Jesus loves Superman

Warning! The following link may not be safe for work, particularly if you work at the Vatican! If images of grown men passionately kissing one another offend you, especially if one of them is Jesus and/or Superman, this link is probably not for you!

...and apparently Superman loves Jesus right back.

Racy stuff. Or is it? Maybe the artist is actually quite traditional and is suggesting that Superman will betray Jesus.

(Via the inimitable and nigh invulnerable Thomas of Say It Backwards.)

PS: Oddly enough, the preceding blog post on Newsarama features Warren Ellis belatedly trying his hand at the whole crucified super-hero thing. The comic is called Supergod and sounds like it has a few things in common with Miracleman and Black Summer.

Elliot's Favourites in 2008

Out of the forty-odd graphic novels I read in 2008, these ten were my favourite. Note that they weren't necessarily published in 2008; I just happened to get around to them in that year. I tried not to pick two volumes from the same series (if the other volumes are good I mention it.) Okay, counting down:

10. DC: The New Frontier, volume 1, by Darwyn Cooke. 2004. 208 p.

Cooke re-imagines the origins of the Silver Age DC universe in the Cold War Space Race. Fighter pilots-turned-astronauts jostle with G-men in the shadow of the Korean War and McCarthyism, and everyone's got that hard-drinking Rat Pack style. The art is striking - retro yet not outdated. Some of the storylines are brilliant: Steel, survivor of a lynching, stalks the Jim Crow South slaying members of the Klan; Hal Jordan (later to be Green Lantern) is a hot-shot pilot who refuses to kill ; the Martian Manhunter is endearingly humorous and idealistic. Unfortunately Cooke tries to include just about everyone from the Silver Age. All the old WW2 soldiers, fighter pilots, science-action characters, and murderously ruthless (but basically good at heart!) FBI and CIA agents blur together into one big puddle of square-jawed, buzz-cut testosterone-soaked chest-thumping All-American blah-blah-blah-who-gives-a-crap? This problem becomes unavoidable in the second volume; and the Big Threat revealed therein is kind of lame. So maybe just read the first one.

9. X-Men: Divided We Stand, by Mike Carey, et al. 2008. 136 p.

Ten short stories about individual X-Men, by a variety of authors and artists. The quality varies, but overall it's pretty entertaining. There are some real gems, including a theological-philosophical tale in which Scalphunter is visited by Nightcrawler in both his priestly and demonic guises. I posted a little about the book here and here.

8. The Frank Book, by Jim Woodring. 2003. 351 p.

Plenty of writers and artists try to be surreal. Jim Woodring accomplishes it, maybe because he's not trying so hard. The younger Woodring experienced highly convincing hallucinations, and that's what Frank reads like: a kind of fevered dream that you can't shake off. Frank and his friends and enemies wordlessly wander through a mystical, wondrous and sometimes deeply disturbing (this book is not for kids) dimension that's part Krazy Kat, part early Disney and part oblique parable.

7. Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, by Joss Whedon. 2004. 152 p.

He's not Grant Morrison, but he is Joss Whedon, so he'll do. He picks up the New X-Men where Morrison left them, adds a character, and flings them into one exciting adventure after another. It's typical Whedon, so we get heaps of deadpan, witty repartee, some tough-as-nails women, plenty of relationship issues, lots of violence, and wouldn't you know it - dramatic twists and cliff-hangers! I quite liked the art. All four volumes are good. The drawback is that it's typical Whedon, and if you've seen enough of his TV work this will all start to seem kind of familiar. But enjoyable.

6. Supreme: The Story of the Year, by Alan Moore. 2002. 332 p.

With Alan Moore, the expectations are high. Supreme doesn't disappoint. Having started his career by deconstructing superheroes, Moore has more lately moved on to reconstructing them, to seeing how they work and celebrating what's great about them. With Supreme, Moore revamps a lousy Rob Liefield character (or is that adjective redundant when talking about Liefield's work?) and uses him to do a lengthy and insightful meditation on all things Superman. He plays with the changing nature of superhero stories (all those retcons!) and casts an affectionate eye on the DC Golden and Silver Ages. The style and quality of art varies quite a bit throughout the volume (in part intentionally, to evoke different eras) but the writing is consistently good. (The second volume, Supreme: The Return, is also pretty good and features a wonderful homage to Jack Kirby.)

