Comics and the Philosophies of Time and Religion

I got a Shonen Jump subscription a couple of days ago. I rarely pay money for any subscription-based service, but I made an exception for Jump. One thing that amazes me in manga (Japanese comics) is how much variety there is. there is a joke in some corners of the internet about this kind of variety: If you can think it, there is a manga about it. There will be some tropes. For example, a lot of them will be set in high school. That's because their core demographics is young Japanese boys in elementary or high school. The tropes notwithstanding, there is still an incredible amount of variety.

You want a series about cooking? That's so basic. Of course there is. It's a whole genre of manga, with some sub-genres. Do you want one about reviewing food? Try Oishinbo, maybe Ms Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles. Want one about iron chef type cooking battles? Shokugeki no Soma or Food Wars, or the classic bread baking series Yakitate Japan. Want one about beating up dinosaurs and eating them? Toriko.

A series about competitive wine tasting? For some reason, there is: Drops of God. A manga series about the history of science? Try Dr. Stone.

A high school setting where the goal is for the students to kill their teacher? I can think of TWO: Greatest Teacher Onizuka and Assassination Classroom. Both are about badass teachers handling a class full of problem children who want to kill their teacher, but GTO takes the perspective of the poor teacher as the class warms up to him, while AssClass is really more about the students (in particular, how they become better teacher killers) as they also warm up to the teacher.

I can go on and on and on. By virtue of their variety and quality, it's easy to read dozens, if not hundreds of chapters in what feels like a very short time. 

Art is experiential. So when it makes you experience things: anger, happiness, sadness, or even a different pace of time, it's always worth it to examine why and how the art makes you feel that way. Here's my attempt to make sense of how comic books creates experiences of time.

Comics and the Philosophy of Time

Western comics are read from left to right. On the other hand, comics from East Asia (manga, manhwa, etc.) are typically read from right to left. This matters because if you read a Spider-man comic from right to left, you'll be confused about the order in which things happen and the order in which things are said.

The reason is obvious. You have to read the panels of the comic book in the intended order because each panel shows a single moment in time. If you read each panel in this way, your mind will stitch together the two panels and it will create a smooth idea of what happened.[1] 

But is this true though? As the title suggests, this post is about philosophy. One of the ways we do philosophy is by questioning some assumptions we take for granted. The above description of what comics are is based on the assumption that a panel depicts a single moment in time. 

We don't need to go very far to debunk this assumption. Let's look at a panel from my favorite manga series of all time, One Piece.[2] 

Some context before I show the panel. This is the part where I stand on a soapbox and try to evangelize you into reading One Piece. 

One Piece is about the adventures of a young pirate named Luffy. He wants to be the King of the Pirates. "King of the Pirates" was the title given to the man who had everything the world had to offer. Before he was executed, the King of the Pirates said that he left his treasure, the One Piece (roll credits!), somewhere in the world. Many new pirates began searching for the One Piece, and the one who finds it will be the next King. 

But for Luffy, being the King of the Pirates is less about being wealthy or being powerful. Rather, to him, the one who will be the King of the Pirates is the one who is the most free in the world. It is this freedom-loving philosophy that makes him unable to ignore people who are being oppressed by monarchies, warlords, or the World Government. He and his crew go to different islands, each with their own unique cultures, architectural styles, geographies, histories, etc. One of these islands is the "island" of Zou. I put "island" in quotes because this island is actually a gigantic and ancient elephant, cursed to roam the seas with this civilization of animal people called Minks on its back. 

Zou uses its trunk to spray water on the people, allowing the Minks to purify it into drinking water using an elaborate system of aqueducts and to grow fruit trees. The sprays also provide the Minks with fish. The sprays, however, lead to floods. The Minks adapted to the flooding problem by creating treehouse-based cities.  

Here's a panel[3] of Luffy and his crew just hanging out with the Minks. Read from right to left:

So, what did we see here? It seems that the Minks on the far right side of the panel want to cuddle with  Zolo, the angry human we see a bit to the left of the big tiger(???) looking Mink saying "LETS FROLIC." Moving leftward, we see Luffy sitting on a panda Mink scolding Zolo about his manners. Moving even more to the left, we see a separate conversation between another Mink, the dog in the bikini (don't ask, we don't have time), telling the human girl next to her that in Mink culture, friendship is expressed through physical intimacy. Because they're animals, get it? And to the far left of the panel, we see a third conversation between a rabbit Mink and a long nosed human about the kind of food that the Minks are accustomed to eating on Zou.

