It was written and drawn by Sean Murphey, which was quite impressive. Murphey has a genuinely provocative storyline that captures the attention of anyone who hears of it and his art style is dark and gritty which carries the tone throughout the entire story. The story is about a company that has way too much money and somehow is able to convince the Catholic church to let them extract DNA from the Shroud of Turin (the shroud that supposedly belonged to Jesus) and clone Jesus to then be the star of a reality TV show. If this isn't enough to catch your attention, it follows this young boy who is supposedly the clone of Jesus as he is victimized by the American entertainment world and turns into an atheistic, anti-establishment punk rocker.
Murphey is able to use this storyline to make a few classic jabs. The first and most obvious is Murphey's perception of corruption that is the consequence of the American way of using entertainment (at any cost) to make money. Tied to this idea is how integrated religion is in society and how it's a bad thing, for there are very few instances of the positive side of religion. To be fair, Murphey doesn't deny that there is a positive contingent of believers but only religious people one sees is the loud, and often violent, demonstrators (which is representative of real life unfortunately). The last major pattern is the exploration of the place of faith.
Although Murphey hits on some of these themes, do not expect a complex and systematic conclusion about any of these things. Unlike other works of fiction that have definite systems of thought behind their conception, Murphey's epic plays out more like an interesting idea fueled by an existential crisis and current day stereotypes. As entertaining as it was I ultimately found myself disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it did cause me to think. Heck, you're reading my thoughts right now. But I did not get the same satisfaction reading Punk Rock Jesus that I did after reading Moore's Watchmen or watching Nolan's Inception. It just lacked the philosophical follow through.
Then again, maybe it didn't. Maybe that was the point. The entire time I was reading expectantly to see how Murphey would conclude this great story. It had violence. It had thought provoking situations. It had punk rock. But what it didn't have was a comprehensive explanation. I was hoping that Murphey was using the story to build to a point and that he would use the story to typify the issues he was tackling and then offer his perspective, his artistic contribution to the conversation on faith. In the end, I guess he did but I just wasn't impressed.
Granted, I am a Christian. I recently graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in youth ministry. I was reading hoping that I would get an explanation of the religious experiences that Murphey uses to propel his story. In the end the explanation I got was this: God doesn't exist so just deal with it. Honest, hard to wrestle with, but honest. I am telling you this because I am not sure I didn't like the ending because it was a weak ending or because I am a Christian and I was left with what it seems most believers' response would be; "is that it?"
But I think that is a fair question to ask. I have been reading Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel, an atheistic philosopher from NYU, and he seems to pose the exact same question to the common evolutionary materialism that atheism bases its metaphysical answers on. He, along with the many Christian apologists over the years, can't find a satisfaction in materialism's explanation of the universe (specifically when it comes to the consciousness for Nagel). In the end there are just things that keep you wondering what's really going on, in life and in Punk Rock Jesus.
Bringing this back to the comic, it ends abruptly and doesn't give itself the chance to explain. The character development that Murphey did such a good job throughout the entire novel just ended. There was very little follow up on what actually took place in the storyline and you are just left with a sense that the whole thing was an entertainment ploy to get rich off the religiously inclined. A part of me feels like that was the point. It wasn't about what Murphey had to say, but that he took you on a journey and left you with the feeling of losing faith.
Overall, though, I was entertained. I enjoyed one of the main characters- Thomas "The Cemetary" McKael and it was interesting to follow the developments of this sci-fi case study. I find it ironic that Murphey got what his story testifies too. I was a Christian who was intrigued to see how an entertainment medium treated Jesus. I came to the table hoping for conversation but in the end I was being entertained by straw men.
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