The Four Horsemen in Comics
By RazzaTazz 12 Comments
When it comes to matters of faith it is often the case that the dominant religion in an area will refer to its own beliefs as dogma and the word of God (or the gods) while ascribing the beliefs of others to the status of legends or myths. In terms of the applicability of this to a fictional medium it makes it so that a certain amount of reverence is paid to certain belief system while those of others can be somewhat relegated to more superstitions (for instance native American religion often gets a poor portrayal.) Of course as comics are primarily centered in the USA which is predominantly Christian, the portrayal of most biblical characters is either true to dogma, or significantly modified to essentially have no relation to the original source material (another stream would be the depiction of religious characters meant only for shock value.) Of course comics has a strong track record of stealing their material from other mediums, whether it be from myth or from literature. In keeping with this though it is common to steal certain elements from the Bible, although generally these are played into more mystical or spiritual stories. In one case at least that I can think of though this is not the case and that is with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of the Last Judgment (spooky!) As they relate to comics though the only versions I can think of are completely different incarnations. Granted I can only think of three, but in the X-Men stories they are a group of mutants, and in the story 52 they were biotechnological terrors. Another story from silver age Wonder Woman had them as marauding aliens. Of course some stories from this biblical group might tie in more closely with the Bible, but they do serve as an interesting microcosm of how we treat our religions.
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