5. Superman: Birthright, by Mark Waid. 2005. 314 p.

A clever yet sincere up-dating or reboot of the origins of the Man of Steel. It never became canonical but it's still a great new window on the character of Superman, on his compassion and moral power. And it's got a cool vision of the Kryptonians. Click here for the brief review from Say It Backwards that prompted me to read it.

4. The Invisibles, volume 2: Apocalipstick, by Grant Morrison. 2001. 208 p.

The Invisibles is not for those with weak stomachs, and it's bound to offend just about everyone at some point or another. And Morrison admits freely that he was experimenting with drugs while working on the series. He also says that it was designed to be grasped on the second or third read, rather than the first. My first-read impression is that it's a massive sprawling haphazard thing with one big-clever-Morrison-idea piled atop another. They don't always fit together all that well. And I think he's used some of those ideas more effectively elsewhere. But there's plenty of brilliance: from Barbelith to Totep to Triple-U! It's challenging, mystical, cryptical, bad-ass, anarchistic and strange. I think this volume was the most consistently excellent, with a few powerful one-shot tales and with a story arc focusing on transvestite shaman Lord Fanny.

3. Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, volume 1, by Jack Kirby. 2007. 396 p.

It's King Kirby. Of course it's awesome. It's larger-than-life, exploding-off-the-page, primary-colour awesome. You can actually use this book as a sacred relic to destroy vampires, zombies, bankers and other evil creatures. Just hold it up and shout "TAARU!!!" A blinding light, the Astro Force, will come forth, striking the evildoer and blasting it to oblivion with a mighty Kirby Crackle!! BAZOOM!!

Ahem. The other volumes (which I've been reading this year) are even better (if I were reviewing all four, they'd be at number one on this list.) Grant Morrison provides an almost-embarrassingly gushing introduction to this volume, in which he compares the Fourth World saga to the Bible, like, three or four times. I'm not sure I would have at first understood the awesome nature of the original New Gods if I hadn't been primed for it by Morrison's mythic interpretations of them. I might've been a noob and said: "Why is Jimmy Olsen trading quips with Don Rickles? Who are these newsboys? What the- death on skis??" But, really, you'd have to be blind to miss the raw primal creativity, the sheer cosmic wonder of it all: the flaming disembodied hand writing the commandments of the Source, the divine Mother Box, furious tormented Orion, forbidding majestic Darkseid, "TAARU!" and the Mountain of Judgment and... and... GEE WHIZ! Any children I have will grow up in a nursery that has big, brightly-coloured Jack Kirby characters stenciled on the walls. They'll grow up to be hero-artists, awesome, mighty, and strange.

2. Astro City: Confession, by Kurt Busiek. 1997. 208 p.

This book was electrifying. It knocked my socks off. The Confessor! The Cross-breed! The cover! I... wait, just read Paul's review here.

You should also read the first book, Astro City: Life in the Big City, which is very good. And the rest of the series. But Confession was my favourite. And it's got oodles of religious references. One of the most intriguing takes on religion that I've ever seen in a superhero comic.

1. Top Ten, book 1 by Alan Moore. 2001. 208 p.

Ok, I know I'll get flak for rating this above The Fourth World, The Invisibles, and Astro City. Those are classic works. But for humour and deft, quick character development, Top Ten was the most fun I had with a comic book in 2008. It's part of Moore's reconstruction effort which I mentioned above. In a city where everyone has superpowers, who watches the watchmen? The job falls to a motley group of officers at the 10th Precinct Police Station. Moore has a lot of fun with the backdrop, but it's the interactions amongst the police, and between them and "ordinary" citizens that make the book work. It feels like we're catching a glimpse of the diverse lives of some real people. Moore includes some fascinating religious characters, whom he treats with respect.

You should read Moore's second volume, as well as his prequel, Top Ten: The Forty-Niners (from 2006.) Don't bother reading Paul Di Filippo's contribution to the series, Beyond the Farthest Precinct. It's not the worse comic ever, but after seeing what Moore can do with these characters, it's disappointing to have them reduced to idiotic two-dimensional caricatures - the religious ones most of all. And the plot is largely lifted from PKD's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. You may also want to skip Smax, Moore's fantasy spin-off of Top Ten. It's got some good moments, but don't spend any money on it.

