Review by Booklist Review
Hold onto your hats for this premise. Under the control of a ratings-hungry TV executive and with the help of a geneticist, Jesus is born again (to a virgin) thanks to the miracle of human cloning, only to suffer the indignities of reality-TV stardom. Hounded by increasingly radical fundamentalists and guarded by bulky ex-IRA soldier Thomas, the second coming of Christ, this time named Chris, rebels in spectacular fashion after the death of his beleaguered mother by giving himself a mohawk and leading a decidedly unmeek uprising as the front man for a widely reviled punk band. But Chris shouldn't get all the attention. Murphy (Joe the Barbarian, 2011) has created a fascinating, multidimensional cast of supporting characters with rich backstories and believable existential angst especially Thomas, whose crisis of faith over his violent past proves the most heartbreaking of all. Murphy's gritty, mesmerizing black-and-white art spills over the pages with architectural lines and angry ink-splotches, depicting cinematic car-chase action and dank, rain-soaked cityscapes. A surprisingly nuanced, Molotov-cocktail-wielding version of the greatest story ever told.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This bracing tale of the Second Coming uses contemporary social issues to explore a familiar "what if?" scenario-namely, what would happen if Jesus showed up and was confronted with the corrupt, consumerist culture in which we live? In Murphy's version of this oft-posed query, a power-hungry producer of a reality television show plays a key role: he has Jesus's DNA, extracted from the Shroud of Turin, injected into an anonymous teenager whom he "casts" as the new virgin. In tracing the maturation of the new Jesus (named Chris here), the action is fast and the plotting is thick-there is a former IRA terrorist as the producer's head of security, a geneticist whose work is tied to the success of the show, and a very gentle polar bear. The ambitious story tends to get a little too big in terms of plot; this bloating distorts character dynamics, occasionally twisting them in unnatural directions. But the story's bigness has an upside: Murphy has constructed a compelling, searching, and important tale that embraces some of the biggest questions of our day, and he does so using incredibly energetic art with dynamic, elastic compositional approaches. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the near future, with global warming threatening coastlines, geneticist Sarah Epstein secures funding for her plan to engineer carbon dioxide-gobbling plants by participating in a new reality TV program. She implants DNA extracted from the Shroud of Turin into the womb of a young virgin, and so is born Chris, the new Jesus Christ. With holograms for classmates, and a surrogate family including Sarah's daughter Rebekah, who is Chris's age and a former IRA terrorist head of security, Chris grows up in an island compound in front of the entire world, his existence splitting Christians into two factions: those who believe he's the Second Coming, and those who believe the "J2" project is an abomination. VERDICT Murphy's spiky, detail-rich black-and-white artwork brilliantly illustrates an engrossing and surprising story that achieves a heightened sense of reality: a place where satire turns questioning and abstract, larger-than-life issues and conflicts are concretized on a human scale. An audacious, nuanced, and hugely compelling tale of science and religion, belief and rebellion, damnation and redemption-and, yes, punk rock-this work is highly recommended for older teens and adults.-S.R. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
