As creator of REVEREND ABLACK: ADVENTURES OF THE ANTICHRIST, a comic book about the Antichrist coming to earth in the guise of a priest, I've gathered my share of critics. In the process, I've been labeled a "Satanist" and a "Nazi," and that I was furthermore "condemned to Hell forever." The attacks were leveled against me, of course, by people who considered themselves good-hearted "Christians." In all cases, not a single one had actually read the book.

I self-published ABLACK in 1988, on xerox paper with mail-order distribution. The readership grew enough over the years to warrant a "professional" publication, so a new version was worked up and published by CFD Productions and released in 1996. Ironically, during the book's 8-year lifespan, I was probably what one would have considered a religious Christian: I believed that Jesus had died on the cross and rose from the dead, in order to pave the way for we sinners' entry into Heaven.

I had been baptized Dutch Reformed, and was later confirmed Methodist. My parents were largely nonreligious and didn't go to church with me, instead sending me with the neighbor's kid. Later, in order to avoid the problems of public school, they sent me to an Episcopalian private school for seventh grade, and Catholic schools from eighth through twelfth. I then went to a predominantly Jewish college. Obviously, this heterogenous dogma mix is largely to blame for the combination of my fascination with religions and my inability to buy into any of them. Simply put, I never could fathom how one group of people could so firmly believe theirs was the "right" faith, while the others argued their case equally convincingly. Someone had to be "wrong."

Catholic school had the greatest effect. I was grossly mistreated by the Catholics, probably not so much to do with being the only Protestant, but rather for being too damn smart. In eighth grade, the monsignor stepped into class and asked what "catholic" meant, and I was the only one who raised my hand. I was asking for it.

I was shocked, even throughout high school, at the nuns' oddest sense of priorities. Drug deals were allowed to go on in the halls, but the girls' skirts had to be a certain length. Students would harass the weaklings in the middle of class and go unpunished, but laughing during a Hail Mary bought you detention. The message was clear to me, even at that age: this was about appearances, not actually abiding by the moral lessons taught at Mass.

Even still, the Catholics had so much else going for them: the costumes, the Latin, the music, the Mass. . . . It all appealed to me in very much the way it is designed to: as a symbolic link to the psyche, a Jungian tool to excite the subconscious. It just didn't overcome the hypocrisy I saw, so I became divided. I learned to love the ritual, but hated the players. I'm still in awe of the beautiful machine they've created.

By the time ABLACK came out, I was still wrapped in the Christian history and legend, but starting to ask mature questions about the hypocrisy. The book's thesis, in fact, was "what you don't believe in can destroy you." While Vatican higher-ups dismissed the idea of a true Antichrist, Ablack was busily becoming it. The later "professional" version of the book went a bit further, and examined the power of faith over the weakness of doctrine. At the conclusion, it is the Pope who saves the day, immune to Ablack's power due to his own faith. Those catcalling Christians failed to read the book, remember.

In about 1989 or so, I joined the Communist Party USA. I was surrounded by true "atheists," and was completely baffled. I understood Marx's position on religion, but disagreed with it. All the Marxist/Leninist criticisms of religion seemed not to jibe with the Party's mantra "socialism is inevitable." The comrades showed the kind of faith --- in the goal of an equal society --- that religious devotees do to their gods. I didn't see much difference. I did, however, begin to get economic answers to some of my questions about Church hypocrisy. But the Party couldn't sway me from my belief in God. I was still too afraid of angering God by rejecting Him.

Another event had a more powerful effect. My parents (nonreligious at the time) and I had given up speaking in around 1986, over a string of a string of incidents wherein Mom, herself the adopted and quite-unloved daughter of two very strict German Jews, played the guilt cards to a son who was outgrowing the game. I gave up on them, not being able to handle the negativity they were producing. It was during this period that, at some point, my parents found God. A depressogenic agoraphobic, Mom wouldn't leave the house, so never actually went to Church; instead, she fell into that homespun religion which consists of pulling out Bible verses to justify her self-made alienation with her family and society (Matthew chapter 10 comes to mind.) Dad became co-pastor in this new Momchurch, and the two set off on using religion to revisit the family problems of the past. Well, they didn't exactly "set off," since that would require leaving the house; they just sort of sat there, stewing.

