Next year I’m teaching the general education course The Bible in Popular Culture (in which I can indulge my love of comics etc. and be paid for it), so I’ve been checking material to add the that which previous lecturers have used. A while back (Greenflame · More comics and religion) I noted that there were some recent Superman stories that explored religious aspects of the character, and this week I’ve gotten around to reading the recent trade paperback that put several of them in one volume.
Superman: Redemption by Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza collects three stories – one about a woman who sees Superman as her personal angel of judgement, another about what happens when fundamentalist religion and superpowers mix, and a third that continues the DC universe’s development of the nature of Hell. The last story didn’t really work for me – it felt a bit clumsy (compared to some of the Sandman or Spectre material that intersects the DC universe) – but the other two stories were worth looking at. I’ll try and buy the TPB for my own collection of such things next time the comic shop has a sale.
