Issue 07: Marvel’s Christian Comics (Part 1)

Alright, everybody. Gather round. It's time we talked about how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus. Twice. 

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Episode 7 Transcription

[00:00:00] Mike: is there anything more offensive than lazy comic books?

 

Welcome to Tencent takes the podcast where we apologize for comic books ends one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined as always by my co-host, the celebrated comedian, Jessika Frazer.

Jessika: Hello. Hello.

Mike: How are you doing?

Jessika: Oh, I'm pretty good, wild week, but I mean, we have comics to go with.

Mike: Comics make everything better.

Jessika: It's true.

Mike: If you're new to the show, the purpose of this podcast is to look at comics in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're [00:01:00] woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history.

Today, we’re venturing out of our fool's paradise and checking out how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus through not one, but two runs of Christian comics.

Jessika: Gawd, you almost wished they had stopped. 

Mike: It’s a ride.

Jessika: It's such a ride.

Mike: Before we get started though, Jess, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately?

Jessika: Well, I am very excited about what I'm about to share. And I was recently at my local comic shop and grabbed the first copy and started a subscription for the comic Alice in Leatherland by Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli and published through Black Mask Entertainment.

Mike: Oh, Black Mask is awesome. They're a smaller imprint, but they were super supportive of local shops when the lockdown happened.

Jessika: Oh, that's lovely. I'm really glad I supported them then.

Mike: Yeah. I, if I remember right, Brian’s, our [00:02:00] local shop in Petaluma, they did a deal where Brian's was talking about it, and basically they had, if you did a direct order from them, they would split the revenue 50, 50, as long as you provided the name of the local shop.

Jessika: Oh, that's so nice.

Mike: Yeah, they're rad. I really liked them a lot.

Jessika: I already really liked this comic. I mean, I'm one issue in. 

Mike: Yeah. I haven't heard of it.

Jessika: Oh, it's amazing. It's queer. You know, I love me some queer content. It's emotional. The animation style right now is monochromatic and detailed. So I'm interested to see if the color vibe continues that way, or if it goes in another direction, kind of, as the story continues.

Mike: Okay.

Jessika: The storyline seems like it's going to take us on a really fun sex and kink positive adventure, and I'm excited to see what the next issue brings us.

Mike: That sounds really cool.

Jessika: Yeah. What about you?

Mike: Well, I have not been reading new comics, it’s kind of the opposite of [00:03:00] that. I finally got my old comic collection from my parents' house and I've been digging through it for the past couple of days. 

Jessika: Nice. 

Mike: Yeah, it's, it's a time capsule.  And it's also, it's, it's a lot of fun to see what I was reading and also cringe a little bit, but also see that in some cases I had really good taste and that collection is appreciated better than some people's stock portfolios, I’m sure. So that was kind of cool to find the first appearance of Bain in the middle of the box.

Jessika: Oh, that's cool. So you curated that collection, it wasn't like things that were kind of given to you or was it a combination?

Mike: It was a little bit of both. But I mean, I started, I started really collecting comics when I was about nine or 10, and so it was, it was several long boxes. So, you know, the first appearance of He-Man was in there as well. And then, one of the things  that I actively collected was a comic series called X, and it was from Dark Horse in the early 1990s.

So. [00:04:00] Dark Horse was using this in a couple of other books to launch their shared superhero universe. And X was this really interesting  take on a Batman kind of figure. He was this character who would mark criminals with an X. If you crossed him, you'd receive a slash across your face as a warning, or you'd be marked for death with a full X. So.

Jessika: Damn.

Mike: Yeah.  A large part part of the character is the mystery around him and his abilities and the writers weren't afraid to let it stay a mystery for the most part. It's very much one of those, you know, grim and gritty nineties books, but it's also pretty good on the reread. It doesn't quite age as well as, as I would hope it would. But for the most part, it's really fun.

Jessika: That's great. It's always nice. When things meet your expectations, most of the way.

Mike: Most of the way.

Jessika: On the reread. 

Mike: I'm not embarrassed to like 80% of what came across.

Jessika: I dig that.

[00:05:00] 

Mike:  Well, after our last episode, I found myself thinking of weird Christian comics that I've come across and I realized I actually have some in my collection. So I started digging, and then I wound up digging some more, and it turns out Marvel had two different runs of very different comics for Christian audiences.

And this is a first for us, we’re going to do this as a two-part episode. So we're going to talk about the first run tonight, but we're also going to talk around some of the background with Marvel and religion.

