God Is Dead #3-4

[superboyprime]

'"The only people who take a joke better than atheists are vegetarians," he said just back from the disastrous dinner party. Seriously, I thought my wife was going to kill me.' - Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[grumman]

This one's... well, the Flame Network is still the only halfway decent part of the series we've seen, but at least the rest of this one seems to only be offensively stupid and not stupidly offensive.

Mammon...

[bewareofgeek]

False idol. Spirit of greed.

NOW can I state that Hickman hates science?

Re: Mammon...

[drtechnobabel]

I don't think he hates science. I just think he's a hack who thinks he's being 'deep' and 'symbolic' with this story.

[michaelhealy]

And all the Gods not worshiped by white people are dead...

[icon_uk]

I still hope the African deities and the North American natives are keeping an eye on things, letting the white guys deal with each other.

[draganoche]

I'm not offended. I'm bored. This doesn't any of the feeling of scope that TMP ,EoW or the prolonged Avengers have. This is just images of things killing each other nothing more.

[thanekos]

" So you're saying we built a.. Mammon Machine? "
" .. yes, nerd. Yes, I am. "

[q99]

I don't like it how every pantheon vs pantheon is a one-sided fight with no casualties on one side, and a wipe on the other.

[bewareofgeek]

This is symptomatic of Hickman's style, though. He doesn't write characters, but game pieces. The gods are simply there to win/lose, and move the plot along.

[mishalak]

Hickman is the Tom Green of comic books.

[icon_uk]

Who is Tom Green, if I might ask?

[cypherfdp]

Dead Pantheons
-Aztec
-Hindu
-Egyptian

Not Dead
-Norse
-Greco-Roman

Hmmm I'm noting a weird pattern here!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

But it's not offensive at all!

*cough*

[thezmage]

1. The problem might not be that they can't take a joke, but rather that you can't tell one. The powerful threatening the weak is not a joke. The powerful being scared of the weak just barely qualifies as a joke. Make the gods afraid of the atheists. Maybe they've been somehow elevated into anti-gods whose very touch is harmful to them. Then, at least, you would have the beginnings of a joke.

2. These gods don't seem very powerful. They can get taken out by shotgun blasts or a single stab through the back.

[doodleboy]

I suppose a rule of comedy should be "Don't punch down."

[sir_razorback]

So what happened in the first issue to cause all the fighting?

[drtechnobabel]

I think it was the Norse Gods deciding the backstab the Hindu ones. Or the other way around. Not really sure from what's posted here, and I refuse to give Hickman one cent by buying this schlock to find out.

[grazzt]

This was a lot better when Warren Ellis did it.

[espanolbot]

And when Gaiman did it in American Gods.

[indyreloadx]

"How the Hell can you people be geniuses at War with Gods, when obviously I'm the only one here to ever read the bible?"

Wow.... that line just speaks levels of idiocy... Wow...

[freezer]

That was one of the least WTFish lines to me: They're going to make their own god to take the place of the other gods, but seem to have completely ignored the Capital "G" God.

IT's like claiming you're going to take over the world of Hip-Hop while ignoring Jay-Z.

[freezer]

So basically, Hickman read American Gods and thought it needed the Walking Dead treatment?

[espanolbot]

Less cornish pasties, more unlikeable people shouting at each other!

[donnblake]

Is it wrong that I find Mammon kind of adorable?

[espanolbot]

Reminds me of the Frost Giant baby from Hellboy.

[espanolbot]

Lacks scope. There only appearing to be three of each pantheon showing up at once is kind of weird, considering most are pretty huge in how many different kinds of gods there are.

Hell, The Egyptians could have had Set show up and kill their enemies' believers with plagues and sandstorms if they wanted... though he was also god of foreigners, so I don't know that would enter the equation.

And considering they're only just entering the realm of pseudo-Christian mythology, I wonder what interpretation of the demons and what not will be present when Satan shows up. Will be God's means of testing the beliefs of his followers, an entity that torments mankind for its own amusement, or the Byronic hero type put forth by Milton and Neil Gaiman?

Yeah, my main issue was they didn't go big enough. That and how they took out the Hindu gods so easily.

[applecup]

forgive me if i'm wrong but isn't mammon concerned with greed rather than vanity?
moreover, shouldn't the satanel and the demonic princes have shown up anyway along with everything else that's been worshipped by a human being at some stage in history?

[big_daddy_d]

I am glad that Hickman pretty much admitted this series is nonsense. Honestly.. this feels like a child playing with toys. Just let him have his fun. Hell I personally wanted to write a god war story. Just wish they went bold and threw in God and Jesus. Let's get the Christians in on this and just go balls out. Good or bad, this is one of those series where... just go all out already. Although the scene where Zeus displayed that level of extreme cruelty is one of the things that either turns me away from the series..or at the very least want me to see Zeus get curb stomped by someone else.

[mrstatham]

The problem is that Hickman's fun isn't just like a kid smashing his Spawn figures together on the rug and making the standard 'k'blammo' and 'pew-pew' noises; It's that Hickman has to try and dress this up as something clever when it's just tasteless and puerile. If it were just Celebrity Deathmatch with various pantheons duking it out, that'd be fine, but he has to just insert the meanspirited, disgusting fuckery with the gods going after atheists, and in ways that don't particularly make sense for his chosen god.

[nyadnar17]

1) I find it hilarious they accidently created Mammon.
2) If you go strictly by each gods own mythologies Zeus and Odin would stomp a mudhole in almost all the other gods.

[bruinsfan]

That's not been my impression from my layman's reading of world mythologies. Almost every religion I'm aware of ascribes great might to its chief figures, and both Olympian and Norse mythologies have adversary figures (Typhon and Surtur, Loki's children, etc., respectively) that threaten to overthrow the gods.

[thezmage]

This series went on sale through comixology today. It's a good thing that you posted this, otherwise I would have wasted $15 because the high concept of a godwar does sound appealing to me.

[silverzeo]

So.. is this all to it? Gods killing each other in cheap shots while a group of nerds try but fail to FIND ways to kill them with interludes of the comic's Kent Brockman? I thought some of the gods here argue amongst themselves, like the Greek and Egyptian Pantheons. Hell, some of those gods are suppose to heroic and noble types to some degree. Anubis is the God of Death but just judges the soul when it enters the after life, where in the mythology does he actually goes on conquests... and really? "Who was life in death, died"?

But so far, from these scans, it seems like a bad 90s comic, like a so bad 90s comic that it kinda the trope maker of Bad 90s Comics: All the graphic deaths and "subtle" messaging in the story. Has anyone said the S or F words yet, cause I am expecting to see them in something like this....

[althechi]

See, I wouldn't mind if this was just a dumb tie-in comic to Tournament of Legends. But on its own, as its own narrative?

Jeez, this is offensively stupid.

[shadur]

"The only people who take a joke better than atheists are vegetarians," he said just back from the disastrous dinner party.

I'm sorry, I must have completely missed the multiple instances of atheists violent rioting over a crappy cartoon, the loud demands from Richard Dawkins that a book/artist/band be banned from performing or at least publically apologizes for insulting his screed and the earnestly held beliefs of many people, and most of all an entire self-described atheist political movement going ballistic over a perceived "attack" on their most sacred (and shamelessly commercialized and appropriated) holiday by people just want to be more inclusive and say "happy holidays".

Here's another theory, Hickman: Maybe it's not that we can't take a joke, maybe it's just that you're a small-minded puerile humorless Warren Ellis-wannabe hack who wouldn't know a good joke if Thalia herself appeared to you in a dream and read you the punchline.