Three separate conversations in one panel. This is hardly a single moment. We see the Minks' action of asking for cuddles, we see Zolo's reaction to the Minks, we see Luffy's reaction to Zolo. The dog Mink also sees the commotion on the other side of the room and reacts to it in a separate conversation, which could have taken place at the same time as the Minks-Zolo-Luffy interaction or immediately afterwards. We also see a completely unrelated conversation about meat.

This single panel depicts a scene moving through time, not just a single snapshot. It does this through the use of words. Words create a sense of time in comic books because they represent sound, something that cannot exist outside of time. If you take a snapshot of a moment in time, all of the things happening in that snapshot are happening at the same time. This is true even if you look at the picture from right to left. 

On the other hand, if the comic book panel says that someone is saying "LETS FROLIC," and you imagine them saying that, you are creating your own illusion of time existing in a picture. Physics would say that the panel has no time, as it is merely a static image. But you are creating time by doing the act of reading.

Panel one: there are two people in a room. One has an axe raised above their head, the other has their arms raised as if to shield themselves. Panel two: it is a picture of the night sky over a small town, and there is a speech bubble saying "EEEEEEEEEK!!"

What did these two panels depict? Well, nothing at all, from a physics point of view. But you know what actually happened. You imagined it. You caused it to happen when you read it. Scott McCloud used this example to say: "every act committed to paper by the comics artist is aided and abetted by a silent accomplice... the reader." [4]

Time is created in the act of reading. It is most apparent in the reading of words, but this is definitely not the only reading done in comic books. As mentioned before, when you move from one panel to the next, it is assumed that you are moving forward in time to see another event.

Take this very simple yet effective set of panels from Akane-Banashi. This is a manga about a very old form of Japanese storytelling called Rakugo, in which a single person (called a Rakugoka) sits on stage and tells a story. I won't get into the details of it right now, but it can get very anxiety-inducing for professional Rakugoka. In the panels [5] below, we see one such Rakugoka:

This Rakugoka is anxious for his performance, and has doubts about the quality of his own art. Relatable. But ignore the words for now. See how he goes from holding the cigarette in his hand, to taking a puff from it, to putting it out in the ashtray. That is action-to-action time.

When these small actions are put in their own dedicated panels, every action seems deliberate. And this communicates how deep in thought the character must be. It's almost as if time for that character is moving  s l o w l y.

By using the panels, you can manipulate the reader's sense of time. Multiple panels about small actions show that time is moving slowly for a person. In the same way, panels showing several events in conjunction make the reader feel like they are jumping through time.

For example, in the Earthchild series, an ordinary man is tasked with raising a baby destined to become the world's next superhero. Because the baby has very powerful psychic abilities, playtime can be quite dangerous. So, the man enlists the government to help him create a playground for the baby. Their day[6] looked like this:

This was an entire day, full of different events, compressed into a single page of comic book. Time can speed up. In films, we would call this a montage!

Just like how comics can make time slow down and speed up, it can even freeze time. A panel without words and with minimal "movement" (which you would get from actions lines) can make it seem that this moment is frozen in time, like in this panel [7] from Bleach, a story about soul reapers. I won't give context for this panel. It's one of the times where if you know, you KNOW. 

Anime is known, rather unfortunately, to pad out the runtime of their episodes with redundant reaction shots. Yes, the main character punched someone. We don't need to cut to twelve people individually gasping or groaning in reaction. But in the world of comics and manga, this technique can be used to emphasize the different aspects of a single moment. Take this page[8] from Elusive Samurai, for example:

In this series, the main character is the heir to the shogunate, but is notoriously non-confrontational. He avoids any responsibility connected with ruling over the land. That's what makes him so elusive, you see. In this page, we are seeing the same moment from different perspectives. The first panel, we see the scenario for what it is: a kid sitting on a tree branch overlooking a town. In the second panel, we see what the kid is looking at-- not the town, but the people. We also see the people happy to see him. The third panel tells us why they're happy by showing us what the people are seeing-- the young lord happily living among them.