Jessika: I'm so excited for this. You have no idea. I've been thinking about it all week as I've been reading these again, bananagrams comics, but like bananagrams in a totally different way than the last ones we read.

Mike: It's a very mixed bag this time around.

Jessika: Ooh, scary mixed.

Mike: Yeah, Marvel and the Bible never really had a strong relationship, although ,they've done some flirtation every now and then.  Back [00:06:00] in 1953 Atlas, which is the publisher that would become Marvel eventually, they had a short-lived series called Bible Tales for Young Folk, which adapted iconic stories from the Bible for younger readers, but it only ran for five issues.

So I'm gonna put that in a little bit of perspective: comics circulation in the 1950s was still incredibly high, partially due to the fact that televisions weren't as commonplace as they would be by the end of the decade.  Do you remember when our first episode I mentioned,  that only 9% of us households had TVs at the start of the decade versus 90% by the end?

Jessika: Yes. Yeah, I do remember that.

Mike: Yeah. So I came across an article that actually talks about the average comic sales per month in 1959. What do you think that number was like what the average circulation of comic books, the entire market.

Jessika: 1959. Well, gosh, they had comics that they were  sending through the army and everything. Gawd, it had to have been in the millions.

Mike: Yeah, 26 million.

[00:07:00] Jessika: Wow, wow wow wow.

Mike: So it was, it was pretty substantial, and the fact that a comic series based on the Bible only sold well enough to last five issues during that insane circulation period is pretty telling about what kids were and weren't interested in reading. But anyway, overt at Christian iconography and characters generally haven't appeared in Marvel's books too often. Certain characters like Daredevil and Nightcrawler are strongly defined by their respective Christianities, but it's generally just treated as faith. It's not identified as the quote true religion. And Marvel's actually made a good point in recent years of setting up a complex Pantheon of gods, so it makes it seem like there's no wrong religion to follow.  Side note though, one of my favorite comic details is that Dr. Doom had a recent confrontation with Dracula and he revealed he had splinters of the true cross in his armor as a vampire deterrent. I thought that was just chef's [00:08:00] kiss.

Jessika: Oh, wow.

Mike: It was great.  Jesus himself never really appeared in mainstream Marvel books though. There's been occasional messages or sometimes you'll see the  iconography or occasionally there'll be cameos as well. But honestly, the most notable appearance that I'm aware of was in the 1970s with Ghost Rider.

 In the 1970s Ghost Rider comic, when a mysterious character only identified as a friend shows up to save Ghost Rider on occasion.  It was very clearly meant to be Jesus, but this character was eventually retconned to be an illusion created by the demon Maphisto. This is one of those things that's just, it's so weird, I want to take a moment to focus on it. So writer, Tony Isabella, who is actually the guy who created Black Lightning, which I know you've been reading a bit of lately.

Jessika: Yeah!

Mike:  So he explained how this character came to be in an interview a while [00:09:00] ago with Comics Buyer's Guide. Would you like to read what he said out loud for our audience?

Jessika: Certainly

Mike: Alright. 

Jessika: Getting prior approval from editor, Roy Thomas, as I would from later editors, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. I introduced “the Friend” into the series. It looked sort of like a hippie Jesus Christ. And that's exactly who He was, though I never actually called Him that. It allowed me to address the disparity that had long bothered me about the Marvel Universe. So we had no end of Hells and Satan surrogates in our comics, we had nothing of heaven. After two years, I had written a story wherein, couched in  mildly settled term, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever. Had I remained on Ghost Rider which was my intent at the time the titles [00:10:00] religious elements would have faded into the background.  Blaze would be a Christian, but he'd express this in a way you led his life. Unfortunately, an assistant editor took offense at my story. The issue was ready to go and the printer, when he pulled it back and ripped it to pieces, he had some of the art redrawn and a lot of the copy rewritten to change the ending of a story two years in the making.  The friend was revealed to be not Jesus, but a demon in disguise.  To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrongheaded actions I've ever seen from an editor.

Mike: Someone's still got feelings about this.

Jessika: Feelings,

Mike: All capitals.

Jessika: Salty. 

Mike: That assistant editor that he's talking about has been later identified as Jim Shooter, who eventually became Marvel's Editor-In-Chief in 1978. Shooter's kind of an interesting guy. He's [00:11:00] hailed as the person who really righted Marvel’s ship after a lot of prolonged instability.

So during his tenure, there were a lot of acclaimed runs and storylines, like all those Saturday morning cartoons we talked about in our first episode, those all happened under his watch. So, you know, you can't say that he didn't do a good job, but a number of major industry figures have also gone on record to state that he forced a lot of editorial decisions on people working for him.

