Pray like a superhero!

"Riddle me this, Batman-- what's my faith?"

To paraphrase the old saying about books, the problem with all these new webpages is they keep us from getting around to all the old ones. So I just discovered one of the most remarkable examples of comic-book scholarship that I've ever seen: "The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters."

The page and its philosophy are "intended to accurately report the composition of comic book character religiosity." It does that with exhaustive notes, referencing comments on newsgroups and forums (for both comics and religions), with the entries for some heroes so long you'd need some kind of afterlife just to finish them.

So who's what? It turns out The Thing is Jewish, Batman is Episcopalian (lapsed), The Shadow is a Buddhist, and Ghost Rider is Catholic and Baptist both (he probably needs two kinds of saving). Not too surprisingly, the villians listed are all atheists, Satanists, Communists, or Nazis. And The Joker's religion is listed as "Being Batman's Arch-Enemy."

If it all puts you in a Superman mood, here's another on-line treat I'm just getting around to: a video for "Volcano Song" by The Budos Band-- it uses footage from a great '40s Superman cartoon (reedited so the volcano wins!) as a perfect complement to the Budos' mighty wailing. This tune's from their first CD (I like their second and latest even better) and is a good example of what they do. The animation is by Fleischer Studios, the cartoon factory that produced Betty Boop and Popeye.