Testament

The invention of text broke the monopoly that priests had on the collective story. Armed with a 22-letter alphabet, a ragtag bunch of Hebrew slaves went out into the desert and rewrote their reality from the beginning…Douglas Rushkoff

I was browsing through the comic book store when I came across a new series written by Douglas Rushkoff called Testament. He’s using stories from Old Testament as a mythological basis for stories in a near future where everyone has RFID tags, the US is always at war, and the draft is about to be reinstated to preserve our freedom.

The narrative in the book moves back and forth between the future and the Old Testament past. The first volume brings in the story of Akedah where Abraham almost sacrifices his son Isaac and then retells it in the near future as a scientist who works for the government and has to make his son eligible for the draft.

They do some neat things with the panels. Gods exist outside the panels, and the humans only exist inside them. When the gods do break through the panels to interact with people their finger might transform into a pillar of fire.

The book definitely has some Grant Morrison type flourishes in the writing and the art. I could easily see The Invisibles working in the near future story line. I’m really excited to see where this series goes.