The Manga Messiah: A Non-Review
September 28th, 2007 by Gavok | Tags: mangaAt work, we’ve been receiving some comic anomalies lately. For one, there is the Ronald Reagan graphic novel biography, which I admittedly bought for my friend’s birthday since he’s a Reagan nut. Then there is the Kiss 4K comic, based on an average rock band doing stuff in the future. Neither of these two get more double-takes than this baby.
That’s right. A Jesus Christ manga. Look at that. Look at the tagline! Sweet protagonist!
If you’ve been following this site long enough, you know me well enough to think that I would buy this for the sake of review. The truth is, I did put a lot of thought into it. Then my friends put forth an intervention against my bad comic buying ways and insisted I not purchase it. I gave in, though I did flip through it for a bit. Something is really off about seeing Pontius Pilate with one of those manga-style angry blood veins on his forehead. Judas is portrayed here as a red-haired bishonen. It’s wacky.
So yes, I did agree that I wouldn’t buy it, but that makes me feel bad. I hate wasting things, so here is a list of all the jokes I would have made for the Manga Messiah review that never was. Enjoy.
“Whenever Jesus powers up, his beard becomes blond.”
“The whole thing about Jesus being white came from Superboy Prime’s continuity punches.”
“The best part is when Jesus boards his trusty Mosestron mech to fight Lucifer’s demon of the week.”
“** For more details, read Jesus/Job Team-Up, on stands now! – Ed.”
“The Romans did not arrest and crucify Christ because he claimed to be the son of God. Instead, they arrested and crucified Christ because he was the son of God and refused to register his powers with the government.”
“It seems pretty uncreative and gratuitous for them to do an issue about Jesus and the Apostles at the hot springs.”
“Bizarro Jesus showed that he can swim through the ground, which I believe is more impressive.”
“I’d like to take this moment to point out that Wyatt Wingfoot is totally boring.”
“Ah, the short-lived Jesus Armor. Not one of his better moments. Nice foil cover, though.”
“Let he who is without sin cast the first sweatdrop.”
“I’m not keen on my bible knowledge, but I don’t think there was a tentacle monster in the manger.”
“Fun little fact: Jesus can turn water into pure speed force!”
“Little does Jesus realize that the mysterious Entity X is really his long lost father God, HO!”
“Wanderer hasn’t written an article here in like forever.”
“I have to really question the tact of having Jesus constantly yell out, ‘I DID NOT SLEEP WITH THE JUGGERNAUT!’”
“So these normal guys with whips beat up and humiliate the most powerful being in the world with little problem. What, did Garth Ennis write this?”
“If you look closely at the third panel of the Last Supper scene, you can see Uatu the Watcher frowning in the background.”
“His divinity level is over 9000!”
“The Peter that denounced Jesus was just a Skrull imposter. Saw that coming a mile away.”
“And on that day, Jesus rose from the depths of HFIL and ascended into Heaven.”
“After that pointless Noah appearance, Adam and Eve showed up for no reason whatsoever. Man, sometimes I just hate Jeph Loeb comics.”
“Also included is What If Jesus Christ Had Become Sorcerer Supreme. Great issue.”
“Years after Jesus’ death, Dan Didio introduced a minority replacement. The new Jesus was a handicapped Native American with a lactose intolerance. His series lasted for only four issues. Don’t get me started on Christ 2099.”
“For the life of me, I just can’t understand why they would cover the Sermon on the Mound during the Nuff Said issue.”
Thank you and have a good night!
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I like the sound of Bishonen red-haired Judas. It’s probably the most appealing incarnation of the character that I’ve heard of, outside of an old Biblical cartoon I watched where Judas was the spitting image of Oroku Saki(the Shredder from TMNT. Minus the armour, of course).
Who are the characters on the cover? My guesses would be that the angel at the top left is the one that informed Mary that she’d be having Jesus, and told Joseph to stand by her, the bloke one down from the angel is probably Peter(or whichever apostle cut some bloke’s ear off), directly below him is someone I’ve no idea about, and under him is good old Judas.
I’ve no idea about the women on the right-hand side though, except for the bottom one, as I think that’s Jesus’s mum. I know there were a few women in Jesus’ portion of the Bible, like the one he freed from being possessed by demons, and I seem to recall something about a prostitute but it’s all kind of vague in my mind.
There are about three Mary’s in Jesus’ life. There’s Mary, his mom, Mary Magdalene (who was NOT a prostitute, contrary to what many believe; that was a different character entirely), and some other Mary I forget.