 Interestingly, though, Shooter actually gave a video interview last year where he actually addressed Isabella's description. He said he was concerned about the Jesus' storyline, because it would have quote, basically established the Marvel universe as a Christian universe and that all of the religions were false and he felt that would have alienated other readers.

Jessika: That's kinda how I feel about it.

Mike: Aye. I can't say I disagree with them, but I can also see Isabella’s [00:12:00] point. Um, I don't know what the right answer would have been, but it's an interesting moment of comic history.

Jessika: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike:  Now the funny thing is that the first comics that we're going to talk about actually were published by Marvel when it was running under shooter's guidance. So two of these were co-written by Roy Gasnick. Gasnick himself is also a pretty fascinating guy.  He basically spent the entirety of his adult life in the Franciscan order. He wound up serving as the Director of Communications for the Franciscan Province of the East Coast Holy Name Province, which was headquartered in New York. And he worked there for 18 years and he dealt a lot with the media.

He was also a big believer in civil rights, and apparently he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Not what I would have expected.

Jessika: No, like the whole end of that, I was like, oh, oh, oh, okay. All right. 

Mike: Yeah.  And granted I'm reading largely obituaries about them. And so they're going to [00:13:00] paint them in a good light, but to recap, his public image is that he was a dude who devoted himself to the church for basically his entire life.  He wrote best-selling comic books and he fought for others' rights.

So kind of interesting.  It sounds like the proverbial cool priest that everybody wants to be.

Jessika: it's that priest you call uncle? No, don't do that.

Mike: No.

Jessika: There were one of the comics that did that.

Mike: Yeah. Yep.

Jessika: I didn't like it. It was, it was really creepy. I was like, no, you took it too far.

Mike: Yeah, it was the Pope

Mike: Yeah, it's, it's really awkward because it's the Pope and you're just like, oh, oh, I don't know a Catholic priest who wants young men to call him uncle, I don't know how I feel about that.

Jessika: Yeah. 

Mike: okay. So Gasnick wrote the first comic that we're going to talk about, which is Francis Brother of the Universe.

This is a book that came out in [00:14:00] 1980 and it was actually published in order to celebrate  the saint’s 800th birthday. It would have been 1981 or 82. His actual birthday has been lost to history, they just know it was really late in one year or really early in the other year,

Jessika: Hmm.

Mike: But  effectively, it tells the life story of Saint Francis, which has definitely taken on a mythological quality  since he reformed the church about 800 years ago. Jessika, would you do me a favor and describe the cover of this comic? Because it is a trip.

Jessika: It is a trip. Okay. So it is first of all, at the very top in the box that would usually have the comics code, the little emblem, it actually has Francis himself with like a Wolf. It says 75 cent one first issue, Marvel Comics Group Francis, [00:15:00] Brother of the Universe, his complete life story, and okay guys, this is exciting.

It is an exciting cover. So first you see a guy on horseback, medieval guy on horseback and it's white horse, and he's got a sword in the air and it's cutting through the text at the top and there's fighting behind him in a big cloud. And then there, then you see bald Francis. We're going to talk about why is he bald?

Okay. It's like, why do you have to do that? Like, just get rid of the whole thing. I dunno. Anyway, so bald Francis, and then you've got, you know, another guy, I think it was also Francis. I think this is all Francis.

Mike: That, that, is young Francis. 

Jessika: Young Francis on a table with a cup he's like screaming into, you know, a

crowd. 

Mike: Hosting a party at a Tavern like you do.

Jessika: That's right.

Yeah. Hosting a, yeah he was a big [00:16:00] party hoster that's right. And then you've gone him with the Pope when he's the monk or he's with some other type of religious leader of some sort. And then he's got his back to  the viewer and his arms are outstretched and there's light coming down onto him.

It looks like he's about to be beamed up into heaven. There's doves behind him.

Mike: It should be noted that this is a wraparound cover, too.

Jessika: It is a wraparound. I'm sorry. I, yeah, I'm describing the back now. Oh, and

then there’s.

Mike: It is a work of art man.

Jessika: It is a work of art. It's really pretty, it's very colorful. It's all very eye catching.  There's more fighting.  There's, a sultan or a king and then there's Francis singing at the bottom is he is just singing his little merry heart out.  It is, it's a fun cover.

Mike: Yeah. And it, it does a really nice job of being very visually attractive, and it also showcases  a lot of the big moments from the comic itself.

[00:17:00] Jessika: Yeah. Agreed.

