Marvel’s Non-Battle Pope Comic: Part I
June 3rd, 2009 Posted by guest articleGood evening, gentle readers! My name is James Howard; I like history, and I like comic books, and I am here to talk to you today about both things at the same time.
Marvel Comics Presents The Life of Pope John Paul II, 1982 one-shot. Written by Steven Grant, drawn by John Tartaglione, beheld with bewilderment by millions.
This is true: I bought this comic for two dollars, no tax, from the fire sale of a closing Winnipeg comic book store a few years back. I took it home, I read it, and I framed it. Framed it. Because I am a major-league dork.
I’m not much for religion, and it’s not an earth-shatteringly great comic (as we’ll get to in a second), but who didn’t have a soft spot for ol’ Pope John Paul II? Dude was like the Catholicism Sara Lee. Passersby and visitors don’t just look at this cover — they stare at it for a few seconds, fishlike and uncomprehending, because honestly what the hell is this.
And given the information you can gleam about it from one glance — comic book, iconic historical figure, single issue — the comic is actually a lot more subdued and grounded than one would originally expect. There’s nothing in here that approaches the funnybook wackiness of Superman punching Muhammad Ali, 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 Wolverine riding a motorcycle through a gunfight in a church in the past, so I guess I’ll take my down-to-earth portrayals where I can get them.