Testament, Vol. 2: West of Eden

Testament #2

by Douglas Rushkoff, Liam Sharp (Illustrator), Peter Gross (Illustrator)

From the imagination of best-selling author Douglas Rushkoff, one of the most icono-clastic and acclaimed minds of our era, comes a graphic novel series that exposes the "real" Bible as it was actually written, and reveals how its mythic tales are repeated today.

Young Alan Stern may have created life — inside his laptop. Now, he's about to discover the terrible consequences of playing God.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Religion, Fiction, Comix

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 2007

About the author

Douglas Rushkoff is a New York-based writer, columnist and lecturer on technology, media and popular culture.

Reviews

[Bob Stains]

Creative mash-up of "pagan" creation myths, gods and goddesses with Genesis tales told in parallel "then and now" story-lines. The artwork is lavish but I found it hard to follow the in and out weavings of the ancient myth with the contemporary story. The author provides a detailed scholarly explanation in end-notes that helped make sense of it all and, as an added bonus, taught quite a bit about rabbinical perspectives on many of the classic stories and midrash on dilemmas, questions or missing details in biblical accounts. Like: why did Jacob send Joseph to check on his brothers when they already hated him for ratting them out in the past? I'm not sure if I'll read another in the series, but it was an interesting book.

[Michael]

Y'know, I'm still not sure what to make of this book. I think Rushkoff's a smart guy, and there are some intriguing ideas in the book, but I truly wish that he put a little effort into making me care about the characters. I tire quickly of them speaking in non-stop socio-economic soundbytes and find them all to be nearly blank slates. Two volumes into the series, the ideas alone simply aren't enough to compel me to buy this anymore.

[TheWord]

1,5

[Eldan Goldenberg]

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....

[Paul]

Et ca continu.

More selective biblical references to fit the story, but that's OK, it makes for a pretty interesting read.

OK, maybe I'm not being all that fair, using the old gods to create the word, pitting them once against the other, and manipulating humanity to their devices (but then again, dont all gods do that?), makes the overall story worth reading. As far as humanity is concernedm, it pretty much seems to reflect that "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose"

The art holds up, it is actually pretty nice. The colors also need to be mentioned as being nice as well.

On to volume 3...

[Shane]

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.

[Chris]

The second in "The Testament" series which focuses on three parts of early Genesis, the creation story, Cain and Abel, and Joseph. Again like the first book in this series, the author ties in present day circumstances with the biblical stories. Jake is still conflicted and doesn't know who to trust as the next wave of "first generation manna" is released. Trippy story, but really makes you think and connect ancient and present day stories.

[Matthew]

The saga unfolds. Mysticism, sexuality, tyranny....

[Marc]

If you want to know my opinion on it, listen to Episode 48 of V for Vertigo at http://vforvertigo.blogspot.com

[Jaime]

Weird.