Absolute Kingdom Come

I wanted to point out the cover of the "Absolute" edition of Kingdom Come, which puts the story's religious symbolism right up front. It depicts the Spectre stepping out of a stained-glass window into the church pastored by Norman McCay. (McCay is modelled on Clark Norman Ross, the artist's father and a real-life minister.) Kingdom Come is mostly centered on Superman, but the Spectre is an interesting character in his own right. Created by Jerry Siegel (one of the creators of Superman) in 1940, he has over the years become one of the metaphysical/theological mainstays of the DC Universe. If there's a big mystical story to be told, the Spectre will usually get involved somehow. I mean, c'mon: a guy who can dramatically step out of a stained-glass window without breaking it is pretty cool.

At the Edge of the Mind of God

Whew. DC's epic Final Crisis event has come to a conclusion. I think it has certain flaws, but the main Grant Morrison storyline (laid out in Final Crisis & Superman Beyond) contains so many genius moments that I'll be re-reading it for years to come. One theme was divinity, and all the positive and negative variations of that concept. Morrison laid out some of his ideas in an interview over at IGN. Here are some of the more theological/metaphysical ones:

GN Comics: So if you'd go so far as to say the DC Multiverse is as real and as organic as anything, would you say that the story of Superman is its heart?

Morrison: Yeah, totally. Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He's a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He's like a sci-fi Jesus. He'll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That's just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.

A bit further on:

IGN Comics: I want to get to the Monitors and their overall role in Crisis and Beyond, especially the role played by Nix Uotan - am I saying that right?

Morrison: It's pronounced "Wotan." Every one of them is named after writer gods from different cultures. So Uotan is named after Odin or Wotan from the Norse/Germanic tradition. Ogama is Ogma from the Celtic gods. Hermuz is after Hermes the Greek god. Tahoteh is after Thoth the Egyptian god. Novu is after Nabu from the Babylonian pantheon…there's a ton of them. The women's names, Weeja Dell, Zillo Valla, were inspired by the greatest lost love of them all, Shalla-Bal from Stan Lee's Silver Surfer.

IGN Comics: So that kind of answers my question, which is that the Monitors all seem like analogs for storytellers. There seems to be this never-ending cycle of the stories affecting the storytellers and the storytellers affecting the stories and on and on.

Morrison: Yeah, it's a bit of that. It's also the idea that they're like angels as well. For me, the cool, essential idea of all stories being real creates this great cosmology to play with. It's the notion that the white page itself is a void, and in the context of the DC Universe, well that's God or The Source. In the white page, or the void, anything can happen, everything is possible. As I dug down closer to the very root of the activity I find myself engaged in as a career, I was thinking "what is the basis of the comic book story? What actually is it?"

In the case of comic book stories, it's the war between white page and ink. And who's to say that the page might want that particular story drawn on it? [laughs] What happens if the page is a bit pissed off at the story that's drawn on it? So I thought of the page as God. The idea being that the Overvoid – as we called it in Final Crisis - of the white page as a space is sort of God. And it's condensing stories out of itself because it finds inside its own gigantic white space, self-absorbed pristine consciousness, it finds this little stain or mark, this DC Multiverse somebody has 'drawn'. And it starts investigating, and it's just shocked with what it sees, with all the crazy activity and signifying going on in there. It then tries to protect itself from the seething contact with 'story' and imagines a race of beings, 'angels' or 'monitors' (another word for angel, of course) to function as an interface between its own giant eternal magnificence and this tiny, weird crawling anthill of life and significance that is the DC Multiverse.

Morrison goes on to talk about dualities (or symmetries) and unity:

IGN Comics: You get into that in Superman Beyond #2 with the Superman and Ultraman dynamic.

Morrison: Yeah. Again, on the very edge of the art and the edge of the mind of God there are these two big concepts fighting – Superman and Mandrakk, Predation and Protection, Greed and Preservation, Ugly and Beautiful, Youth and Age, Good and Evil, Black and White, Is and Isn't and all the others. Beyond that crumbling ledge in Monitor-World, those concepts don't exist and it's all non-dual Monitor mind, or God, or Kirby's Source, in which all contradictions are resolved into unity. It's funny, the more I talk about it, the more I'm getting into it!

