Sean Murphy's Vertigo miniseries has a surprisingly unique premise (surprising that no one had thought of it before). DNA lifted from the Shroud of Turin is used to create a human clone of Jesus Christ. This being the 21st century, the clone is implanted in the womb of a virginal teen mom, who gives birth on live television as part of a reality show. Mother and child immediately become virtual prisoners, as Christian fundamentalist protesters threaten their safety.
Their main protector and ally is bodyguard and security chief Thomas McKael, an ex-Irish Republican Army member with a string of killings to his credit. In fact the book opens with him witnessing the death of his parents in a shootout, the beginning of his IRA indoctrination. The series is arguably as much about his story as it is about the clone.
Murphy uses this unlikely mix of characters to explore the nature of religious faith, scientific ethics, and the contemporary cult of celebrity.
The kid called Chris becomes an instant celebrity, his every waking moment broadcasted to a huge audience. Religious zealots either love or hate the show, and scientists fear the implications of the whole experiment. Is this really the Second Coming, or something far darker?
More later, but I hope others will chime in.
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...I posted about the serial here , BTW .
About the premise -- I know at least one person who thought of it before, though I don't know if anyone did anything with the idea before. But around the time of the Jurassic Park movie (or maybe JP II), my brother came up to my room and said, "You know what you should write? Someone takes the DNA from the Shroud of Turin and clones Jesus. Jurassic Jesus!"
I shrugged and said "Maybe," and went on doing whatever I was doing at the time. But it's a fine idea, to be sure.
Yeah, it clearly follows on the Jurassic Park model. So I suppose I really meant that no one had done anything with the idea, at least that I'm aware of. Of course the premise is just a small part of the story that Murphy told. If it was just "clone of Jesus joins a punk rock band" there wouldn't be much to talk about.
Almost all of Murphy's characters have one thing in common: they want to do the right thing, but they're conflicted. Geneticist Sarah Epstein has doubts about the whole cloning project, but she needs financial support for an algae she is developing to combat global warming. Thomas McKael doesn't completely trust the J2 project, either, but he is doing penance for the murders he committed on behalf of the IRA. Gwen Fairling wants a better life for her family, but she has no idea what life as the clone's mother will be like.Rick Slate is the man behind the entire project, and he's the only straightforward adult character: a manipulative bastard with no apparent moral sense whatsoever. He's basically a charming sociopath, a two-dimensional cartoon compared to the rest of the cast. Only Chris is completely innocent, at least at the beginning. He starts out embracing his role as the reborn Christian Messiah, at one point even attempting to walk on water in a swimming pool, where he nearly drowns. As he begins to understand the forces behind his creation he embraces atheism and punk rock, becoming the "punk rock Jesus" of the title.
In my humble, I loved this series, but I feel almost like it could have easily been one of Vertigo's "limited ongoing" titles, a la Sandman, Scalped, Preacher, Y the Last Man, and Sweet Tooth. There was a whole lot of this miniseries that was rushed, and could have been afforded the chance to breathe a little bit. I think, if given more issues (I'd say at least 30), we would have a much more intimate story that would be a lot better for the shelf-life of this title.
I have to disagree, Sensei. I would call the story densely packed, but I enjoyed the information density, and didn't feel it was rushed. These issues had 32 pages of story (versus the usual 22 pages), so the six-issue run was equivalent to almost nine issues in page count. Plus the TPB had an additional 10 pages, but I couldn't tell you where they were added because I only read the collection.
I'm curious about the 32-page format. There seemed like there were significant act breaks (often with leaps forward in time) at the midpoint of every issue. Was it initially planned as 12 16-page issues, perhaps?
I don't know about the number of issues planned, but I remember something about Murphy being surprised that it was coming out in B&W instead of color. If that's true, it sounds like there were some late adjustments made. I was having a lot of trouble figuring out where the issue breaks were in the trade, so I finally just found reasonable stopping points and stopped worrying about it. It read continuously, similar to the way the collections of The Walking Dead look. Although those issues generally end in a climactic splash page, so it's easier to figure out.
Yeah, Walking Dead really makes me guess where the issue breaks are, too. Very smooth issue-to-issue transitions, there.
I thought the thing with the "guardian angel", for one, could have been played out over several more issues. I would just like to have seen about seven or eight trades of this instead of just one.
And as it stands, I'm holding out for this one in a color hardback version. You know it's coming, at least within the next five years...
Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod) said:
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