As a young boy raised Catholic in New England, I was largely ignorant of anything having to do with the bible, the history of the church, or the possibility that other religions existed in the world that may disagree with my christian education.  At this same time I was reading tons of comic books and my ideas of what deities were capable of were inspired by stories of truly cosmic beings; the first one and the most influential was of course the Beyonder.

The Beyonder is a Marvel Comics Character who lived in his own pocket universe happy as can be until something ripped a tear between his universe and ours and he realized he was not the only individual in existence.  With godlike power he enters our universe to investigate, and makes a bizarre first move: he creates a planet and has thirty some super heroes and super-villains fight it out to see if good or evil is stronger, the tale and the battle all captured in twelve issues of "The Secret Wars".

Now, even in that short summary, we see powers that are a little bit beyond what Jesus was capable of.  Sure Jesus could walk on water, but pull together a new planet made of disparate parts of other planets from all around the universe?  And this stunt was only the beginning of the Beyonder's work.

In the Secret Wars II, the Beyonder visits Earth and tries to walk among man to learn as much as he can about the human race.  (Why he has this huge Earth hang up is difficult to say, but Jesus had the same bias so I'll let it slide).  Over the course of the nine issue limited series he transforms lives, increases some heroe's powers, and then almost rips apart the mantle of the Earth in such a way that if the combined forces of all of Marvel's superheroes cannot heal the planet everyone on it will be destroyed.  Now, this is not as scary as the Bible's book of Revelations, I'll grant you that, but I'll be damned if it's not a bigger show of force than forcing a few demons out of the minds of the mentally ill, (a biased critique of the healing Jesus does, I admit).

So we have a godlike figure walking the Earth, and he seems to be there to judge the Earth, with very little interest in helping the general populace to overcome thei limitations in anyway.  He is ego-maniacal to the extreme, and when he does do a favor for one super hero or another there are usually strings attached.

Still, he was so powerful!  When I thought of Jesus wandering around telling everyone to love one another, I was unimpressed. Obviously we should all love one another, or is it only obvious to me due to Jesus' work?  One way or another Jesus did not do a lot of heavy muscle flexing, and it's sad to say, but the working of his miracles pale in comparison to the creations of many a comic book author.

So why does this power gradient exist?  I think it's simple.  In the time of Jesus, the world was very hazardous to the health of the individual.  Disease, religious fanaticism, and Roman rule all posed daily problems to the average Jew.  A Messiah who could overcome all of these problems would be seen as a miracle maker from the great beyond.  And don't get me wrong, if Jesus did raise Lazarus from the dead, in addition to his own miraculous return, then Jesus could definitely pull out all the stops when he had to.  But Marvel Comics gave these same powers to the Beyonder, and far, far, more.  So why shouldn't I have been a little confused as a young reader, trying to figure out why Jesus was the man to worship, when really we could imagine something beyond him?

Only now do I realize that the scale of our Gods must reflect the scale of human achievement at our time.  For instance, the Beyonder was the product of a modern society that had learned how to make nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet many times over.  Humans can visit the heavens, we can conquer disease, and a good psychiatrist is casting out mental demons all day long.  So to impress the comic book readership the Beyonder had to be bigger than anyone could imagine, more powerful, and just to keep the townsfolk from rushing the gates with torches and pitch forks, the Beyonder was compared with God and found lacking.

The Beyonder was finally sent away when it was realized that he was the incomplete half of a cosmic cube, (the longstanding magic lantern of Marvel comics), and he shared his power with a super-villain named the Molecule Man.  The Molecule Man was incredible, he could literally change anything into anything he could imagine, "just" by altering it's molecular structure. He could turn led to gold, save injured continents, and stop any super hero in their tracks with a quick thought, turning them into gas, sand, or mist.  When the Beyonder was reintigrated with the Molecule Man he retreated to his personal universe and has there remained, even though Marvel will hint at his possible return every once and a while.

So did this spoil me against Christ?  I'm not so sure.  I'm afraid it is truly the inconsistencies between human's spoken beliefs and their actions that makes me doubt their religious convictions, but the fact that I could imagine someone tougher than Jesus early in life may have served to open my mind to a little heresy.  But these Secret Wars comic books are excellent and I totally recommend looking for back issues or the graphic novels.

The writing is great and some of the images from the books have stuck with me to this day.  At one point the Molecule Man drops a full mountain on top of the superheros in Secret Wars 1 #4, but the Hulk braces himself and holds the entire Mountain up, keeping it from hurting his teammates so that they have the time to plan their escape.  Doctor Doom also plays a wicked game of trying to steal the Beyonder's power for his own, and the culmination of the first series is very well done.

As you can see, I am still stuck in the eighties when I come up with the greatest comic books of all time.  I know I am biased as those early stories made an impression that has been hard to forget, but the Beyonder's story is really a tale of a God gone wrong.  And yes, I know I can be found guilty of taking comic books too seriously, therein lies the glory of amatuer literary criticism, I can recommend what I really think you'll enjoy.