Gotta admit I probably would've skipped a comic book entitled Warriors Creed (Guy Thing Press) were it not for its promo release. Sent by a firm in Texas, it trumpeted the new color comic book series as part of a burgeoning Christian-themed boomlet aimed at young male readers: "For boys especially, for whom the King James Version of the Bible might not exactly seem compelling, these comics present a new way to engage youth in their own language."
Christian-themed comic books aren't new, of course. Most comic fans are familiar with the notorious evangelical graphic tracts of Jack T. Chick, while the Spire Comics line published a series of Christian-focused Archie comics for years. But having recently moved to a small Arizona town where the only bookstore in the area is a religious one, I was feeling curious about this new supposed movement of religio-graphic novels. Which is how this largely lazy agnostic wound up writing Guy Thing Press for a review copy of this floppy.
The book's creator, John King, I've since learned, is an Australian turned Texas evangelical who is also founder of the International Men's Network, a group devoted to building better men through application of Christian principals. In addition to his new comic series, the minister also has a collection entitled Helping Guys Become Better Men, Husbands And Fathers, which the PR folks also sent me alongside two copies of Creed #1. Haven't cracked that puppy open yet, though I have read my way through the 24-page Creed premiere several times. The experience hasn't particularly inspired me to dig any further into Dr. King's oeuvre.
The comic concerns itself with two brothers, Joe and Paul Lee, whose parents were killed by a nefarious terrorist organization called the Black Hand. As the story opens, Joe is a clandestine operative working under the code name Operation Mongoose, while Paul is a streetwise pastor teaching young boys kickboxing. After the Hand captures Joe, his brother is enlisted to pull his own G.I. Joe-styled outfit out of mothballs. Going by the heavily connotative moniker of the Iron Cross, Paul flies to the Philippine island where his brother is being tortured by a turban-wearing (but of course!) baddie called the Inquisitor. "Shouldn't someone named the Inquisitor be wearing something more Papal? A mitre, perhaps?" the inquisitive reader may wonder, but this is no anti-Roman jeremiad. The Black Hand, we learn, worships the Middle Eastern deity Moloch.
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