There is Thor , Herc , Zeus gods from different cultures and Reed took Doom's technology to get the Thing out of Heaven and Ghost Rider had a huge story arc about God so is there one God that rules over all in comics ?
Do comics believe in One God ?
THE ONE ABOVE ALL is marvels ipso de facto "god", the guy reed and the rest of the F4 met (i think he was in the form of jack kirby that time) was him.
In Spideys One more day he appeared as a homeless man, and over the years he's appeared to other characters, usually in the guise of a writer or creator (usually Lee, Kirby or Ditko).
He/She/It is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. Ergo he is all powerful, all knowing, and always there, no matter what timeline, universe, reality, or planet he is ALWAYS there.
@kgb725: Short version: Yes, no, or maybe as the plot demands.
Long version: Historically speaking, Lee, Kirby, Bob Kane, Siegel & Shuster, and Will Eisner were all Jewish, which may or may not point to a traditional Abrahamic theological backdrop to explain why good often (if not always) triumphed over evil in a lot of the old stories.
Obviously, this is complicated when you have Marvel's Mighty Thor, created by Lee and Kirby. My interpretation of that particular snafu is that Thor is represented as a "mythological" being, whose existence (and coexistence with people like Hercules and eldritch horrors like Dormammu) doesn't really effect the big religiophilosophical questions in terms of why the universe was created, the meaning of life, the nature of morality, and the path to salvation, etc.--though various "cosmic" characters like Adam Warlock would address these questions, inconclusively, in the '70s.
HOWEVER, in the 1980s, we have the Dark Knight Returns written by raised-Catholic Frank Miller and Watchmen written by ceremonial magician Alan Moore--the latter leading the way for people like outspoken atheist Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman (Jewish), and Grant Morrison, who identifies as a chaos magician. At this point, the comic medium/industry has evolved to the point where serious discussion of any and every spiritual worldview is not only possible, but conducive to some seriously awesome storytelling.
In Marvel, you have all these super Judeo-Christian demons like I'm-totally-not-Satan Mephisto, Asmodeus, Zarathos, etc., but you also have Thor, Hercules, that Japanese guy from Chaos War, and Gods know who else. Meanwhile in DC, you have the Greek pantheon tied up in Wonder Woman's family tree, but there's also people like (pre-Flashpoint) Zauriel, the new Question who might actually be Judas, the Spectre (God's wrath incarnate), etc.
Marvel's The One Above All (King Kirby) and DC's The Presence/The Source are almost completely undefined and are barely ever even mentioned in their respective universes. These quasi-monotheistic concepts (Can they be referred to as Gods? And if so, do they have to be Christian/Muslim/Jewish Gods?) serve more as metaphysical placeholders than actual characters/principles of reality.
To conclude, I'd say that the DC/Marvel universes are panentheistic in that the universes exist as aspects of unknowable Supreme Beings (or one Supreme Being known by different names): Therefore God exists (more or less).
However, Odin and Darkseid aren't exactly blowing smoke either: Therefore gods exist within the above framework.
What do you think?
In the New Gods mythology, the source is sort of the god of the new gods. Izaya the Highfather is sort of an immortal Moses god.
@joshmightbe: Occam's Razor strikes again! Well played, sir.
in DC it's God (or presence) pretty clear from Greg Rucka's interview, a direct quote from him:
But the sort of unspoken rule in the DCU is that the Judeo-Christian God sits above all others. And then below that you can have your New Gods and your Greek gods and whoever else you want.”
source:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16707
in marvel it's definitely TOAA, and he represents the writers as shown in fantastic four arc called herafter i believe.
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment