Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for April 23, 2010

Wow! Billy’s Catholic!

I’m certainly not sending any money to the Billy Billings Fan Club! At least not without a box number and ZIP code.

I like the goat, but you forgot to include the young boys that I’m sure Billy likes also. Any death threats for showing a depiction of God man?

Won’t my pennies fall out of the envelope like when I sent for the X-Ray glasses?

the flock ARE sheep…and the sheep ARE stupid…..praise the lord

Dare you to do Mohammad-man.

God-Man and Allah-Man are one and the same; they’re merely different continuities handled by different creative teams. Billy Billings and Muhammad likewise have both held the position of “God-Man’s Pal” at different times in different “universes”, and they’re far from the only ones. For the most part, though, stories from one creative team (such as this one) can be transposed to any other without serious contradiction.

However, the lack of editorial unity in the handling of God-Man’s adventures leads to some irresolvable continuity lapses. For instance, in some stories Jesus-Lad is God-Man’s begotten son, in some he’s merely another “Pal”, and in some he’s God-Man himself, by another name.

One of my favorite alternate (as opposed to parallel) continuities is the Gnostic Universe, where God-Man (or Demiurge-Man, as he’s known there) is insane and actively evil, and Jesus-Lad derives his superpowers from an unknown (and unknowable) figure above God-Man.

I hear there’s a special “Crisis of Infinite God-Mans” series planned, which will attempt to rewrite much of the backstory and jettison generations of encrusted continuity (much of which is beloved by fans). Alas, I can’t imagine that Demiurge-Man will survive conflation with the more mainstream aspects of the character…

I think I bought some very bad Cannabis recently. Should I send that to Billy so he can check it out for me?

tchuck64 - Called for that 2 weeks ago.

jnik23260 - Like there aren’t other Christians bleeep anything that moves?

smurf-farts, the key difference is that Catholic doctrine holds that God-Fans’ experience with their hero must be mediated rather than direct. Most Protestant denominations, even those with ordained clergy, allow (or even insist on) a personal relationship with God-Man. Any sect much smaller than the RCC which holds that its supreme leader is a direct (and infallible) conduit of God-Man’s will is immediately slapped with the label “cult.”

I’m Catholic and I read this as an indictment of ANYONE who claims to be on a “personal relationship” basis with an all-knowing, all-seeing Deity. If you think you can read specific Catholic-bashing into it, you either want to bash Catholics OR you are a conservative, super-sensitive Catholic -er, in which case you wouldn’t be reading Tom the Dancing Bug at all, it would be so far off your radar, so never mind.