SECOND COMING - SerioComics 70 + Q&A with Writer Mark Russell
How I Met Mark Russell!
Back in March.
I flew to Seattle.
To attend Emerald City Comic Con.
After receiving a press pass for SerioComics.
Mark Russell was one of the many comics makers I met.
I had heard of him from his previous work with Shannon Wheeler.
Their book God Is Disappointed In You.
Shannon was the subject of SerioComics 60 and wrote a blurb of SWBAG?
And I had purchased but hadn’t finished Mark’s Second Coming.
When I met him he seemed supremely confident.
Like he knew he had made one of his life’s works.
With the Second Coming series.
So I was excited to buy the second book.
Fully check out both.
And do this Q&A with him!
Mark Russell
Mark Russell is an author, comic book writer, and cartoonist living and toiling in Portland, Oregon. The works he is known for include God Is Disappointed in You, a modern re-telling of the Bible, The Flintstones, Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles (Winner of the 2019 GLAAD Award for Outstanding Comic), Not All Robots (Winner of the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Humor Comic), and Superman: Space Age, which tells the story of Superman and his loved ones, living against the backdrop of Cold War America. As far as he knows, all his books are still in print.
SECOND COMING
In this acclaimed, controversial graphic novel, God commands Earth’s mightiest super-hero, Sunstar, to accept Jesus as his roommate and teach him how to use power more forcefully. Jesus, shocked at the way humans have twisted his message over two millennia, vows to straighten them out.
The book everyone’s talking about, by award-winning writer Mark Russell (Snagglepuss, The Flintstones) and artist Richard Pace (Pitt, New Warriors)! God commands Earth’s mightiest super-hero, Sunstar, to accept Jesus as his roommate and teach him how to use power more forcefully. Jesus, shocked at the way humans have twisted his message over two millennia, vows to straighten them out.
What a Concept with such Depth!
As someone who loves to mix religion with pop culture.
With my parody haggadahs.
And upcoming The Enneagram Superheroes…
I love this concept that combines Jesus and a Superman like character.
Into sort of a buddy cop comedy dynamic.
Jesus is the peaceful foil to the powerful Sunstar.
That also shows how much America and other power structures have conflated Jesus’ message into super power.
What’s surprising is how much depth there is as well.
Russell received so much controversy that the comic was initially cancelled at DC/Vertigo.
But if you read it, he actually stays quite true to depicting a respectful version of Jesus.
And a deep interpretation of the bible.
Visuals are a mixture of Superhero and Religious Tone
Interestingly there are two artists in this comic.
Which is somewhat rare in indie comics.
Though this was inititally a DC/Vertigo one.
Richard Pace and Leonard Kirk are the two illustrators.
Pace is said to have focused on the Supermnan/Sunstar art.
While Kirk is said to have finished the Jesus art.
The two different aesthetics are able to show two different worlds.
To great effect.
A man of peace vs a man of action
One of the most interesting things about reading this comic for me.
Was that the central theme.
Jesus is a man of peace.
And Sunstar is a man of action.
It’s very similar to the theme of Should We Buy A Gun?
It’s essentially another debate book.
Where the plot revolves around their difference.
Pacifism vs Defense.
And how to resolve it.
I won’t say exactly how that happens.
But it’s incredibly surprising…
Q&A with Mark Russell
1. SerioComics: Second Coming about a Superman like character (Sunstar) and Jesus becoming friends is one of the best concepts I've ever seen. And the execution is phenomenal. How did you come up with this brilliant conceit? Was it an idea you had been saving until you were ready for it? Had anything like it been done before?
Mark Russell: Originally, it was two ideas that got melded into one. I had an idea for a series about Superman and Lois Lane trying to have a baby even though belonging to two different species and an idea about God worrying about his son when Christ returns to Earth. It occurred to me that these were both stories about fatherhood and power, so I combined them into a single idea. And, no, for better or for worse, I think it's a pretty original idea. I haven't encountered much like it in the wild.