At one point I tried to re-establish connections with them. It didn't go too well: my father, probably having heard about my work on ABLACK, screamed over the phone at me saying, "You know what your problem is? It's those Tarot cards you had! You gave your life over to Satan! TO SATAN!" I was about 28 at the time; I had Tarot cards when I was 14. Dad was digging deep: to them, "Satanic" Tarot cards had become the explanation for a 14-year old's prepubescent problems. Old Scratch had replaced Dr. Spock.

The event sickened me. To watch otherwise intelligent adults be reduced to desperate, spiritually weak rants in order to explain their son getting his ear pierced some twelve years prior was repellent. I was starting to see that someone WAS wrong.

Later, in reading the works of some of our top physicists, most notably Michio Kaku, I began to explore a scientific vision of "god." Kaku, heir apparent for Steven Hawking's crown, proposes a universe constructed of many dimensions, with our reality simply a result of vibrations from higher dimensions. As new-age as it sounds, this is the stuff of hard science, and incredibly complex mathematics. Studying it, one realizes that our concepts of "God" are becoming scientifically plausible, and that science --- once considered the realm of Satan --- may one day prove God. The problem is, at least for fundamentalists, the "scientific God" isn't going to look anything like the Biblical one. It was becoming easier for me to give up the notion of a God who would get angry if I rejected the image presented by his loudest earthly spokesmen. Maybe God was just an equation.

Even with these interesting alternate theories entering me, I was still too fearful of God and death to contemplate the illusion of the former and the reality of the latter. Then I began researching the origins of Christianity and the life of Christ for a novel of which I'm currently writing. Of particular interest was the collection of recent works on the "historic Jesus," which looks at Jesus from the evidence presented by history, not literal interpretations of Biblical accounts. Discovering the early and immediate squabbles over Jesus' legacy left me pale. The religion known as "Christianity" had been corrupted within the first ten minutes of Jesus' passing (a debatable subject in itself.) Paul battled with Jesus' brother James over the interpretation of Jesus' life and teachings, while Peter began structuring a sexist hierarchy of his own invention. 300 years later, Emperor Constantine mixed up a big brew of Mithraism, Judaism and Pauline Christianity, spiced it with hefty doses of miscellaneous paganisms and incantations to Sol Invictus, and called the melange "The Roman Catholic Church." The Romans, that gang of finely-dressed hoodlums who once crucified Christ, had suddenly become the Christians. Retaining the flavoring that made the Church "Roman," they passed an edict: to make sure everyone became enlightened with the Christian values of brotherhood, forgiveness and love, nonbelievers were sentenced to death.

You know, the stuff they forget to mention at Mass.

I cannot possibly sum up the amount of history I've discovered for myself in the past year, much of it from the Vatican's own records; and naturally I've only scratched the surface myself. The evidence, when one looks at things without an agenda to prove or disprove God, is overwhelming. True Christianity doesn't exist, and perhaps it never could.

This leaves me where I am now. There have been occasions in my life when an overpowering realization --- an epiphany, for lack of a better word --- strikes me like lightning, forcing me to reevaluate everything I thought I knew. One such "lightning strike" was the understanding of the wage-labor/capital relationship, which subsequently gave me an understanding of history and contemporary politics.

Another such epiphany was the realization that humans are less interested in factual analysis of the histories of their religions than they are to clinging to supernatural explanations that ease their fear of death. Hypocrisy between words and deeds is acceptable so long as we don't get near the concept of Nothingness- After-Death. People would rather spend their entire lives in misery in order to deny its end. We have gone not much further than our primitive ancestors, naming the sun in the hopes of appeasing it.

The good news, I believe, is that in the end, most people ought to be pretty happy. If the theories of our top physicists prove true, then eternal life is just a few dimensions away. Awaiting it, however, I fail to see the need to resort to supernaturalism. If there isn't anything beyond, then there's all the more reason to make this trip a fulfilling one.

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