It's well worth reading - after you read the comics, of course!
[via Ian]

Why Grant Morrison is wrong about religion (and right about ontology)

How did I miss this one? At Newsarama, Grant Morrison talks about religion, spirituality, and God. It's a bit annoying, frankly, mostly because he starts out with this:

I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely.

But it soon becomes clear that when Morrison says "religion" he means "church." Unsurprisingly, he doesn't like hierarchy, but he most certainly does believe in transcendence.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf just close your eyes and say hello: "god” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

Which is, in my mind,is pretty spot-on. It's an old idea called panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism), and it's been appearing in writing—religious writing—for centuries. What are process theology, Kabbalah, and Sufism if not religious? Morrison, it seems would call them "spirituality"—and he argues that "Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex."

I've always found the distinction between "religion" and "spirituality" unsatisfying. It's like people who argue that they hate science fiction, but that they love Orwell (for instance), or Margaret Atwood. 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale aren't SF, and why? because people who aren't SF fans like them. Their picture of SF is a caricature, just as the picture of "religion" as a cruel hierarchy is a caricature (and a mostly outmoded one at that. The most politically conservative churches have no hierarchy.) 

To Grant Morrison, to all those who draw a line between religion and spirituality, I say: it's okay. "Religion" is bigger than you think. There's room in here for lots of ideas. Just as the universe, in a panentheistic system, is part of God, spirituality is part of religion.

He talks about All-Star Superman some, too, and whether or not Superman is a Christ figure. Read that segment of Newsarama's 10-part interview here.

This post previously appeared in an ever-so-slightly different form at SF Gospel.

Please forgive me, Kurt Busiek

I went to Manitoba Comic Con this weekend, and I had a good time.

The highlight, for me, was meeting the person who is fast becoming my favourite comic book writer--Kurt Busiek. I tried to think of intelligent things to ask him, but I fear most of my questions were more along the lines of: "Did you know that you're Kurt Busiek?" or "What's it like to be so awesome?"

I see Busiek in many ways as an anti-Stan Lee; where Lee is responsible for humanizing and psychologizing super heroes, Busiek seems to be always working with Ironic heroes, and writing about them mythologically and even theologically. When asked, he said that what he wanted to do with Superman was to "do Superman right". He didn't want to do a twist on Superman--Superman the journalist or Superman the alien. He felt that those twists only work if you have a strong center to draw your tangents from. If the center isn't strong enough--if people aren't familiar with the iconic Superman, then none of the twists work either.

And I couldn't agree more. I love Kurt Busiek's writing, and my secret hope going to Manitoba Comic Con was to persuade him to become my best friend.

And then I told him that he wrote my favourite Superman comic--Superman Redemption. Except for three little details. Kurt Busiek didn't write "Redemption", I haven't read it, and I believe Gabriel McKee's review here when he says that it wasn't good.

What I have read, and Kurt Busiek did write, and I did actually like is Superman "Angel", which Gabriel McKee reviewed here, and which review I completely agree with.

Now I'm sure that Busiek isn't sitting around all tortured that some random fan in Winnipeg thinks he wrote an issue that he didn't. It's even possible that he liked Fabian Nicieza's "Redemption" comic, and that he's flattered that someone thought he wrote it. But even so. I feel the need to apologize.

So, Kurt Busiek, if you happen to be googling yourself and you happen upon this blog, I'm sorry. I actually liked the comic you wrote, not the one you didn't. Sorry. Please forgive me.

And be my best friend?

Superman, Christ and Morrison

Superman’s job is to fight for and inspire those who cannot fight for themselves. His job is to make this world a better place and to help all men realize their potential as supermen. Further to this, it’s important to keep in mind the Superman/Christ parallels WITHOUT being obvious and heavy-handed about them. Superman has to think differently from us, and when we see into his head, we should be shocked by the clarity and simplicity of his brilliance and compassion. This is a god sent to Earth not to suffer and die but to live and inspire and change the face of the galaxy by his deeds and reputation.

More on what Timothy Callahan, writer of "Grant Morrison: The Early Years", calls "the essence of Morrison's Superman" and how the recently completed All-Star Superman fits in with Morrison's attempts to reboot Superman in 2000 at Comic Book Resources.

Maggin for Congress

This is not an imaginary story: Elliot S! Maggin is running for Congress in the 2008 election in the 24th district of California. Of particular interest to us here at Holy Heroes will be his working out of his religious convictions with the comics experience. This quote says it all I think:

“Truth, justice and the American way” is my personal torah and I'll say so everywhere I go.