2. SerioComics: Your style is very seriocomic to me. Because there are both ironic and satirical elements that remind me of 90s humor. But also very serious and smart references to religion and culture that could come from a mythology professor. How did this imitable tone come into being? What were your influences and touchstones?
Mark Russell: I wanted this comic to be, first and foremost, about something. What I didn't want to do was to just turn this story into a sitcom with a bunch of jokes crowded into a phone booth. I wanted it to explore the themes of power and belief systems and how these beliefs go wrong because, in the end, we believe in pretty simple things, whereas the institutions we create around those beliefs are very complicated. The fact that we create barriers between ourselves and things we want from life spawns a lot of humor. But the humor isn't the point. Among my influences was the book I wrote about the Bible (God Is Disappointed in You) and the theological questions researching the Bible created for me. Particularly regarding the life and mission of Christ.
3. SerioComics: You hint at the difficulties publishing this book. I could probably Google and find out more about it. But did it have more to do with blasphemy or with copyright? Because you push hard in both directions, the theological and the pastiche. Also regarding publishing, can you talk to us about how you worked with such a big team of artists? Do you rewrite based on layouts or push for changes in the visuals?
Mark Russell: There was a short-lived but intense censorship campaign directed at this comic when it was going to be published at Vertigo. A lot of culture war articles about how DC was publishing a "blasphemous" comic and an online petition to get DC to drop the title. But this was all before anyone had read a single page of the comic so I think it had less to do with actual concerns about sacrilege or whatever than it had with certain toxic elements within the Christian faith feeling like this was sort of a copyright issue. That Christ was somehow their intellectual property and we shouldn't be making a comic about him. They wanted to reserve the right to create God in their own image.
4. SerioComics: I published a graphic novel Should We Buy A Gun? about a pacifist progressive couple introduced to self-defense after a mugging, which has very similar themes to your Jesus man of peace and Superman-like man of action schema. Without revealing too much, can you talk to us about Jesus' arc in the end of book one. Did you always know he was going to become a man of action, or did that surprise you as you wrote it? I am also working on a spirituality + superhero mashup called The Enneagram Superheroes. It teaches the psychological/spiritual system of The Enneagram through nine superhero origin stories of how the archetypes liberated themselves from their worlds. I noticed after reading your work that my book has a lot more education and teaching of The Enneagram than it does superhero action and plot. How do you recommend finding balance between narrative drive and entertainment with education in spiritually infused comics?
Mark Russell: I always knew that Christ was going to try to start his own church to compete with the megachurches and set people straight on what his teachings are and what he came to Earth to do. One thing that did sort of surprise me as I started writing was how big of a character Satan became. Satan wasn't even in my original idea for the comic but not only does he give the story focus, he himself kind of becomes a sort of tragic figure. He sees himself as the son of God who never got the love that Christ did. Everything he did was to get God's love, or barring that, his respect. Or, barring that, at least his attention.
As for writing a comic like this, I don't think of it in terms of striking a balance so much as figuring out what your themes are always bringing the story back to those. I try to think of one moment that I think really defines what I think inspired me to write that issue. It could be a story Christ is telling about his childhood, or Sunstar attacking the wrong villain, or Sheila Sharp trying to retain her integrity as a journalist when most of her stories are about her husband. And then I build the rest of the plot around that one idea.
5. SerioComics: Finally for readers new to your work, or already hooked, what should we explore in your back catalogue, and what's coming soon?
Mark Russell: One title I'm very proud of is Traveling to Mars. My story of the first manned mission to Mars. A mission undertaken, not for exploration, but so a corporation can claim all the mineral wealth on the planet. And they accomplish this by finding a terminally ill man who's willing to go and die there. Also, an older title but one which I think is especially relevant now, is Billionaire Island. A story about billionaires creating an artificial island in the Gulf of Mexico to escape the end of the world, of which they are the cause.