{"id":5237,"date":"2006-01-23T08:51:52","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T08:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose.html"},"modified":"2006-01-23T08:51:52","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T08:51:52","slug":"smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose.html","title":{"rendered":"“Smallville meets The Name of the Rose…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Flying Friar:<\/em> A comic book\/ graphic novel inspired by St. Joseph Cupertino:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Mr Johnston, a British author of graphic novels, attempted to keep his character faithful to the saint, but has embellished his adventures by creating a fictional adversary in the style of Superman\u2019s enemy, Lex Luthor. The story involves Joseph\u2019s struggle with Lux Luther, a ficticious childhood friend and great nephew of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Reformation. <\/p>\n

In the final act, Joseph must use his special powers to avert Luther\u2019s plan to rain fiery death on Copertino, his home town. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe tradition of superheroes goes back to Greek mythology and the Bible,\u201d Mr Johnston told The Times<\/em>. \u201cModern superheroes follow on from that, although they tend to come from science rather than religion.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Um, okay:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Flying Friar: A comic book\/ graphic novel inspired by St. Joseph Cupertino: Mr Johnston, a British author of graphic novels, attempted to keep his character faithful to the saint, but has embellished his adventures by creating a fictional adversary in the style of Superman\u2019s enemy, Lex Luthor. The story involves Joseph\u2019s struggle with Lux…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n"Smallville meets The Name of the Rose..." - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Smallville meets The Name of the Rose..." - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Flying Friar: A comic book\/ graphic novel inspired by St. Joseph Cupertino: Mr Johnston, a British author of graphic novels, attempted to keep his character faithful to the saint, but has embellished his adventures by creating a fictional adversary in the style of Superman\u2019s enemy, Lex Luthor. The story involves Joseph\u2019s struggle with Lux…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-01-23T08:51:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/28\/50610948_f56e91a41b_o.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Smallville meets The Name of the Rose...\" - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/smallville-meets-the-name-of-the-rose.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Smallville meets The Name of the Rose...\" - Via Media","og_description":"The Flying Friar: A comic book\/ graphic novel inspired by St. Joseph Cupertino: Mr Johnston, a British author of graphic novels, attempted to keep his character faithful to the saint, but has embellished his adventures by creating a fictional adversary in the style of Superman\u2019s enemy, Lex Luthor. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}