It is comprehensible why DC Comics feared a backlash over Jesus showing in “Swamp Factor.” The non secular proper’s affect grew considerably within the Eighties, as evidenced by the Satanic panic epidemic that “Stranger Issues” Season 4 references. That form of prominence, mixed with occasions like the discharge of Martin Scorsese’s “The Final Temptation of Christ” resulting in a religiously motivated terrorist assault on a Paris theater in 1988, principally scuttled Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli’s story. The timing arguably wasn’t appropriate for a Jesus-meets-Swamp Factor story again then, however DC as soon as once more received chilly ft about publishing the story over thirty years later in 2019.
In line with The Gutter Evaluation, there have been reportedly conversations about lastly printing the “Swamp Factor” story in a group of Veitch’s DC work. Sadly, the negotiations coincided with the backlash in opposition to “Second Coming,” a non secular satire from co-creators Mark Russell and Richard Tempo that DC meant to launch as a part of its adult-oriented Vertigo imprint. This sequence induced large outrage in non secular circles earlier than its launch, forcing the writer to cancel its publication and seemingly curtail any tales involving the Son of God. (It’s price mentioning that “Second Coming” was finally acquired and launched by Ahoy Comics, the place it discovered success and spawned two subsequent miniseries.)
It stays to be seen if “Swamp Factor” #88 will ever see the sunshine of day (maybe to capitalize on the character’s large display reboot underneath James Mangold’s path) or if it would endlessly be thought to be a forbidden curiosity, a comic book that scared DC a lot that the writer canceled its publication greater than as soon as.
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