Mike: Yeah. So the book’s origin is another one of those examples of the power in asking that we talked about during the Highlander episode. So the way this happened was Jean Pelc, who was Marvel's representative in Japan in the seventies,  he was a devoted Catholic and  he was regularly attending mass at the Franciscan Chapel center.

And according to the forward in the comic. He was having coffee with two friars who asked him, why don't you do a book on St. Francis and reportedly Pelc thought about it for about a minute and then said, yeah, sure. Why not?

Jessika: I thought that was funny.

Mike: I thought it was great.  So as I mentioned, the comic story was overseen by Gasnick.

He basically kind of oversaw the dialogue and the general story, but he didn't write the script. The comic script was written by Mary Jo Duffy, who had recently been reading Marvel Star Wars series in the seventies. [00:18:00] And then it was illustrated by Eisner Hall of Fame member, John Buscema, who is a legend in the industry, but he's one of those pencilers who basically became a patron Saint for other comic professionals.

So, Buschema’s involvement feels especially relevant in this case, because this is a medieval comic. And one of the comics that he really worked on a lot was Conant the Barbarian. So he was really very much in his element. And you can tell because the art in this book is great.

Jessika: Oh, it's amazing.

Mike: Yeah. Marvel clearly believed in this book and they put some serious talent behind it.

What was your overall reaction or impression of the comic? I'm curious.

Jessika: I feel like this is the type of religious comic that kids won't get embarrassed over liking.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: It's got adventure, it's colorful, and those cheeks could cut glass. I was im, I was [00:19:00] impressed.

Mike: Yeah,

Jessika: There were, of course the subversive, like white supremacists tones when they were talking about the good people and all the floating heads were Caucasian. So thanks for that, everyone.

Mike: Yeah. Which I mean, Not great, but also it was the seventies. And also they're talking about medieval Europe, which was not the most racially sensitive environments.

Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is true. But also loving that a lot of these guys low-key operated, like co-leaders like St. Francis even got a whole acapella group together to hang out with his cult.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: Sounds pretty rad until the leader gets the incurable stigmata. That seems like it would be a real bummer.

Mike: Yeah. He and he clearly has untreated PTSD, like, you know, from his time where he was held in the dungeon for a couple of years. 

Um, you know, and like that's the whole thing is that he's, he's a prisoner of [00:20:00] war. And then he starts hearing voices.

Jessika: Mm, mm,

Mike: Like, you know, and granted it's, you know, this is Catholic propaganda, so it's presenting it as, oh no, he heard the divine call and he answered and he gave up everything and blah, blah, blah.  I'm with you. I personally, I really dug it. So the funny thing is that when I was 11, I came across a copy of this and the kid's school room for Sunday school. And I really fell in love with it. Like, I basically just didn't want to actually pay attention to Sunday school and they were doing all  the actual religious study activities. And so I would just sit in the corner and read this, and they couldn't really get mad at me because I was reading about a religious leader who the church was named after. So. Hmm. But you know, it felt like a fantasy comic more than anything else. And when I re-read it, this week, I was struck by both the art and the storytelling being as good as they were like, yes, it’s, as I said, it's [00:21:00] Catholic propaganda, but it's good propaganda.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: So. According to Gasnick's obituary, this comic was actually the best-selling single issue in Marvel history at the time. And, you know, clearly that record has been shattered a few times since then.  It apparently moved more than a million issues, which in 1980 was like, unheard of.

I couldn't find a resource to fact check this though, because all the sites that track comic sales numbers don't seem to go that far back, or at least they don't yet, but it was clearly popular enough to spawn a couple of other related comics that I've seen referred to on the web as the Saint series.

 That's where we're going to go next. Following the success of Francis brother of the Universe, Marvel launched Pope John Paul II's biographical comic, which it's a thing.

Jessika: It happened.

Mike: Yeah. So this was, again, one of those books where Marvel really put some talent behind it. They had art [00:22:00] by John, I’m going to butcher his last name, Tartaglione, I believe.  But he was known for doing historically accurate work with his art. And then the book was written by Steven Grant who went on to write the first Punisher series for Marvel in the eighties.

Jessika: Hmm.

Mike:  And then he would go on to write Dark Horse’s 1990 series, X.  Full circle, baby.

Jessika: Here we are.

Mike: Yeah. Would you be willing to provide a quick summary of the book?

Jessika: Oh, certainly. I like the evil laugh too, that’s just perfect. So this follows the life and spiritual journey of Pope John Paul II. And, it does this very Tarantino's thing where it starts with the assassination attempt against his life. And it goes back to earlier in his life to tell the story of how he got to that point, [00:23:00] which oddly enough, involves a lot of hiding theater from Nazis. True, true. It then discusses how he gained interest in the church, how he rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and eventually was selected as Pope, which leads us back to his assassination attempt from which he recovers.

