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A review by cetian
Strange Girl Omnibus by Rick Remender
4.0
Rick Remender's work is just as personal as Craig Thompson's Blankets The two authors produced great art with different aproaches, comming from the same place. They had a religious upbringing and somewhow comics became a way to express their inner conflicts. They wrote about different things and at some point it became about religion.
What Rick Remender did was unexpected. He created a dystopian religious extravaganza, starting from a quite legitimate premise, in sci-fi terms: "so what if the rapture did come true?".
The rapture, its appeal, comes from the fact that it is a menace (for the believers, a promise) in the future. Like profecies, its appeal comes from a trick: it's not that they "will" come true, but that they "haven't" came true yet. And when something with the magnitude of the end of the world is put upon humanity it's the biggest gimmick of all. Set in a near future (allways about to happen, some have predicted it over and over again, failling over and over again) it creates momentum, and dares people to have faith.
So... Rick set out to test people faith in another way. A lot more exciting. And with a lot more intelectual honesty than religious charlatans, that play with human emotions, fears and expectations. Sci-fi mode: by allowing people to use their imagination and put themselves elsewhere, creating some distance so that, once there, they can look back at reality.
He created the world described by those that want others to believe in the Rapture. And because those say that the wretched will pay and suffer, the anti-heoine is a non-believer, that stays on a demon ruled earth, separated by God from her fundamentalist parents.
A strange girl indeed.
This is a work of genius. Of talent and wit. Of courage and intelect. Of hummour. And a deep personal voyage into humanism and teology. That allows us all to question ourselves better, taking from the experiences of the author. Instead of making, like Craig Thompson, a biographical journey, Rick Remender did this. A dystopian rapture anti-hero narrative. Something that no one has ever did.
.
What Rick Remender did was unexpected. He created a dystopian religious extravaganza, starting from a quite legitimate premise, in sci-fi terms: "so what if the rapture did come true?".
The rapture, its appeal, comes from the fact that it is a menace (for the believers, a promise) in the future. Like profecies, its appeal comes from a trick: it's not that they "will" come true, but that they "haven't" came true yet. And when something with the magnitude of the end of the world is put upon humanity it's the biggest gimmick of all. Set in a near future (allways about to happen, some have predicted it over and over again, failling over and over again) it creates momentum, and dares people to have faith.
So... Rick set out to test people faith in another way. A lot more exciting. And with a lot more intelectual honesty than religious charlatans, that play with human emotions, fears and expectations. Sci-fi mode: by allowing people to use their imagination and put themselves elsewhere, creating some distance so that, once there, they can look back at reality.
He created the world described by those that want others to believe in the Rapture. And because those say that the wretched will pay and suffer, the anti-heoine is a non-believer, that stays on a demon ruled earth, separated by God from her fundamentalist parents.
A strange girl indeed.
This is a work of genius. Of talent and wit. Of courage and intelect. Of hummour. And a deep personal voyage into humanism and teology. That allows us all to question ourselves better, taking from the experiences of the author. Instead of making, like Craig Thompson, a biographical journey, Rick Remender did this. A dystopian rapture anti-hero narrative. Something that no one has ever did.
.