The Groovy 1970's Christmas Countdown: Son O God by Neal Adams, Michel Choquette and Sean Kelly

It’s been some time since I mentioned the cheerfully blasphemous “Son-O’-God” comic strip that appeared in the National Lampoon magazine in the 1970’s. I picked up the pages shown here 6 months ago on eBay for a pretty decent price, and was waiting until Christmas to show them. In the “Lampoon” stories the “Son-O-God” is Benny Davis a nerdy young man in his late 20’s who still lives with his parents in Brooklyn. When he says “JESUS CHRIST!” he transforms into a muscular super-hero version of Jesus with a six-pack, cape, and halo, ready to do battle with Catholicism, Islam, and the Antichrist. It still surprises me that no publisher has taken on the chore of collecting all the National Lampoon comic strips (not just "Son O God") – then again maybe we are less tolerant today of anything poking fun at religion.

Tales of Jesus ....as a superhero!

National Lampoon was an American humour magazine that ran from 1970 until 1998. The magazine itself featured long text pieces of surreal satire with some actual news items and (more importantly) also featured some amazing comic strips with art by the likes of Ralph Reese and Barry (Windsor) Smith. It would be fair to say that the humour of the magazine often went way beyond what was considered acceptable even for the 1970’s. It was in 1972 that the cheerfully blasphemous National Lampoon magazine introduced the superhero comic strip “Son O God” , written by Sam Kelly and Michael Choquette with art (on most issues) by the legendary Neal Adams. The strip featured 2 or 3 page parody’s/ satires of religion with something to offend everyone with our hero fighting Catholicism, the antichrist Pope and even the “scourge” of Islam (their title not mine). Possibly not the most Christmassy of items to feature a few days before the big day, but it is interesting to see that this type of work was published in the 1970's and that people then seemed to be strong enough in their own beliefs not to blow up the National Lampoon offices. Or maybe they just had the sense to know that this was only a daft wee comic strip.