Testify!

Douglas Rushkoff, a name well-known to many of us from his books and online writings has been working on a book with Liam Sharp for DC's mature readers imprint Vertigo, called Testament: Akedah. The religious component is bound to infuriate some who will no doubt hold forth on the wrongness of it without actually reading it - but since they aren't going to read it why pay any attention to them?!? Besides controversial religious themes didn't stop Mark Millar and Peter Gross' Chosen, a modern day tale of Jesus, which sold out its first issue. The graphic novel collection of Testament is coming from DC in July and I think readers who enjoy the likes of Mike Carey's Lucifer are going to find this to their taste - I'm certainly looking forward to it. Douglas has kindly allowed us to reproduce some thoughts about the series he originally wrote for On The Ledge:

"The Bible may have actually been written in the wrong medium. I'm saying this as a media theorist - a guy who has written books and novels, taught university classes, and made documentaries about the impact of new technology on the way we relate to stories. And particularly on those stories we happen to really believe in.

If anything, working in what is still the rather new space of networked computers has taught me that our relationship to narratives is stuck in a dangerous place. Sure, we watch TV and imagine ourselves as characters, but we have lost access to the gaps in the stories. The places where temporality, interpretation and sequence are up for grabs. We just get lost in the seamless reality and get taken along for a ride.

I've found some less than receptive audiences for these observations.

When I wrote a book presenting the Bible as an "open source" collaboration, I was blacklisted by fundamentalists of more than one religion. They just didn't want their story messed with - even though I had been able to prove it was written with that very intent!

Businesspeople, religious people, educators, and publishers are all equally threatened and confounded by the idea that real stuff is actually occurring in the gaps between the moments that pass for history.

And that's when I realized the perfect place to tell what I've come to believe is the *real* story of the Bible: comics.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. The Bible has been intentionally framed as a dry and sanctimonious tome just to keep thinking people from getting near it. In reality, it’s powerfully dangerous stuff: the ultimate handbook for psychic revolt. It’s filled with sex, temple prostitutes, incantations, incest, travel to other dimensions, conversations with aliens, wars with giants and, on more than one occasion, ritualized anal rape. Think you’re an accomplished magician? Check out the source code on reality hacking, and see if you can handle it.

A comic is camouflage for me to expose the mythic battle underlying Western Civilization, and sequential narrative the perfect way to tell a story taking place simultaneously in multiple universes - including our own. It'll follow a band of cyber-alchemist revolutionaries, in a future just a day after tomorrow - when the draft is reinstated, and the mind virus known as the dollar requires military enforcement. It'll also take place in Bible time - exposing how this plot has been recurring for centuries.

For by insisting we “believe” that the Bible happened at some moment in distant history, the keepers of religion prevent us from realizing that the Bible is happening right now, in every moment. The narrative and its power transcend time. All we need is access and will.

Then reality itself is at our disposal, and we'll be the superheroes."