Why do comic-book heroes seldom reveal their faith?

Even the origin of the FF was a snafu. Four friends, including test pilot Ben Grimm, were accidentally exposed to radiation during a rocket test and returned to Earth with various superhuman powers. Together they became sort of super family with recognisably ordinary squabbles to settle among themselves while they battled super villains. Ben’s blue-collar battle cry became “It’s clobberin’ time!”

The success of the FF begat Spider-Man, the Hulk, Daredevil and the X-Men (just to choose characters who have come to a movie theatre near you) and dozens of others. The FF success woke up DC Comics - home of Superman, Batman and other costumed heroes - which started adding fascinating, fallible traits to its lineup.

Over the years, the writers told readers all kinds of things about the habits and foibles of the characters. We knew about their taste in clothing, their troubles with relationships, their sense of humour. But we rarely discovered whether they followed any particular religion. That seems odd in one way. Why wouldn’t reality-linked superheroes have a particular religion?

But American popular culture, at least in second half of the 20th century, was vague about the faith of fictional icons. What church did Lucy Ricardo attend? What kinds of prayers did Matt Dillon say? What kind of wedding did Ben Cartwright have? Nobody knew, or at least the creators didn’t tell us.

So when the creators of the Fantastic Four came along, they followed suit.

“I wanted these stories to be palatable for readers of every type,” Stan Lee said recently. “My one ‘religious’ precept was, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Treat people the way you would want to be treated.” In reality, comics writers have stayed away from explicit religion to avoid offending.

But there’s another reason, said Tony Isabella, a writer on more than a dozen comics, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Mickey Mouse and Superman.

“So many writers have no background in anything but popular entertainment,” he said. “They don’t have faith of any kind. They don’t have a historical or social context.” For whatever reason, only a tiny percentage of the hundreds of characters that have appeared in comics have been attached to any particular faith.

Lee (born Stanley Leiber) and Kirby (Jakob Kurtzberg) were not the only Jewish creators behind famous comic characters. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, dreamed up Superman almost 25 years before the birth of the FF.

The Man of Steel’s origin was even a loose adaptation of the story of Moses. Moses’ mother floats the baby in a basket on the Nile to save his life. He’s rescued and becomes a mighty hero. Kal-El’s parents put their baby in a rocket to save his life and he’s rescued and becomes a mighty hero.

There have been a few characters over the years whose faith has been made explicit.

Daredevil, the blind superhero whose mother was revealed to be a nun, is Catholic. Nightcrawler, a member of the X-Men considered becoming a Catholic priest.

But their religion was not a part of their Hollywood movies. Neither was The Thing’s faith a part of the plan for the FF movie, or the Punisher’s for that character’s movie, Marvel officials said. Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad declined to explain why faith wasn’t woven into the scripts. But comics industry experts said it was for the same reason religion hasn’t been a big part of the books: Not offending is safer.

Oddly, the dark side of faith has been well represented over the years by demons from Hell and even Old Scratch himself. For instance, Stan Lee used a variant of Satan as a villain in his Silver Surfer comic.

“I didn’t think of it as religious. I figured, I’m going for the worst villain I could come up with and I got Satan.” he said. “I called him Mephisto.”

But the faith of the marquee players in mainstream comicdom has mostly stayed mysterious.

That’s all for now, until next time, God willing, know that Faith without works is dead.

As usual I can be reached at THE GENESIS FOUNDATION at 627-8433 or email genesistt@gmail.com