Punk Rock Jesus
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A reality TV show starring a clone of Jesus Christ causes chaos across the U.S. of the near future in PUNK ROCK JESUS, a new graphic novel written and drawn by Sean Murphy, the acclaimed illustrator of JOE THE BARBARIAN and AMERICAN VAMPIRE. J2 causes both outrage and adulation. Religious zealots either love or hate the show, angry politicians worry about its influence on the nation, and members of the scientific community fear the implications of cloning a human being at all, let alone the Son of God. Thomas McKael is the clones's bodyguard and former IRA operative, who despite his turbulent past is hired to protect the new Jesus-a baby who captivates the world, but grows up to become an angry teenager. When falling ratings force the network to cut Jesus's mother from the series the young star runs away, renounces his religious heritage and forms a punk rock band. And what starts off as babysitting for Thomas becomes an epic battle, as Jesus goes to war against the corporate media complex that created him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This bracing tale of the Second Coming uses contemporary social issues to explore a familiar "what if?" scenario namely, what would happen if Jesus showed up and was confronted with the corrupt, consumerist culture in which we live? In Murphy's version of this oft-posed query, a power-hungry producer of a reality television show plays a key role: he has Jesus's DNA, extracted from the Shroud of Turin, injected into an anonymous teenager whom he "casts" as the new virgin. In tracing the maturation of the new Jesus (named Chris here), the action is fast and the plotting is thick there is a former IRA terrorist as the producer's head of security, a geneticist whose work is tied to the success of the show, and a very gentle polar bear. The ambitious story tends to get a little too big in terms of plot; this bloating distorts character dynamics, occasionally twisting them in unnatural directions. But the story's bigness has an upside: Murphy has constructed a compelling, searching, and important tale that embraces some of the biggest questions of our day, and he does so using incredibly energetic art with dynamic, elastic compositional approaches.