Sal's Sunday Punch #22

Incredible Hulk #195 Writer Len Wein, artist Sal Buscema.

 You know who my favourite Hulk villain is? It's the Abomination. I love watching the big green Russian monster fight the Incredible Hulk. So today's Sunday Punch is the Abomination and the Hulk fighting each other, from two different eras (in terms of writer) of the Incredible Hulk -- though actually it's all from the same run of Sal Buscema on the Hulk book.

Comics vs. The Ten Commandments

Ahhh, the ten commandments. You’ve heard of them, right? Yahweh’s ten immutable laws!

They're meant to be the divine words of god, handed down from on high by a perfect, unchanging, omnipotent godhead who chose them as the ultimate rules for human life. In fact many Christians claim that the ten commandments are the basis for Western law and morality. They're absolutely perfect!

Now ignoring the fact that actually Hellenic law and morality is as much the basis for Western law and morality as anything else, I think there's a case to be made that the ten commandments are anything BUT perfect. In fact I think you can prove that comic books offer a more interesting, complex and practical guide to moral thought than the ten commandments could ever provide.

Hey, why don't we do that right now?

The first problem with the ten commandments, of course, is that not everyone agrees on what those commandments are. Catholics, for example, don’t even bother with the graven images one. So for the purposes of this article let’s use a comic as our source for scripture.

You might be able to detect some evidence
that this is a second-hand copy on the cover.
(Classics Illustrated #135, writer Lorenz Graham, artist Norman Nodel.)

Hooo yeah! Let’s get this thing underway.