Four-Color Theophanies: Ten comic book characters who have met God

Mayor Mitchell Hundred (Ex Machina #33, by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, and Jim Clark)
During his recent audience with the Pope in last month's Ex Machina #33, some dastardly villains tried to mind-control Mayor Hundred into murdering the pontiff. He resisted, but what really averted the assassination was a sudden mystical experience. Hundred sees God as a living embodiment of New York City. (The Liberty Torch fingers are my favorite touch). It's a truly awe-inspiring moment, and it seems it will spark a new status quo for the series. The true nature of the vision is a mystery that Vaughan is unlikely to solve soon, but I for one hope he doesn't eff the ineffable too much as the story unfolds.

In no particular order, here are nine other comic characters who have had met their maker...

The Authority (The Authority #9-12, by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch)
Warren Ellis-created superteam The Authority didn't just meet God—they killed him. In this universe, an enormous alien pyramid created the Earth billions of years ago. It comes back to reclaim its creation, killing thousands in its initial attempts at xenoforming our world. That doesn't sit right with the Authority, and their leader, Jenny Sparks, electrocutes his brain. So much for "the earth is My footstool." (For a bit more on the Authority's battle with God, see chapter one of The Gospel According to Science Fiction.)

The Savage Dragon (Savage Dragon #31, by Erik Larsen)
The Savage Dragon is a superhero of his convictions. Even after watching firsthand as God kicks the crap out of Satan, he persists in believing that the big guy is a human invention. He harangues the deity with some Big Questions, and God, irritated by the interrogation, gives some deliberately pedantic answers. The Dragon's team-up with God didn't sell as well as his team-up with Todd McFarlane's Spawn shortly before, but McFarlane declined Larsen's suggestion to make up ads citing those sales figures as proof that his character was more popular than God.

Dr. Strange (Marvel Premiere #13-14, by Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner)
Dr. Strange has met dozens of deities in his career, but in Marvel Premiere #13-14, he met Cagliostro, a time-traveling medieval magician who seeks to become God. The bizarre twist is that he succeeds, moving back in time and gathering magical energy until he becomes an all-powerful creature at the beginning of time—"And what is another term for an all-powerful being at the dawn of creation? ...IT IS GOD!" Dubbing himself "Sise-nig", Cagliostro announces his intention to recreate the universe. After an issue's worth of hand-wringing over what he will do with his unfathomable power, he does—nothing. He's all-powerful, but he's also all-knowing,, and he learns that the world that existed is the best of all possible worlds, so he puts things back just how they were. Cagliostro remains an elephant in the room of the Marvel Universe, since he actually did create everything in the reset universe.

Jesse Custer (Preacher #49, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon)
God, as written by Garth Ennis, is a jerk. When Jesse Custer attempts to hold God accountable for the tragedies he's endured, the enraged deity bites his eye out, steals his memory, and separates him from his supporting cast for a dozen issues or so. The joke's on God, though—in the final issue of the series, the Saint of Killers, a sort of ultraviolent, Old West version of the Wandering Jew, shoots him dead and reclines on his throne. Preacher is set in a violent world, and has a violent supreme being to match.

Promethea (Promethea #23, by Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III, and Mick Gray)
The centerpiece of Promethea is a mystical journey exploring Alan Moore's theories on magic, writing, spirituality, and just about everything else. The final stop on this qabbalistic quest is immersion in the source of all creation. Little surprise that the apotheosis comes down to words and pictures. After a fade to white, Moore presents two double-page spreads: one of hundreds of speech bubbles containing prayers in various languages, and another showing dozens of illustrations of the infinite variety of the human experience. We are God, Promethea tells us—let's make the most of it.*

The Fantastic Four (Fantastic Four #511, by Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, and Karl Kesel)
When The Thing dies, the rest of the Fantastic Four use a machine created by Dr. Doom to go to heaven and bring him back. After causing a small degree of mayhem, they finally have an audience with God himself—who turns out to be Jack Kirby. It's a bizarre story, but a clever idea, even though they weren't the first to think of it...

Supreme (Supreme: The Return #6, by Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, and Rob Liefeld)
...because Alan Moore and Rick Veitch granted Image's Superman analog a very similar sort of encounter. Both stories use the King to examine the nature of human creativity and to show the affection that this particular creator held for his works. Stan Lee has met a number of his creations, particularly in recent years, but only Kirby has been depicted as God.