Mike: And then that's where the book ends because his assassination attempt had only happened a year or two prior. But the funny thing is that it doesn't start with the assassination attempt. I thought it did, too, until I was reading up on it. So that's where it's weird. So the comic opens at his 1979 visits to Yankee stadium.  And it spends so much time there.  When we're not being shown his life. That it feels like the assassination attempt also took place there, 

Jessika: Oh, I that's. I did think that you're right.

Mike: Yeah, but like, that's the thing is he wasn't actually shot until two years later in ’81 when he was back at the Vatican and it's very vaguely shown [00:24:00] and that's only one page after everyone is leaving the stadium.

So the first time I read it, I thought he basically got shot at the stadium as well, because it's super vague. They only show you that one kind of like small frame where you see a gun being held high. You don't even, it's just a hand holding a gun and that's it.

And I mean, I get it. You don't want to show the Pope getting shot in a Pope propaganda comic, but it was one of the things that was actually pretty brutal, in real life. Like, he got shot multiple times and lost a lot of blood and they didn't know if he was gonna make it. 

Jessika: Oh yeah. 

Mike: And then later on, he went on to basically forgive and become friends with his would-be assassin.

Jessika: Oh, wow.

Mike: It's very strange, but it, but it feels like a very Catholic turn the other cheek kind of story. 

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: Honestly, as I was writing all my notes on this episode, I thought that he had been shot at Yankee stadium. And then I had to go back and [00:25:00] reread that section specifically.

And it’s not obvious unless you pay very close attention to the dialogue.

Jessika: There, this has to be spring, like a whole generation’s worth of kids thinking that the Pope was shot in America. 

Mike: Well, especially now because we're so like gun fetish oriented or what is it? Ammo-sexual. That's the word that I keep on hearing. We're we're a nation of ammo-sexuals.

Jessika: I am tickled by that.

Mike: Yeah. You can thank Sarah for that one.

Jessika: Oh, she's amazing.

Mike: Yeah. I don't know why she's with me, but I'm not complaining. Um, so how did you feel about this comic?

Jessika: I think they did a good job making a continually captivating storyline, especially as biographies go, all things considered. It was funny because I was picking up some super queer vibes from him. The whole, like, not just the whole [00:26:00] theater thing, cause that's, that's a generalization I don't follow necessarily, but it's just, it was that whole, like having his actor friend move in with him so they could continue practicing their craft, as it was.  I'm just like, man, I've heard that before.  And yes, we hear you loud and clear.

Mike: Well, and I mean, you know, like it portrays his younger life and he is shown as a, being an alter boy and very devoted to the church. And then, and this is for anyone who is not familiar with the life of Pope John Paul, he became really interested in theater after his brother died. And he went and visited his brother's friends who were a theater troupe.

And so he got super into theater and there's a note about how a priest really wanted him to join the priesthood, and they were like, oh no, he's like, he, yeah, he's a great orator and all that, and he's got a wonderful presence, but he's going to be an actor. And the priest was apparently heartbroken, but yeah, like, anyway, sorry.  So side tangent over.

[00:27:00] Jessika: No, that's okay. I was also irritated. So at the end of the comic, they made a big deal about how a woman was also shot when he was, and that he was going to go visit her before he went back. He even said, when I, before we go back to Rome, that's what it said in the thing.  So I don't know what happened. I don't know what the whole thing was with that, because I specifically wrote back to Rome, but they never said her name nor did they actually show him going to see her, and that, definitely rude.

Mike: yeah. And I mean that whole, for something that got billing on the cover,  it's featured very little in the comic, so.

Jessika: What about, how did, how did this rub you?

Mike:  I dug it. I didn't dig it as much as Francis Brother of the Universe, to be honest but overall,  if you're going to do a biography as a comic, you could definitely have a worst subject. It felt pretty exciting. [00:28:00] He lived a pretty interesting life,  growing up between two world wars and in Poland.  Parts of it, like the bit where  he joined the secret seminary in Poland during World War II felt almost like something out of a spy story, more than anything else.

And it also felt like the comic wasn't afraid to poke a little fun at him, like when he volunteered to clean out the toilets that the Nazis had ruined. So, I kind of appreciated that it wasn't taking him as seriously as I felt it could have.  A lot of biographies would be like, no,  you can't show him in any way  that makes him seem less than saintly, which we'll get to, we'll get to that in our next comic.

