Re: One More Day #4 ***Spoilers****

In article <0001HW.C3A5AE02035AB3C0F0182648@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Amy Guskin <aisling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 21:51:52 -0500, Gregory Weston wrote
(in article <uce-6AB768.21515205012008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <4780332B.1050409@xxxxxxxxx>,
"John W. Kennedy" <John.W.Kennedy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Gregory Weston wrote:
In article <477BD774.7070405@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"John W. Kennedy" <jwkenne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have my own objections, as a Christian, and in this case it's no fair
for JMS to object that he isn't a Christian -- you put the Christian
devil into a story, you gotta take the consequences.

I'm not hugely into the canon of the Marvel universe, but I have the
impression that that character isn't "the Christian devil" in a
meaningful sense. Marvel's own web page on the character asserts that
explicitly, claiming the character is often mistaken for Satan and uses
that to his advantage. But as a distinct entity known to the super-hero
community...

Potayto, potahto.

Um. No. If I wander into a jungle, find myself a group of indigenous
people and pretend to be one of their mythic spirits that doesn't
actually make it true.

Same thing here: You've got a character capable of masquerading as
another identifiable entity; that doesn't *make* him that entity. <<

I see what you're saying, but I also see what John's saying, and I think he's
saying there's one more level of 'meta' there than you're accounting for.
Sure, the backstory is that he's this super villain guy -- let's say from
another dimension or whatever -- who is often mistaken for "Satan," the
literary construct who became arch-enemy to a certain subset of religious
believers in our real-world universe. But John's conjecturing (I believe)
that the reason he was written like that was an excuse for Marvel to have an
anti-Christian, Satan-like figure. Basically getting to have Satan without
calling him Satan.

I understand that, and I'm even sympathetic to the view. But I think it
neglects a salient point: time. The back story counts. The character may
well have been a way for Marvel to introduce "Satan" without running
afoul of the code, but that was nearly 40 years ago. Whatever the
original motivation was in 1968, in the intervening time his existence
as something distinct from Satan and known as such to the heroes of the
Marvel universe has been established. The real-world motivation that
Stan Lee had doesn't matter as much as the story for what that character
is today.

.

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