Meh.
Okay, I’ll be saying more than that on GloryBe!, a Christian satirical comic by David C. Hill, but I just had to get that out-of-the-way.
I’m not giving this comic a bad review because it jokes about Christianity. Hell, I’m a Christian myself, and I regularly laugh at the sillier aspects of religion. I’m giving this comic a bad review because the humour is so… apologetic.
Let me paint you a picture here. On the front cover is displayed the sentences ‘To be taken with a pinch of salt’ and ‘suggested for mature readers’. This to me sounded like it was going to be very black humour, a comic that you would not give to your children. The kind of humour I love! But I was very wrong. In the Foreword, the artist and writer makes a statement saying that he is not satirising Christians, but ‘the flawed character traits of human beings’. He then spends a paragraph explaining that he does not intend to mock Christian beliefs as he ‘plays for Team Christian’. He then rambles on about Christianity is a broad church that hosts people from every walk of life (which is true) and then once again reminds the reader that this is ‘satire’ and ‘best taken with a pinch of salt’. He signs off by saying a humour comic that tries not to offend anybody would be ‘soul-achingly dull’ – and yet I fear that that is exactly what GloryBe! is. Any chance this comic had of being satirical has been shot down by way of Hill’s constant apologetic tone before the jokes even start coming in. Do The Simpsons, or Family Guy apologize for their material? No sir, they do not! And neither should GloryBe!
And that’s just the foreword! Okay, to be fair, the comic did make me laugh a total of three times. Yes, there were three very witty jokes… but out of an 84 page comic, that just is not good enough to merit entertainment. The comic portrays the fictional Riverdale Church, led by Pastor Peter Loftus. Most of the narrative – actually, that’s the wrong word, this is more of a sketch show – derives from emails sent from Peter and the various attendees of the church. The problem is that these emails are never followed up, we never see their reply – and the humour content of each email are by and large not enough to be standalone.
Furthermore… I have a nitpick about the art style itself. All the characters look so angry. Even in the scenes where I’m given the impression Pastor Peter is joyous by way of the dialogue, I cannot tell if he’s frowning or if that is just the way his, and everyone else in Riverdale’s, eyebrows are formed. I’m just going to go ahead and assume that everyone in this comic has a pineapple shoved up their ass.
If apologetic humour is your sort of thing and I haven’t put you off by this review, then by all means check out the website: http://www.glorybe.co.uk/. But if not and you want cutting edge, unashamed humour, then you’re better off looking elsewhere.
Rating:
1.5/5
Alex resides in the quaint little island known as the United Kingdom. As such, he enjoys buck-teeth, top hats and monocles, and speaks in a very posh accent. He was kicked out of Hogwarts for practising the Dark Arts and now works as a receptionist aboard the Death Star.
