Wednesday, June 20, 2012

God-Man

Ruben Bolling is the best comic strip writer working today, and I don't read any other comic strips to even be able to properly judge, so you know it must be true! When I had the idea to do Bible Stories five years ago, I first did some searches to see if anyone was doing anything similar already. No one was (luckily), but (also luckily) I ran across "God-Man," a character that appears from time to time in Bolling's strip, Tom the Dancing Bug.

The major complaint about Superman is that he's too powerful, even spinning time backward when things don't go his way. Ruben Bolling takes this flaw to the extreme with God-Man, the superhero with omnipotent powers. Usually God-Man gets the bad guy or "narrowly" escapes by changing the laws of physics or blowing up the world and starting over or moving characters to an alternate universe. Bolling also uses God-Man to comment on perceptions of God himself, such as the strip where God-Man refuses to save a woman who doesn't believe in him, or when Science-Hero is "defeated" when the people thank God-Man for "causing" Science-Hero to develop a vaccine to save them from an outbreak of disease.

Recently, to show my appreciation of Bolling's work, I bought him a compilation of Archie comics. I received this in return:


A rare case where the thank you card is worlds better than the gift. His drawing was in black-and-white, but I decided to color it (in Photoshop--don't worry: I preserved the original drawing) so that I could pretend that we collaborated on something... and because coloring is fun.

Being thanked by God-Man is the next best thing to being thanked by God himself.

Read Tom the Dancing Bug each week, or go to this fan site if you wanna get caught up on your God-Mans. God Blog approved!