Sunday, April 28, 2013

God-Man

"God-Man: The Superhero With Omnipotent Powers!" is a superhero and religious parody in the Tom the Dancing Bug strip.
Overview
God-Man is an omnipotent superhero. As such, he is easily able to defeat his villains with little effort to the point he can teleport a person to Costa Rica unharmed by lightly shifting his weight (as seen in "Billy Dare, Smuggler's Cape chapter MVLXX") and vaporize a supervillain ("The Threat of the Purple Beetle"). However, blasphemy can weaken God-Man ( "Is the Pen Mighter than... God-Man?!"). He has the alter ego of Milton Baxter ("Close Call"). Somtimes, he teams up with other heroes such as God-God-Man ("Paradoxer Solved"), the Super Justice Team ("Lo, There Come The Evil 8") and Human-Man ("God-Man Human-Man Team-Up").
Despite being a superhero, God-Man tends to be extremely selfish and egoistical. The most egregious examples are  the unnamed 3-29-01 strip, where he prevents a Muslim from burning a God-Man comic book (portraying God as having a physical form is taboo in Islam) but allows the same man to deny his wife medical aid, and "When Strikes... Destructo", where he intentionally makes the titular character's life into a living Hell causing him to become evil in the first place and then beats him up.
God-Man has a gallery of villains that almost always only make one appearance each. Most of these villains try to turn people against God-Man, make people not believe him or disprove his existence. As such, he has villains such as the Kevin Smith-look-alike Blasphemy-Boy ( "Is the Pen Mighter than... God-Man?!"), Freshman Philosophy-Major Man ("Danger in the Dorm") and the God-Man impostor Doc Darwin ("Imposter Disaster"). The other villains are either generic villains (such as the titular villains from "The Menace of the Ooze" and "The Threat of the Purple Beetle") or normal human criminals.
Criticism
Some people found the comic offensive. Ruben Bolling, the writer, explained "God-Man isn't actually God. He is a straw man that I'm using to make fun of some people's very simplistic views about religion and philosophy."
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