I can’t imagine the actual review being much better than that, though I’m curious.
Also, how was the Jesus vs. Galactus fight?
I believe that Jesus’s aunt was also called mary something, the one that had a babie at old age before jesus was even born.
Mary Magdalene was the one that cleaned jesus’s feet as far as i remember and is often miscredit as being a ho.
The one in the upper right with the cliche anime pose 984212 “I’m hot and you WANT me” has to be Mary Magdeline. Vok, how could you pass this thing up? I know your fingers are itching to buy it!
“Has he come to save the world… or destroy it?”
Cripes. This looks so much worse than it did when you told me about it!
ObiJay: I read enough to know that that isn’t Mary Magdeline. It’s the daughter of the woman who wanted John the Baptist put to death.
Wow, that’s an odd character choice to stick on the cover. So where’s the scene in which Jesus summons up enough fish to feed a village, and then eats it all himself?
“Sure, he gets killed at the end for shock value, but they brought him back pretty soon after this issue — and the less said about the four Christs who popped up in the meantime, the better.”
I happened to like the cold and emotionless fake Jesus with the big, yellow goggles.
There was no good reason for the stone Jesus to be played by Shaquille O’Neal in the movie. Really, now.
Fortunately it all worked out in the end when the real Jesus came back sporting an awesome mullet.
One Year Later… Jesus drops the Son of God stuff and becomes the Mayor of Bethlehem? What the–?
Knight, you realize that you’ve got an open invite to write here, right?
Wait, “invite” is the wrong word. What’s it called when you say things like “Write for 4l or Gavok and I will kill you?”
The anime got ahead of the manga and they had to come up with filler. Jesus & the Apostles take part in the Olympics. Jesus visits his hometown and inspires a kid to work hard and believe in the power of courage. Jesus saves another world kinda close to ours that was never mentioned before.
Unknown to the public, bespectacled and mild-mannered scribe Joshua Kent is in reality the Lamb of Steel, The Last Son of God, Jesus Christ!
Gavok had mentioned the notion to me previously; I’m actually working on a guest post as we speak.
Well, no. That’s not quite accurate. I’m actually working on moving into a different house as we speak. After that, though!
Also: POST-CRISIS JESUS HAS NO POWERS WTF
The long-awaited Jesus and Mary Wedding Special had great art, but was spoiled by an out-of-nowhere Jesus death. And right after all that nonsense they pulled to get him back!
I always preferred JESUS: FUMOFFU!?!?! myself.
I just realized the title implies he’s only the Messiah for Manga. Screw faith in the Lord, only people who loves them some 4koma get into Heaven.
I like rating things and I rate this book a 10/10
This book was good I’m using it for my reading log at school and I read the whole book
I can’t wait to get the full bible of it
I don’t know, greg snow. Doesn’t the bible look down on “mortal combat”?
I LOVE THIS BOOK, I wish it were mine lol, my friend just let me borrow it, and IT ROCKS, I love how funny it was when Jesus was wearing a hood telling his disciples to put the fish net on the right side and they got a lot of fish and Peter was like “ITS THE LORD!” “HUH?” “WHO ELSE CAN DO THAT!? YIIAHHH * DIVES INTO THE WATER AND SWIMS TO JESUS*” one of the disciples: “PETER WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” and then Peter is like about to glomp Jesus and Jesus has one foot up and his arms up and hahaha it just made me laugh: just like manga-style should do XD
If that above comment doesn’t tell you that reading Manga Messiah is a horrible way to waste your time, I really don’t know what would do it.
well, this book is nice (since I’m an anime addict) and it did make me understand the new testament better through the illustrations and simplified narration. And this manga made me read the Bible.
[…] see Simon acting all goofy with his brother Andrew. Judas is a “red-haired bishounen.”[1] It makes knowing Jesus’ story a lot lighter in tone. And I don’t see anything wrong […]
I just read it and I rather enjoyed it! As an artist, I hope to produce my own one day and I couldn’t think of a better way to start than looking ta other people’s work like this. I really liked the character designs. Many of them were, dare I say it, cute!
But I don’t see why the cover had to have “MANGA” slapped on the cover page. The ocntent and style can speak for itself, really. Calling the series “Messiah” would have been sufficient. I also read the “Acts” volume. I think I enjoyed that one even more.
[…] or Spider-Man using the Socratic Method to foil an exact body double of Barack Obama, or… whatever this was. If they made a comic about the Pope today it would probably be thirty-two pages of Hugh Jackman […]
hello i’m italian and…where can i find this manga?????