Whatever your political beliefs you've got to admit that's just too weird/cool. I wish I lived in California.

Find out more about Elliot S! Maggin's bid for the U.S. Congress

Batman and a Protestant Work Ethic

Batman's origin story is a different kind of origin from Superman's, just as Batman is fundamentally a different sort of hero from Superman.

Superman is the sole survivor of Krypton. When his planet was destroyed, he was sent to earth and raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent. He possesses amazing powers, and uses them to defend Truth, Justice and the American Way. But aspects of his story could be (and have been) changed, and he would still be a hero.

In Mark Miller's Superman Red Son, Kal-El lands in Russia instead of in America, and is as idealistic about communism as the traditional Superman is idealistic about democracy. He makes terrible mistakes along the way, but he remains a hero, doing everything he can to work for the good of all human beings.

Elliot S! Maggin, in The Greatest Green Lantern of All, suggests that had the planet not been destroyed, Kal-El would have been the Green Lantern for Krypton.

In other words, Superman is a hero, in some essential way. He is not the merely product of his circumstances. There is something heroic about his very nature--something ethereal that makes him heroic.

Batman, by contrast, has always been very straightforwardly the product of his circumstances. His parents are murdered in front of him, and he responds by vowing to battle criminals. This is the cornerstone of Batman. As Frank Miller (who for all his faults is probably the writer who best understands Batman) says "no murder, no Bat-Man".

This difference of dependance on circumstance explains why, though both characters have tragic pasts and both have been portrayed as tortured heroes, the tragic history of Batman has always been more palatable and memorable than the tragic history of Superman. Superman, the lone survivor of his race, utterly alone in the universe, somehow doesn't seem to be as tragic or as tortured as Batman, the multi-millionaire philanthopist. It even explains how it is Batman, not Superman, who has a reputation as a loner, even though Batman's Batcave is full of allies (Alfred, Nightwing, Robin, Huntress, Batgirl, Oracle, occasionally Catwoman and more) and Superman's Fortress of Solitude is, well, not.

Batman is not, however, solely a product of his circumstances. Above all, the heroic example of Batman is the ability to better oneself, by hard work and perseverance. Batman is an exemplar of a "protestant work ethic". Batman is not only enabled by grace to turn the evil situation of his parents' murder into good, he is ethically compelled to do so. He works because it is right so to do. Batman's training and work do not constitute a quest for redemption but rather an ethical imperative.

Together these two seminal heroes of the DC Universe encapsulate the paradoxical command of St. Paul: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, to will and to do."

So as Superman is a transcendent figure of divine intervention--salvation we have not earned from we know not where, Batman is a figure of the moral imperative to work out that salvation ourselves.

Action Comics #848

Action Comics #848
“Redemption, Part One: If You Believe, a Man Can Fly”
by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Allan Goldman (pencils), and Ron Randall (inks)
DC Comics

Fabian Nicieza—who, with Kurt Busiek, cowrote an excellent parable about faith and responsibility in Superman #659—takes a different approach to the same questions in Action Comics #848. The results, sadly, are frustrating at best. In the story’s opening pages we learn of a powerful metahuman named Redemption who serves as a protector to Christian missionaries in Nyasir, a small (imaginary) African country. The missionaries—members of the “First Church of Redemption”—have converted the Sakira tribe, but the government of Nyasir uses troops to systematically threaten and harass them. Redemption—whose powers stem from the faith that others have in him—accidentally kills several of these troops, prompting Superman to investigate the new superhuman and the church to which he belongs. When Nyasir’s government eventually kills the missionaries, Redemption attempts to avenge them, and Superman intervenes.

Unfortunately, the story is quite muddled, and its message is obscured. The setting—both temporally and geographically—is unclear. We know next to nothing about the missionaries, the Sakira tribe, or the government troops who threaten them. The story is structured as if we are supposed to view Redemption as the villain, but he is nowhere near as reprehensible as the jackbooted thugs he opposes. Superman muses that

"There is a fine line between having a belief, sharing a belief and imposing it. What happens if a metahuman crosses that line...?"

