TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword: Looking for God in the Gutter Douglas Rushkoff (Creator, Testament; The New School) Introduction Christine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and A. David Lewis (Boston University), editors NEW INTERPRETATIONS The Devil's Reading: Revenge and Revelation in American Comics Aaron Ricker Parks (McGill University) London (& the Mind) as Sacred-Desecrated Place in Alan Moore's From Hell Emily Taylor Merriman (San Francisco State University) Drawing Contracts: Will Eisner's Legacy Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University) Catholic American Citizenship: Prescriptions for Children from Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact (1946-1963) Anne Blankenship (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Gold Plates, Inked Pages: The Authority of the Graphic Novel G. St. John Stott (Arab American University, Jenin) Comics and Religion: Theoretical Connections Darby Orcutt (North Carolina State University) Killing the Graven God: Visual Representations of the Divine in Comics Andrew Tripp (Boston University) Echoes of Eternity: Hindu Reincarnation Motifs in Superhero Comic Books Saurav Mohapatra (Creator, India Authentic) The Christianizing of Animism in Manga and Anime: American Translations of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausica¿ of the Valley of the Wind Eriko Ogihara-Schuck (Dortmund University of Technology) RESPONSE & REBELLION On Preacher (Or, the Death of God in Pictures) Mike Grimshaw, University of Canterbury Superman Graveside: Superhero Salvation beyond Jesus A. David Lewis (Creator, The Lone and Level Sands) "The Apocalypse of Adolescence": Use of the Bildungsroman and Superheroic Tropes in Mark Millar & Peter Gross's Chosen Julia Round (Bournemouth University) From God Nose to God's Bosom, Or How God (and Jack Jackson) Began Underground Comics Clay Kinchen Smith (Santa Fe College) A Hesitant Embrace: Comic Books and Evangelicals Kate Netzler (Independent Scholar) Narrative and Pictorial Dualism in Persepolis and the Emergence of Complexity Kerr Houston, (Maryland Institute College of Art) POSTMODERN RELIGIOSITY Machina Ex Deus: Perennialism in Comics G. Willow Wilson (Creator, Cairo) Conversion to Narrative: Magic as Religious Language in Grant Morrison's Invisibles Megan Goodwin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) "The Magic Circus of the Mind": Alan Moore's Promethea and the Transformation of Consciousness through Comics Christine Hoff Kraemer (Cherry Hill Seminary) and J. Lawton Winslade (DePaul University) Religion and Artesia / Religion in Artesia Mark Smylie (Creator, Artesia) Present Gods, Absent Believers in Sandman Emily Ronald (Boston University) Tell Tale Visions: The Erotic Theology of Craig Thompson's Blankets Steve Jungkeit (Yale University) Selected Bibliography Appendices.