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Let me start off with requesting a simple moratorium on X-Men stories about religion? What with the recent movie, and that being spun out of a story where the main villain was a Reverend, there have been a number of instances lately trying to tie back into that, some good, some not so much.
The main problem with religion being used in stories is that the writer brings his prejudices and views with him, and they are not always good. Nor should they be, but sometimes they overshadow a potential good story and is reduced to a soapbox for an overblown opinion.
Most recently, this can be seen in the pages of Uncanny X-Men 423 and 424, where writer Chuck Austen decides to tie up the dangling plot thread of the Church of Humanity, and their machinations for Nightcrawler.
Now, while normally I would give a writer credit for tying up loose ends of a previous regime, something which is going out of favour in Marvel these days, and I do extend that much of a courtesy to Austen in this instance, I really wish he had let the Church of Humanity fade into obscurity never to be mentioned again.
The Church was introduced early in Joe Casey's run on Uncanny, and were a group of religious wackjobs bent on removing mutants from the Earth. Or something like that. Basically, just like every other mutant hate group, but they ran around in priestly robes and wielded guns. So not only was their agenda unoriginal, but they looked silly carrying it out. This was meant to be more "real world" for the X-Men.
Now, the story of their return started off fair enough. The X-Men wake up one morning, and find several mutants, including a few of their colleagues, nailed to crosses on their front lawn. Fine. Mutant hate moving to a new level, the X-Men are quite pissed, even Cyclops shows emotion, and tears into Kurt when he finds out how the whole Church of Humanity situation has been handled thus far, and questions his abilities as leader. All good, fair points, and strikes a serious blow to our heroes in a storytelling and emotional way, quite nice.
But then came the second issue, where we found out the master plan of the Church. Sit back and get comfy, this is a bumpy ride.
The Church planned to fake Kurt's entry into the priesthood, which they actually succeeded in doing. Then, they would help him ascend quickly through the ranks and be nominated to be the Pope. If they have the power to get someone up to Popedom, why fake the priesthood? Wouldn't someone, somewhere notice?
Then, once Kurt was the Pope, they would cause his image inducer to fail, which he would of course be using all the time, and the Pope would stand revealed as a demon, the antichrist, now running the Church.
At the same time, more or less, they would also cause a false Rapture to occur. For those coming in late, let me explain what the Rapture is. First off, it has NOTHING to do with Catholic beliefs, or the Pope, or anything else having to do with the Church of Humanity. Now, what the Rapture IS, is a time when the End Times have finally come, and all true believers in God will just suddenly disappear in a sudden flash, leaving everything behind, and everyone else who doesn't believe at the mercy of the antichrist.
Now, how did the Church plan to bring this about? With tainted communion wafers. Yes, that's right. Tainted communion wafers. They altered them somehow, and would somehow be activated at a point after they were ingested by the people who ate them, to cause their bodies to suddenly disintegrate completely, leaving no trace, making it look like everyone had just up and disappeared.
I . . . Let's just say that I'm astounded by this plan. Or should it be more accurately referred to as a rambling incoherent hole-filled mess? I'm without words. There's so many problems with this, I can't even begin. Rule number one of supervillain plots: If your master plan can not be summed up on a 3x5" index card, it's too damned complicated, and very likely full of holes.
Chuck Austen obviously has issues with the Catholic Church, which is fine. Not everyone is going to like it. I have some issues and such with parts of their establishment. But this is just trumped up grandstanding on a gigantic scale, ranting to anyone, and having it fall on deaf ears.
Now, I still somewhat recommend Austen's Uncanny run. His characterization is excellent, and his plots are usually decent, and well thought out, but they do occasionally falter in the execution, with this one, glaring exception in his sanity. The next few issues, the non-wedding of Havok and Polaris, were quite good, by comparrison.
Let's just keep the religion out of the comic books, ok?
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