when it becomes an object of scrutiny in the analytical mind, rather than an overwhelming direct experience.
@Eric
You are very asynchronously welcome!!