It is the same moment from different perspectives. This technique is really hard to do on film, where time always, always moves forward, no matter how much slow-mo Zack Snyder-types use.

Time is depicted in a single panel using words. Time can be sped up or slowed down depending on what you put in the panels. Time can be frozen if you show different aspects of the same moment in multiple panels or if you show a single scene without movement or words. Is it possible to speed up time using only one panel, with no words? Yes, it is. Check out another panel[9] from Elusive Samurai:

How do you go about reading a page like this? Remember that you read manga right to left. We start from the upper right: the boy lands on one of his assailants' horse. Then, following the motion lines, he jumps towards the bottom of the panel, landing on some other guy's sword. Then, he jumps to the upper left portion of the panel, kicking someone's face to finally land on the head of the guy on the bottom left of the panel.

An entire action scene happened in the space of one panel. This was made possible because we followed the movements as depicted by the motion lines. All action manga do this, although to varying extents. The particular technique described above can be seen in a lot of western comic books, especially Spider-Man. Some manga take this literally, where characters comment that "they're moving so fast it's like I'm seeing mirror images!" They did that in Bleach, too.

When the artist puts pen to paper, and the audience reads what was drawn or written, this interaction between artist and audience creates not only meaning, but time. We inject our perception of time into the page, and we often do so according to the design of the author.

More importantly, in comics, when we go through the spaces in the panels and in between the panels, we feel like we are also going through time. In the confines of these comic book boxes, time and space are one. And things only move when we say they do!

Here's the catch— even if we create time in the act of reading, the fact is that the whole story has already been written. There is no past, present, or future. All the panels in the whole comic book exist concurrently. All of time exists all at once.

This is called the Philosophy of Eternalism,[10] as a branch of the philosophy of time. Eternalism is the view that all of existence in time is equally Real. Past, present, and future exist in a single unit we call a "block universe."

So, the act of reading a comic book creates an experience of time, in the way we described above. In the lived experience, we may even argue that this experience extends only to the present. This is because "past" and "future" cannot exist, by definition. Mark Currie says "the past has been, and so is not, and the future is to be, and so it is not yet." [11] There is only the "present." However, the present is also conceptually problematic because any time you call the "present" can be divided into "right now" and "just now." For example, are you reading this sentence right now? Yes, you were, but now you're not, as this is a completely different sentence. As soon as you experience the present, the present becomes inexistent. 

The first-hand subjective experience of time[12] created when you read a comic book is entirely different from the comic book itself. The comic book itself, as an object, removed from the ego of the reader, is an entire universe in and unto itself. It has a beginning and an end, contained in a single block we call an "issue" or a "volume" or a "graphic novel" (or a pdf, cbr, or epub file). 

Currie continues by saying:

"In written text, the future lies there to the right, awaiting its actualisation by the reading, so that written text can be said to offer a block view of time which is never offered to us in lived experience... If the written narrative offers a model of time, then it offers one which is fundamentally at odds with what we might call 'lived experience.'" [13]

Comics and the Philosophy of Religion

So, if the model of time offered by comic books is NOT compatible with our experience, then it begs the question: whose experience is this? What would we call an entity that subscribes to this model of time? 

The answer is, and hear me out, God. The comic book, as an objective block universe, is how God experiences time. (I must note now that my usage of God here does not specifically refer to the Abrahamic deity, but rather, I'm referring to any deity or Being that can claim omniscience as an attribute)

There's a popular paradox among Intro to Philosophy kids about free will and God. How could God be omniscient, how could He know everything that has happened, is happening, and will ever happen, if humans have free will? If He knows everything that will happen, then we fall into determinism,[14] which means that we have zero agency over what we do. If He doesn't, then we can't call Him omniscient, and thus, religion is wrong.

Of course, because we're talking about God, we can continue moving the goalposts. We can say, as many medieval philosophers have said before us, that it is possible to reconcile these two notions by viewing God as a fully transcendent being, transcending even being, logic, and time.[15] The problem with this, as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy pointed out, is that it is generally unsatisfactory an explanation [16] because it could be seen as hiding the flaw behind an unknowable. You can't rebut what is unknowable.

Except now, we can know what it might feel like to be God.

