Review - Second Coming #1 (@AhoyComicMags)

"Thirty-three years?! You only lasted down there thirty-three years?!"

Finding religion isn't easy for some. There are those who very willingly give into the notion of some sort of messiah and others who are a bit more empirical about it, as is the case in Second Coming #1 from Ahoy Comics. "Second Coming" is written by Mark Russell, illustrated by Richard Pace, finished by Leonard Kirk, colored by Andy Troy and lettered by Rob Steen. "The Closing Doors" is written by Stuart Moore and illustrated by Cayetano Valenzuela.

God commands Earth's mightiest super-hero, Sunstar, to accept Jesus as his roommate and teach him how to use power in a...more powerful way. Jesus, shocked at the way humans have twisted his message over two millennia, vows to straighten them out.

To call Russell's script in "Second Coming" irreverent would be greatly underselling it as it's more than just being blasphemous for the sake of doing so. Russell presents to the reader a narrative about God and his motives, eventually getting fed up with the humans he created and looking to move on. The dialogue to this effect is extremely witty and entertaining, offering a cynicism in God that's sometimes expected but rarely presented. Russell furthers the premise of a bored God by bringing in Jesus to learn from a superhero how to relate to humanity and from there it just gets even more entertaining. Russell doesn't hide what he believes Jesus would be like if he were to venture to Earth and room with a superhero, seeing the modern world as a perverse image of his prior teachings and looking to make things better as a result.

Paces's illustrations do a wonderful job of illustrating both Heaven and Earth in the book. There's an interesting differentiation between the scenes in Heaven and those on Earth as Pace imbues the former with more of an ancient feel that's befitting of its seemingly more historic status. Pace does a great job in particular on the faces, giving them plenty of emphatic expressions that sell their emotion and convince the reader of the prevailing sentiment at that moment. Most of the panels are inset and overlay which also provides a great fluidity to the reading experience. Kirk's finishes and Troy's colors are a good mix of the palette that achieves great effects throughout the issue.

Second Coming #1 is extraordinarily poignant in how it approaches religion as it pertains to its believers. God is the end-all, be-all to some and just a literary construct to others and humanizing him goes great lengths in offering a somewhat honest take on what he quite possibly could've been like. Russell's script is very blunt and is a pretty raucous look at what God's personality is really like. Pace's artwork is a good match for the script as it balances ancient and modern times. Second Coming #1 is not for the religious faint of heart, but for everyone else it's a blast to read.

Second Coming #1 is available now.