Cerebus (Cerebus #192-199, by Dave Sim and Gerhard)
Dave Sim's anthropomorphic aardvark Cerebus has had several mystical experiences. Perhaps the oddest takes place at the end of Minds, the concluding section of the 50-issue epic Mothers and Daughters storyline, in which Cerebus embarks on a lushly-illustrated accidental journey through the solar system. Somewhere past Jupiter, he's hit in the face with a mysterious pie and begins to hear a voice in his head—a voice that calls itself "Dave." What follows is a 140-page dialog between Sim and his protagonist, who has quite a few questions to ask. Sim was well on his way down the rabbit hole of misogyny, paranoia, and general crackpottery that consumed the last few years of his career, but that doesn't stop the theophany in Minds from being one of the series' truly visionary moments.

Animal Man (Animal Man #26, by Grant Morrison and Chas Truog)
Dave Sim isn't the only creator to feel a little bad about the mistreatment his creations suffer. By the end of Morrison's 26-issue run on Animal Man, the hero had seen his powers scrambled, his origin retconned before his eyes, and his entire family killed. In the final issue, Animal Man meets his maker, and their conversation is a sad, funny, and all-around brilliant meditation on the relation between character and author, creator and creation, God and man. Is it a gimmick? Sure. But it's also 24 of the best pages in comics history.

I'm sure I missed a bunch—feel free to list others in the comments!

*Bragging Promethea aside: a few years ago, I bought the original art for the Mobius strip page from Promethea #15, which is pretty much my favorite page of comics art ever. Immediately after the purchase someone offered to trade me the cover for #23, the theophany issue. It was tempting... but not that tempting. That Mobius strip is awesome.

Comments

[Elliot]

Ah Grant Morrison... how I love him. In a strictly platonic way of course. Seven Soldiers of Victory has Zatanna break through into the world of the Seven Unknown Men: http://satisfactorycomics.blogspot.com/2007/09/enemies-from-between-panels.html

For all the rambling preachiness of Promethea, I really enjoyed it, particularly the whole journey-to-heaven sequence. It was very imaginative: the different realms of Godhood, the encounter with Christ, the fallen realm that corresponds to the asteroid belt - particularly the part where Promethea and her friend watch Pan and Selene have sex, and the witness the Big Bang of Primal Orgasm, or whatever, and the giant "I" (or was it "I Am?") appears... All very cool.

[h3yd]

One of my favorite character-meets-God moments had to be in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Johnny dies, and winds up in heaven. The God he meets is a fat, lazy thing that hasn't done anything since creating the universe, stating that he still needs some downtime.

[Jaswinder]

Does Battle Pope count? :D

[Sam Humphries]

What about God talking to Virginia Applejack in Stray Bullets?

[fool]

how about Howard the Duck's meeting with god?

[Jay Tea]

Geez Louise, how could anyone forget Wally the God-boy in Peter David's run on Supergirl? That really, really hurts this PAD fan. A recurring character who put forth a lot of interesting theological concepts in a novel fashion.

J.

[Ford MF]

Ten points for a Stray Bullets reference!

[Black Rabbit]

Actually, God (David Lapham) talks to Amy Racecar, not little Ginnie Applejack. And lest anyone forget, in Rob Walton's Ragmop, God ("the Tetragrammaton")is one of the senior henchmen of the *real* higher-ups.

Also, does Swamp Thing count?

[Andrew Tripp]

A few others for you:

Lucifer has Lucifer, Elaine, the Silk Man, and Lillith meet with God.

Spawn encounters God in the Apocalyptic battle where he discovers that the Man of Miracles is the God behind God.

Bethany Black encounters God in Strange Girl.

[Steven M. Bergson]

Let's not forget "the ghost who walks" (aka The Spectre) and his conversations with G-d, using a special (gothic?) font and yellow lettering for his disembodied voice.

I'd have to look it up, but if memory serves, in DC Presents #29 Superman and Spectre talk to G-d after Superman almost breaks through some special barrier that separates the Heavenly realm from the ... ummm ... rest of the universe.