But, I, I, appreciated the moments of levity as well.  The book itself, though, it does a pretty good job of making him seem like a good guy who just happened to be called to greatness, I felt.  The only parts where I really got bored [00:29:00] were the bits with the unnamed journalist who provides the framing narration while he's waiting for the Pope to speak at Yankee stadium.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: First of all, this is the first guy we see, he's the one who's the narrator and he doesn't even get a name. And then, I kind of laughed at how he opens the comic, stating the Pope is my beat, and then later on states that the Yankee stadium speaking event is the only time he sees the Pope in person.

Jessika: Yeah. I noticed that too. I thought that was weird.

Mike: It was really weird. And I mean, 

Jessika: It was inconsistent.

Mike:  It felt like the editor should have given it one more pass and they could have sat there and it, I mean, honestly, if they just said this was the last time I saw him in person or something like that, it would have been fine.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike:  And then, like I said, I was a little surprised at how little the assassination attempt was featured since it's literally called out on the cover, like whatever.  Oh, fine.

[00:30:00] Jessika: Yeah, I you're visibly watching your face. You're visibly mad about it.

Mike: I'm sorry, if you're going to promise me in assassination attempt, I want to see an assassination attempt. Don't tease me.

Jessika: Oh my gosh. How will you ever get over this?

Mike: Uh God.  It was a solid B, B+ equal to what I feel was kind of  an A-, A comic book,  or spiritual sequel, if you will see what I did there.  So the last of these Marvel Saint series comics is mother Teresa, and that's another official biography of a major Catholic figure.  This one obviously focuses on mother Theresa, who was enjoying a huge amount of publicity in the 1980s. I grew up, throughout the eighties and I often heard her [00:31:00] and Gandhi mentioned together as people who made the world a better place.

And I'm not sure, honestly, if that was because they both operated out of India and they both won the Nobel peace prize, but I feel like that sums up how the Western world perceived or , what was your awareness of her when you were growing up?

Jessika: Pretty much the same level of you'd always see her in these kind of photo-ops of  helping children out of cars and stuff.

Mike: Yeah.  The other thing is that we grew up, like, I, I feel like she's one of those people who was always old in terms of her media appearances.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: You know?  So the book came out in 1984 and that was just five years after she'd received the Nobel peace prize, and this was when she was really, really big.

Like these days, this is viewed as an incredibly problematic figure based on things she said about poverty and suffering. And then there were some serious ethical and financial weirdness that [00:32:00] went on with her missions.  But the public just wasn't aware of that stuff back then, and so given her amount of celebrity, it makes sense that they would have turned to her because she was a really relevant figure in the world back then.

And then again, because they'd had so much success with Francis and Pope John Paul, they committed some serious talent to this comic. So Gasnick actually came back and he wrote the overall story for this, but the script was done by David Michelinie. So miscellaneous had earned a lot of acclaim for his runs on Ironman and he co-created characters like venom and carnage and Scott Lang, who's also known as ant man. Yeah, so  legit people. And then the art was once again handled by, John Tartaglione. So they committed some serious stuff to it, but, I feel like you're on the same wavelength as me where you weren't as impressed this time around.

Jessika: No, no. I was like [00:33:00] snooze Fest, Mother Teresa.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika:  She didn't have any facet. She's like Superman. She was just a good person, all the way around. It's not like she had any trouble with that, I guess. Not like the normal folk.

Mike: I felt like she was more of a prop than a character in the story.

Jessika: I see that.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: Yeah. I had a hard time paying attention to it, to be honest with you.

Mike: no, that's fair. It took me about three times as long to read this book.

Jessika: It's true. And the other thing that was, of course this is going to bother me. I was of course getting some serious pro-colonialism vibes from the whole Jesus and the white men know best, here I go on a mission trip. Aye. You don’t need to convert everyone. Not everyone has to believe the same thing as you, it's just not necessary. And I'm really bothered by the mindset that we all need to be on the same page about these [00:34:00] spiritual and philosophical questions, because we just never will be.

Mike: Right. And that was actually a huge thing. That was one of the big controversies about Mother Teresa is that she would do these kinds of deathbed conversions. And it seems like they weren't always to be honest, consensual.  Like you, I wasn't all that amazed.  The biography of the Pope was really interesting and exciting, but this book story was a framed by some mediocre white journalists who are just going around the world and interviewing people who know her because she won't give them the time of day at the beginning of the book, which I actually kind of enjoyed.

Jessika: I did like that, actually.

