I found this the weakest of the four books in the generally impressive Testament series, mainly because the technobabble that is a minor irritant in Vol. 1 picks up in intensity, to the point of actually being quite distracting. Some of it's just that a little mysteriousness is just fine, especially in a book based on religious scriptures (some of the tech reminded me of midichlorians...), and some of it's that the specific things the tech was given credit for just don't make sense. I suppose I was hypersensitive to it because what Alan Stern is depicting as trying to do at the start is more or less the grotesque version of what my PhD was going to be all about, as perceived by people who don't understand the work and fear things they don't understand.... ( )

I found this the weakest of the four books in the generally impressive Testament series, mainly because the technobabble that is a minor irritant in Vol. 1 picks up in intensity, to the point of actually being quite distracting. Some of it's just that a little mysteriousness is just fine, especially in a book based on religious scriptures (some of the tech reminded me of midichlorians...), and some of it's that the specific things the tech was given credit for just don't make sense. I suppose I was hypersensitive to it because what Alan Stern is depicting as trying to do at the start is more or less the grotesque version of what my PhD was going to be all about, as perceived by people who don't understand the work and fear things they don't understand.... ( )

This is pretty interesting. I like the manna/money idea, Rushkoff seems to really dig this kind of future speculation and he's good at it.

This graphic novel followed the Joseph story from the Bible pretty closely but there were hints at the end that the future books would be "new" stories. So maybe Rushkoff got sick of having to bend his modern story to parallel the Bible stories? Definitely curious as to how it all turns out. ( )

Still not sure about this one. Again, the biblical stories are contrasted with Testament's future world of RFID-fitted people and a push towards a shared currency. (If you missed any of the connections, this TPB contains Bible verses and commentary for the first ten issues, even though only issues 6-10 are published here.) The art switches from good to sloppy, and many of the characters look alike -- although that may be the author's intent. At one point, the characters do something rebellious, and the gods complain from outside the panel -- it reminded me of the Homeric sagas and how the Greek gods "pushed" the characters to their destiny.

----------------------
LT Haiku:

Modern story shows
how man creates myth in each
civilization. ( )

Although clever enough as a biblical parody, as comics it's really pretty bad, with no sense of humor and little graphical imagination (though I liked the nods to Durer and Manet). As science fiction it's even worse -- Rushkoff writes as if he knows nothing about computers, which is pretty weird. Just as a story, the only character who has a real personality is Dinah. The way Liam Sharp draws the character Alec is actually bad.

Todd Klein -- who contribution as letterer is the strongest thing here -- should lock these guys in a room with Moore & Williams's Promethea for a week. For all that book's longeurs, there are characters you care about and plenty of wit on both verbally and visually.