How I Did It #5: Apocrypha

I'm probably going to get into a lot of trouble for this one, but here goes.

"Apocrypha" may be the weirdest story I've written. Rather than summarize it, I've posted it to a separate Web page here. Read and enjoy.

Now that you've looked at it, you're probably thinking "What the hell was that?"

That was the first and only alternate-Biblical pulp adventure story ever written. I was thinking about comic-book superheroes one day. Many of them are based on mythological gods -- Hercules, The Mighty Thor, etc. So I started thinking about what kind of superhero Jesus would make. Now that's not entirely original; I know there was a National Lampoon spoof called "Son of God" with Jesus as a kind of Captain Marvel analog. I didn't want to do that. Sniggering at your own naughtiness only goes so far.

Instead I started thinking about what kind of superhero the actual, historical Jesus would have made. Not much crime to fight in Nazareth -- but Alexandria was the Metropolis of the Roman East. Plenty of evildoers there. Making him an urban crimefighter meant turning him into a cross between Batman and The Shadow, fighting crime with fists and cleverness, and only a hint of mystical Jewish superpowers.

The secret premise is that instead of preaching the Gospel and getting crucified, this Jesus took up a more direct struggle against wickedness, helping people individually. Just like all the comic book heroes who get cosmic powers and use them to stop bank robberies. Note that I'm not sneering, here. In some ways I think the populist American notion of a hero who has special abilities but doesn't try to remake the world wholesale is a very sane and healthy one.  

Actually writing the story required getting myself in the proper frame of mind. I listened to a lot of movie soundtracks as I typed, especially Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music for the incomparable 1938 Robin Hood film. Fans of that picture may recognize the climactic duel between Joshua and Judah.

Once I finished I had no idea how the hell I was going to sell this story. I thought of Alex Irvine and the Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives. It was certainly pulse-pounding. I approached him at a convention, sounding him out cautiously. "How do you feel about . . . blasphemy?" I asked.

"What, you mean like people having sex with their grandmothers or something?"

"No, no. Blasphemy in the technical sense."

"Oh, we're fine with that."

I explained the story and he got very excited. "Crimefightin' Jesus? I wanna see crimefightin' Jesus."

Between crimefightin' Jesus and using the Stations of the Cross in a time-travel story, I guess I'm pretty much guaranteed a seat in Hell.

Comments

[Dwtwiddy]

"Between crimefightin' Jesus and using the Stations of the Cross in a time-travel story, I guess I'm pretty much guaranteed a seat in Hell."

As I said before, I think it more likely it would make people think you were Christian. If I didn't know you, that would certainly be my first assumption. You didn't actually insult Jesus or the disciples at all.

After all, we live in age where Rob Liefeld, as an act of devotional literature, has made a comic where Jesus beats up the Greek gods.

-D*

[suhali leather]

Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among

[JLC]

Normally I delete spam when I find it, but that last one is like a haiku.