Mike:  But that's the thing is you're seeing the memories of other people.  And like you said, it feels very much like Superman where there's no flaws whatsoever and it's just, oh, she's always been selfless. Oh, she grew up in hardship. Oh, she's always wanted to make the world a better place, but you keep on hearing that story over and over again.

And there's no real action. It's also a lot of really dull exposition where [00:35:00] you know, where people are telling her about all the good things she's doing and then how they're going to help her out. And  the impact that she had on the world.  It's undeniable.  I'm just not sure that her life makes for an interesting comic book.  Maybe it's just the way the book was done since she doesn't really feel like a main character in her own story. Also the fact that they're basically using the same framing device that they did in the last one, and

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: Those narrators play a much bigger role in the Mother Theresa comic, because they're clearly trying to make it interesting and hold the reader's attention.  I did learn that this book won the Catholic press associations award for best book of the year in the youth category in 1984, which yeah.

Jessika: What? Who was judging that?

Mike: I feel like that kind of says more about the availability of Catholic kid-friendly books at the time.

Jessika: Yeah.  And the youths weren't judging that contest.

Mike: No, like, no. I mentioned earlier, I'm [00:36:00] not sure how well these other comic books sold, but there is an obituary for Tartaglione that claimed the Pope John Paul biography actually sold millions of copies. And it's the same thing with the Francis Brother of the Universe one, because it clearly did well enough that they wanted to make this Pope John Paul comic.

And then there's  an online archive for Gasnick that's hosted by a Catholic organization and they actually show all the different languages that the comic was printed into. Now.  I really want to get a copy of the Japanese one now, because it came with  a really beautiful book cover.  It's lovely. And plus, it's just kind of a cool artifact, you know.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: But, I don't know  how well the Mother Theresa books sold, because , there are numerous articles providing circumstantial evidence, talking about how well Francis and Pope John Paul sold. And then they'll say, oh, and then there was also this Mother Teresa comic. There's no further information. So, I [00:37:00] get the impression it maybe didn't do as well as everybody wanted it to.

Jessika: Oh, big dreams, Mother Teresa.

Mike: I know, to be honest though, my impression is that the Catholic church didn't really have any other figures with this much name recognition, like St. Francis is a pretty major character, even outside of Catholicism. My parents' church was named after Saint Francis and they were Episcopalian, and Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa had that kind of international rockstar, celebrity, that few others could even dream about in an age when viral fame wasn't really a thing.

Jessika: Agreed.

Mike: So yeah, it seems like everyone kind of looked at these books overall its wins and then they decided to walk away from the table while they were still ahead, which, is kind of the opposite of what happened in 1992, but we're going to talk about that next episode.

[00:38:00] Jessika: Ooh.

Mike: I'm going to leave it on a cliffhanger moment, but, what are your final thoughts?  How do you feel about these eighties Catholic comics?

Jessika: I mean, so far it's kind of a mixed bag. The Francis Brother of the Universe, I thought that was, it was fun. I enjoyed reading that one. You know, I, I even enjoyed reading the majority of the Pope John Paul II. And then we got to mother Teresa and literally I fell asleep and like, yeah, I do a lot of my reading in the evening,

Mike: Yeah. 

Jessika: I'm a night owl it's it was not the time.

Mike: Yeah. Comic books shouldn't want you to sleep.

Jessika: No, it was the content. So.

Mike: Yeah.  I think I've got that nostalgia factor a little bit too with the Francis book. So there's one of these books that I still absolutely love. And it's got this [00:39:00] very soft spot in my soul, if you will.  And the Pope John Paul comic, I agree. It's mostly fun.

It's not flawlessly there's no part of the Frances book that I sat there and really skipped through. It was all interesting. And then Mother Teresa, I.

I'm not exactly thrilled that it's part of my collection now.  But at the same time, I feel like I can't get rid of it because it's, you know, part of that trilogy, that holy Trinity of Saints comics, if you will, sorry, all the religious puns keep on coming out tonight.

Jessika: Well, I was just thinking about the fact that I don't even think it's that I think . You're worried about throwing away Mother Theresa don't lie to me.

Mike: Yeah. I feel like I, what happens when you piss off a Catholic Saint? I don't know.

Jessika: She's going to be staring at you from the trash can. Like, why did you do this to me?

Mike: Oh, she already looks like a goblin. That'll be scary enough. 

[00:40:00] 

So now is the part of the episode where we discuss our brain wrinkles, which are the one thing comics or comics adjacent that has been on our mind lately. I've been talking for a spell. So why don't you go first.

Jessika: Okay. So I've actually been really irritated about something comics related.

