Brown, Box – Everything Dies #1

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Everything Dies #1

Once again, I should give thanks to the internet for leading random people to send me their comics for review.  Sometimes I take it for granted, and sure, I wouldn’t be getting them if I wasn’t willing to review them and all, but the sheer amount of stuff I’ve gotten over the run of this site that I never would have heard of otherwise is staggering.  I have no idea of the history of, um, Box, but this comic shines like something that’s been a long time coming.  That can’t be true, as he also sent along #2 of this series, so clearly he’s already just that good.  There are two main parts of this comic that I’ll get to in a second, but I have to hit the highlight (in a book full of highlights) first: his story of the creationism myth of all sorts of world religions.  There’s Voodoo, Zulu, Mormonism, Islam and Sikhism, not to mention oddities like Maidu and Scientology.  Granted, you could call all religions oddities and you wouldn’t get much of an argument from me, but you get the idea.  His matter-of-fact descriptions of these stories are brilliant without ever being condescending, a difficult task given the subject matter.  His whole comic is suffused with religion, again in a way that manages not to annoy a committed hater of nonsense (i.e. religion) like myself.  The rest of the comic is split into two bits: a monk student asking questions of his master and a modern version of the Biblical story of Job.  The story of Job is fantastic, as many parts of it are taken word for word from the Bible, but everything has been moved to a modern setting.  The questions from the monk are spread out throughout the issue, and serve as welcome breaks from the other pieces.  I can go either way on that sort of thing, but every last one of these was insightful without seeming pointless or cloudy.  It felt like this book was packed but yep, those are the parts of the comic.  They go together beautifully and I’m fascinated to see how he follows this up.  Just a real gem of a comic.  $5