Consider the comic book multiverse. It's fitting that I write about this tonight. It is 8p.m., May 4.  Dr. Strange: Multiverse of Madness is out in theaters today. I was supposed to watch it tonight, but I have to leave the house very early tomorrow (early as in 8:30am; my body clock is messed up) so I need to rest as much as I can tonight.

In the comics, there are at least 161 Marvel Universes. Each one explored in some sort of issue or book.  Earth 616 is understood as the "mainstream Marvel universe" or the "Prime" universe, the Ultimate Marvel Universe is designated as Earth 1610, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is designated as Earth 199999. [17]

Each Marvel Universe is created because a person or a group of persons made a choice, of their own free will, that would diverge from the mainstream or the Prime timeline. This concept is depicted a bit in the Disney+ shows Loki and What If? These shows actually depict the exact choice that made the timelines diverge from the Prime universe. In the comics, this is also usually the case. 

For example, Peter Parker and MJ Watson have a baby. In the Prime Universe, Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin) tasked someone named Alison to abduct the baby. Norman had the baby killed. However, in Earth 982, either Norman chose not to abduct the baby, or  Alison chose not to carry out Norman's instructions. As a result May Parker survived and became Spider-Girl. 

There are some notable exceptions to the logical nature of the Marvel Comic Multiverse like Earth 1610 (Ultimate Universe), where the choice that made the timelines diverge was never revealed. However, as a rule, the multiverse as it exists in the comics is a logical result of people's exercise of their free will.

Back to God. What do we have to work with?

1. God is omniscient and knows everything that will happen

2. Each comic book is its own block universe

3. Each universe in the Multiverse is explored in its own comic book

4. Each universe in the Multiverse is created by an exercise of free will

We have all the pieces, I believe. Let's just put them together. Because of #2 and #3, we can conclude that the following is also true:

5. Each comic book in which another universe is explored is its own block universe

Furthermore, as a result of #4 and #5 being true, we can also conclude that:

6. Each exercise of free will creates a new block universe

Finally, as a result of #1 and #6 being true, we can approximate what it means for God to be omniscient and for God to "transcend time:"

7. God is omniscient because He has access to every single block universe created by exercises of free will.

This is how God can be omniscient while we have free will. We make countless choices, each one creating a new universe in which past, present, and future, are one. We make comic book universes. God's omniscience is simply that of an Entity that has collected every single comic book.

What does that make us casual comic book collectors? What does it make me, a Shonen Jump subscriber? Gods in training? Well, if you insist, I will accept.[18] 

(Don't ask me about the problem of evil right now, though. I'm so tired.)

NOTES:

[1] This process of filling in the gaps between each panel is called "closure," by the way, but that's not what I'll focus on here

[2] If you read it, you wont regret it. One Piece is like a Krabby Patty. The only people who don't like it are people who have never seriously tried it.

[3] Oda, One Piece, Chapter 807, 2015

[4] McCloud, Understanding Comics, Chapter 3, 1994

[5] Suenaga and Moue, Akane-Banashi, Chapter 1, 2022

[6] Shinnkai, Earthchild, Chapter 5, 2022

[7] Kubo, Bleach, Chapter 685, 2016

[8] Matsui, Elusive Samurai, Chapter 1, 2021

[9] Id

[10] Le Bihan, "String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity and Eternalism," 2020, talks about eternalism from a scientific point of view, as a natural consequence of the theory of relativity, among others

[11] Currie, About Time, 2009

[12] Some people call this phenomenology, others call it mysticism, Descartes calls it "idk but you might just be getting fooled by some sort of demon."

[13] Currie, Supra

[14] There's a great discussion on determinism in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessible at https://iep.utm.edu/foreknow/#H2

[15] I talked about this transcendent quality in "A Bowl is Most Useful When It Is Empty" found here at https://kmatega.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-bowl-is-most-useful-when-it-is-empty.html although instead of talking about God, I talked about the Tao. The Tao as described in that blog post is how Apophatic Christians would describe their conception of God.

[16] IEP, Supra note 14

[17] Marvel's website is very useful in remembering who belongs to which universe. Nerds will tell you that they don't need an article like this, they just remember by heart. However, aside from Earths 616, 1610, and 199999, they're probably lying. https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/a-guide-to-the-many-marvel-multiverses 

[18] I'm joking of course. Dang.