Mike: Ooh.

Jessika: Aye. You're shocked. I'm sure I've never heard about irritated about anything in this world.

Mike: What you, no, go on.

Jessika: What, what? So, I collect this six inch Marvel Avengers action figures by Hasbro. They're just the really simple ones, really only the arms and the head kind of moves and the arms kind of move one way. They're cheap. They're just like what, five, six bucks at the checkouts stand.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: And I collect them because I action pose them in my hanging plant garden in all my macrame. So they're just in all my plants, just flying around, but [00:41:00] what irritates me, I'm convinced that they just don't make the female characters in their widespread kids toys series.

Mike: Oh, they don’t.  That's.

Jessika: It pisses me off and they make some of the antagonists even.  I have Thantos and I can't get the Scarlet Witch or Black Widow? It just bothers me so much. It's hard enough to get the female characters in any kind of movie of their own or any kind of thing of their own.

I was really happy the Scarlet Witch, getting a spotlight. And I'm glad that Black Widow is getting one too, but it's just  you could say leaving the best for last, but you just kind of forgot didn't you?

Mike: Yeah, that actually reminds me a little bit of the cartoon Young Justice. So they had two seasons of that show and then it got canceled and apparently it got canceled because the core audience for it wound up being [00:42:00] young women.  And as a result, they weren't buying the action figure toys that were being marketed because they were all male action figures.

Eventually they wound up bringing it back for DC Universe and then HBO Max, it's a great cartoon, but I just remember getting so irritated where I was like, really, instead of actually trying to make toys that would appeal to the audience, you just canceled this fucking show. All right.

Jessika: That's so annoying and it, you know, it really bothers me that we always assume that boys won't play with action figures of girls.

Mike: Yeah. It's dumb.

Jessika: And yeah. And we absolutely need to quit. Assuming the girls won't play with action figures at all.  Because they will.

Mike: I'm actually, I'm really surprised that they're not making female character action figures now. Like it's like the last couple of years, I feel like that's been flipped, but I guess it's still a [00:43:00] thing.

Jessika: Yeah. It's it's just. *sad noises*

Mike: I'm sorry. 

Jessika: No, it's okay. It's okay. It just makes me want to write like angry letters and, you know, cause I want action figures too, goddammit.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: Well, what about you? What's sticking deep in your brain?

Mike:  It's going back to that collection that I got from my parents' house. So part of that collection, one of the other cool things that was included is the 2002 Taskmaster mini series from Marvel, which sent me down a rabbit hole of Marvel Unlimited because you know, they've got all the back issues on there.  Taskmaster is a villain who's also become a bit of an antihero. He's been around Marvel for a while. He's this mercenary who usually uses his power of photographic reflexes to mimic the moves of other heroes. And he's had three dedicated mini series so far and they're all really good. Like they're really fun, and [00:44:00] each one tells a very different story and they all explore his character in really interesting ways. And the last two series have been really funny, which means I'm kind of bummed about how generic he looks and all the promo stuff that they've put out for Black Widow the movie. Like he's a dude who wears a cape with a hood and has pirate boots and is just bristling with weapons.  And that is not what we're getting.

Jessika: I love that though.

Mike: Oh yeah. It's super over the top and theatrical.  His whole thing is that he has a mask that looks like a realistic skull, as opposed to that helmet, that's got kind of a vague skull motif.

Jessika: Yeah, that's way scarier.

Mike:  It is, but at the same time, he hangs out a lot with Deadpool.  And so there's that zaniness to him as well. And instead we're getting this kind of, I don't know, mute generic [00:45:00] bad-ass character and all the trailers who looks like he has some cool flashy moves, but it doesn't really seem to go much beyond that. I don't know, like it might surprise us, but who knows, but it's also made me realize how forgettable most of the villains in the MCU are.

And I wish Marvel would just give us more characters, like Loki who make repeated appearances and then develop some real depth and then evolve into something more than what they are when they first appear.

Jessika: Yeah, it'd be nice to see.

Mike: Yeah. Well with that, I think it's time to wrap things up. We'll be back in two weeks, where we will continue the story of Marvel's foray into Christian comics, and until then we'll see you in the stacks.

Jessika: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us; text transcriptions of each of our published episodes [00:46:00] can be found on our website.

Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, while our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from PremiumBeat.

Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes on Instagram by cut_thistles.

Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is tencenttakes. Jessika is Jessikawitha, and Jessika is spelled with a K. And Mike is Vansau.

V A [00:47:00] N S A U.

Mike: Stay safe out there.

Jessika: And support your local comic shop.