Our Gods Wear Spandex

May 18, 2008 on 1:15 am | In 2.5 Stars |

Our Gods Wear Spandex
By Chris Knowles
(Weiser Books, 2007)

In OUR GODS WEAR SPANDEX, author Christopher Knowles examines comics as a form of modern storytelling passing down achetypes from the most ancient of civilizations, societies and religions.

But was the book any good? Quite honestly, I think it fell just a little short of what I was hoping for.

It opens with a very detailed history of religion and mythology, and how it gave rise to occultism and mysticism. Then it follows that into the involvement of literary figures (Poe, Lovecraft, Doyle, etc.) which then begat the pulps and then eventually begat the comics. It’s a solid evolution, but it suffers greatly in its segregation of topics. The first half of the book is all about religion, with very little to do about comics. The middle is about literature and social trends, and then in its third act it picks up about comics, with little to do with religion, reaching for connections to stories told in the first half of the book.

I think the author is 100 percent right in his claims that comics are an ancient form of storytelling and modern mythology, and I think the examples he uses are generally spot on. I just think they suffer in this book from being separated and isolated from one another. It seems like he felt he had to give us the background on religion first, and then show us how comics have translated it.

A better outline, I think, would have been to jump right into the history of comics, told chronologically and pulling aside at times to expand on how the characters represent religious aspects. By separating them as he’s done, the author separates also the characters from the religions to which he’s trying to tie them. It was all so separated that at times it felt like I was reading two — sometimes even three –- different books. There didn’t seem to be a strong connectivity between the themes, but they were certainly there if you were willing to look hard for them and remember every word and statement about everything he wrote from page one. I personally don’t have that kind of memory, and I envy and fear the relatively few people in the world who do.

I also think he suffers from Intentional Fallacy — applying critical readings to stories that may not have intended it. A good example of this is Superman.

The author claims Superman is a Messiah figure, like Christ. Certainly it’s easy enough to see, but what he fails to recognize (or at least, he spends too little time on) is that Superman was created by Jewish creators. If religion played any role in Superman’s creation, it’s more likely that he was created as Moses figure (which the author does touch upon), and later down the road adopted the more recognizable traits of Christianity for which he’s known today. Yes, Superman is a Jesus-Christ-figure today, but that doesn’t mean it was the intention of his creators 70 years ago. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that it would have been.

(NOTE: You can expect to read more about the Judeo-Christian allegories in Superman in a number of upcoming reviews. Stay tuned!)

To be fair, however, literary critics have applied the very same interpretations to everything from Chaucer to Crichton since the dawn of criticisms. It’s what they do, and while they’re often interesting and valid parallels, they are rarely the intended meaning.

In all, I think the author almost nails it. It’s a great book with great analysis and revealing comparisons. It’s only major fault is that it fails to combine the two aspects of comics and religion at once, choosing instead a “this and that” format.

I’d give this book a rating of two-and-a-half out of four stars.