But is that what Redemption does? He’s not attempting to convert the Nyasirian troops, but rather to protect unarmed civilians from them. After he accidentally kills them (in self-defense), Superman states that “I don’t care to see carnage enabled behind the excuse of religion.” But given what the readers have witnessed, that’s a severe misinterpretation of what’s going on. Redemption seems to be, like Superman, a champion of the downtrodden; his only crime is lack of training. At the issue’s close, Superman confronts Redemption—who has just disarmed the Nyasirian troops without harming them—and declares “this ends now.” In this moment, Superman looks for all the world like the protector of a tyrannical dictatorship. How, exactly, does protecting unarmed missionaries from armed militias make Redemption a supervillain?

It’s possible that this story is intended to be a continued explorations of the themes so elegantly portrayed in Superman #659. But by neglecting to give us background, by failing to adequately explain the central character’s moral approach to the situation at hand, Nicieza turns this exploration into a confusing mess. The next issue will conclude the story, and it’s possible that some much-needed explanation follows. But given the bafflement of this issue, I have little faith that the saga of Redemption will reach a satisfying conclusion.

Superman, Wish Fulfilment, and Eschatalogical hope

Superman's roots are undeniably Jewish.

The co-creators of Superman, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster are both ethnically Jewish, although according to Gerard Jones' excellent history of the origin of superhero comics, The Men of Tomorrow, neither were relegious. Likewise, Harry Donnefield, the founder and first president of DC. Even Donnefield's sometime accountant sometime vice-president Jack Liebowitz was Jewish. All of these people were secular Jews and Siegal and Shuster disavowed or downplayed any influence of relgious Judaism on their works.

Siegal and Shuster's first Superman was in a short story written by Siegal and illustrated by Shuster. This story, titled The Reign of the Superman features a scientifically enhanced Nietzschian superman who reaks havok before being finally overcome. In 1933, as Hitler ascended to power in Germany, calling himself the Nietzschian superman, Siegal and Shuster re-imagined Superman as a hero.

It may be a coincidence that the two Jewish young men's creation of a heroic superman coincided with Hitler's rise, or it may not. Regardless, Shuster and Siegal's creation eventually sold, and in popular consciousness the Superman was forever linked with protecting the weak, instead of with the use of power to dominate and destroy the weak.

Superman is the ultimate immigrant: he comes from some other place, and lands in America. He masquarades as one of them, but at his core he isn't. As Clark Kent he seems meek and weak and easily pushed around, but behind his secret identity he is a powerful warrior for good. He's not an American, but he fights for the American Way.

Even deeper than the political symbolism is the religious symbolism of Superman. Superman is rooted firmly in the talmadic injuction to do good for its own sake. He is, in short, a very Jewish superman, and his strength comes with a moral compass.

Kal-El's arrival in a basket is strongly reminiscent of Moses' appearance in a basket in Exodus. The Exodus is the central story of the Torah, and its most significant instance of salvation. As such, Moses is the most important saviour in the story of Israel. Superman is a Moses figure in more than his appearance as a baby in a basket, but also in that he is a saviour, whether that means in his very person symbolically saving Krypton from complete extinction, or saving an man from being wrongfully executed for a crime he didn't commit, as he did in his very first appearance. For much of his history, and especially in his original incarnation, Superman spent more of his time protecting the innocent than fighting supervillains.

Yet since Moses is a prophetic precurser of the Messiah, Superman is also a Messiah figure. He is a Messiah figure even before he is a Christ figure. This distinction requires some clarification.

Though as most Christians and Jews already know, "Christ" (Greek) and "Messiah" (Hebrew) both mean "Annointed One", the terms are, especially for Jews, not synonomous. I use "Christ" to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, but "Messiah" to refer to the promised savour of the Jews. As a Christian myself, I believe that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but a distinction is still helpful.

But Superman is a Messiah figure even before he is a Christ figure. He represents the Jewish eschatological hope of salvation, the hope of God's intervention, the hope that things will not always be as they are now. Superman symbolises the Jewish conviction that the world can be better than this.

Superman is often accused of being adolescent wish-fulfillment in action: a super-strong hyper-masculine muscleman created by two geeks, a bullet-proof man created by Jerry Siegal, whose father was shot dead by a petty thief. He is all of this. But even more than this, Superman, despite Siegal and Shuster's supposed secularism, is a Jewish messiah figure--a personification of the hope of Judaism. He is a protector of the weak and champion of good in a world with too much evil.