Comic review: Alan Moore’s Providence #3- A black, fishy comedy that mocks Christianity

Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Jacen Burrows
Publisher: Avatar Press
Released: 12 August 2015



I’ve read this book more than a few times now, and have been afraid of reviewing it. The reason being, it’s complex, and a review wouldn’t be easy, and I don’t want to mess it up. However, I’ve read it again today, and can see a slither of meaning amongst the murkiness, and so, I’m ready to give it a go.

Fishy men collecting souls in bottles.

Okay then, so what’s it all about? I think that the following quotation (from the book itself) nicely sums it all up:

‘It’s leaking from the future.’

That’s how I see the book now. That’s why in issue #3 there are weird, disjointed dream sequences, giving hints that are confused (as all dreams are) with events that are currently happening in the life of the main protagonist.

Our man is dreaming of the future, but it’s mixed up with his every day anxieties, his feelings of guilt, and his longings for answers in the present. We are seeing the world through his eyes (as is reinforced by the diary extracts that follow the main comic book narrative) and the confusion that he is experiencing is being transferred into the reading experience of the reader.

The dream sequences (of the main protagonist) are explored in great detail during the diary sections of the book and expand the narrative after the main illustrated part of the book concludes. Within this diary section are clues for the reader, clues that hint at both what is happening, and what is to come. It’s a fascinating story-telling device, and something that adds so much to the comic book reading experience, adding subtle elements, and details that would otherwise have been lost within the necessarily truncated comic book story format.

After reading the main comic book text, and the diary extracts, I cannot help but conclude that our protagonist is a bit of a dim detective. He is preoccupied with homosexual urges that distract him from the clues that can be picked up by the attentive reader, and although he records everything, he is not exactly coming to any big conclusions for himself. I guess that’s our job. Our protagonist records the evidence, and it’s up to us to unravel and make meaning of it all.

Into the caverns of the mind.

Providence is an occult mystery narrative that is dropping clues as it goes along. It’s a complex, involving book, and that’s exactly what you want in a genre book of this type.

The protagonist has to be a bit dim, as he’s laying out the clues, not solving them. The enjoyment to be had here is in following the story, and speculating about what is going on, whilst always being a bit in the dark as the full picture has yet to be revealed.

As for the deeper meanings that lay behind the narrative, that’s even murkier, but at the moment I detect a black comedy that involves jews, fish people, and homosexuals. It’s hinted that all three groups are about to be persecuted by the upcoming Nazi regime, with the black comedy being that two of the group are real, and were persecuted, whilst the other is pure Alan Moore weirdness.

The main focus of Providence #3 is the aforementioned fish people. These half-human, half fish follow a religion that’s part Christianity, and part worship of an ancient Mesopotamian fish God called Oannes.

‘Oannes, in Mesopotamian mythology, an amphibious being who taught mankind wisdom. Oannes, as described by the Babylonian priest Berosus, had the form of a fish but with the head of a man under his fish’s head and under his fish’s tail the feet of a man. In the daytime he came up to the seashore of the Persian Gulf and instructed mankind in writing, the arts, and the sciences. Oannes was probably the emissary of Ea, god of the freshwater deep and of wisdom.’
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Oannes

The fictional fish religion in Providence substitutes Oannes into the role of Christ himself, and is thus blackly blasphemous, disrespectful and contemptuous of Jesus Christ and Christianity as a whole.

Dream sequences include gratuitous nudity, be warned. 

What writer Alan Moore is doing here is insinuating that Christianity itself is a mixed up religion that has taken weird elements from earlier cult worship, creating a new cult that is equally as ridiculous as what came before it.

To further reinforce this point, the book concludes with the ‘Church of St. Jude’s Parish Newsletter.’ This is a comedic, absurdist attack on the origins of Christianity, mocking Jesus by making him a fish on a slab, resurrected and thus followed by all fish that have come after him as the one true messiah of all fish.

‘And they said, let us thake him out and hang him upon hooks that he may cure. Yet many tides did not pass before he was risen from his slab and was descended unto Heaven, through black abysses to dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.’ (The Parish Church of Saint Jude, 138 Bridge Street, Salem, Mass. June- August, 1919)

Pretty silly, isn’t it? Christians are often mocked for taking allegorical Bible stories literally, but this really is taking things to a whole new level.

I have to point out that Alan Moore is picking very low hanging fruit here in mocking the origins of Christianity. It’s something that is allowed, and even encouraged, so I’m not going to applaud him for doing it. If he was mocking Judaism or Islam then I’d applaud him, but he’s not doing that, probably because doing so would be truly controversial, and dangerous.

Alan Moore is not being brave, or outrageous, or scandalous, or cutting edge in mocking the origins of Christianity and talking about a weird fish cult, insinuating that Christianity itself is pretty much the same thing. Sorry, he’s just not. He’s doing what you are allowed to do in our neo-liberal, atheist times, but he’s doing it very well, and Providence is noticeably superior to 99% of the other comic books that I read on a weekly basis.

Providence #3 then is a studious, intelligent, dark occult comic book, but it’s also, very much nestled within the centrally planned social consensus norms and mores of our neo-liberal, cultural Marxist times. Get it, enjoy it, have a laugh with it, but please, recognise it for what it actually is.


Rating: 9/10 (Blackly comic tale that is mocking the origins of Christianity)



Note:
I do realise that Providence is packed with references to H.P Lovecraft and that this book is more than likely a progressive/liberal critique of the identity politics issues within his work. I recognise that, but as I’m not particularly familiar with the PC thought crimes committed by H.P Lovecraft I’ve reviewed this new book by Alan Moore as a stand-alone text.