Holy Bibble
is a three-panel, daily parody of The Bible, hosted on ComicFury. While its main focus is humor and satire, its scope does extend beyond mere parody. It has an extensive cast of angels, many of whom play as "god types" (such as Lilith, the goddess of love, who can pose as Ishtar/Hathor/Aphrodite/etc.) At the heart of Bibble is an extensive backstory that binds all of the stories of the bible (as well as ancient mythology and historical events) together in order to try to understand them in a greater context.
There are essentially three overarching stories going on in Bibble.
- The mortal story, which is often biblical and sometimes historical (such as Hammurabi and King Tut).
- The angel story, which includes both the good and bad angels, how they interact with the mortals, and how they interact with each other.
- The angel backstory, which tells the story of how many of the angels came to fall in the first place.
Notable recurring characters include God, Satan, Lilith, and the archangels Michael and Gabriel.
The comic initially began in 2005, where it was more of a gag comic and followed the bible directly. As the comic neared the end of Genesis with the stories of Joseph, it began to update infrequently, and eventually shut down. In 2010 there was a brief reboot that attempted to include mythological stories (like the story of Amaterasu), but it only lasted for about a year. In 2014, a third reboot was started and continues to this day. The third version included more myths, including Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld and The Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as a backstory of the comic's version of the angels.
The comic's format is somewhere between a long-form story and gag comics. Each comic has three panels and includes a setup/punchline format. However, few of the comics can stand on their own, as they generally depend on knowledge of past comics to understand. Once in a great while, comics abandon the punchline altogether in favor of an action sequence or dramatic moment, though this is rare.
Holy Bibble provides examples of:
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Cain doesn't kill Abel in either version of the comic.
- In the current version, Lilith kills Abel, and Cain ends up saddled with the blame. He is also generally a nice (if very emo) guy.
- In the original version it was Satan after mistaking one of Cain's poems for a prayer for Abel's death.
- All Myths Are True: This comic meshes many god-figures into angels, demons or mortals, such as Lilith and Ishtar.
- A Wizard Did It: During the Fallen angels' plan to infiltrate the Elysian Fields, Lilith invokes this trope as her explanation of why she isn't "ghosty looking" to the angel sent to bring her to the afterlife.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: "Are you seriously still fucking that sheep?!" - Michael to Adam.
- Blood Knight:
- Zadkiel is one, but almost all warrior angels fit here.
- Gilgamesh, too. He loves fighting as much as he loves sex, and the tougher the monster, the better. When his mother warns him that Humbaba will be able to snap him in two, he's practically ecstatic.
- The Bully: Abel is a bully to his brother.
- Cain and Abel: Literally. In at least two versions of the comic, Cain actually had nothing to do with Abel's death. In a previous version, Satan killed Abel because he mistook Cain's lamenting poem about being bullied by his family for a prayer for his death, and in the current version, Lilith/Ishtar kills him after he pukes on her.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: And how. The angels in heaven have offices, councils, rules, etc...
- Continuity Reboot: At least twice so far.
- Crossover Cosmology: The comic crosses over into other mythologies.
- The Devil Is a Loser: Inverted. The God of the Old Testament is a senile and useless minor demon Satan created to score sex. (Or, in an older version, to provide a deity for humanity while the true God was largely absent from their lives.)
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Azrael — the angel of death — is a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel who values the well-being of the mortals she collects more than some of her fellow fallen.
- Emo Teen: Cain is a parody of this character type, contrasting with Abel who has some Jerk Jock traits. He wears black and dyes his hair black to match the darkness in his soul.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: Both the angels and demons are eccentric at best and possess little regard for humanity, and while neither Satan nor Elohim are evil, per se, both have similar issues with being arrogant and self-centered.
- God-Karting with Beelzebub: The angels and demons seem to have this relationship on occasion.
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: The angles have white and round wings, the fallen have black and pointed wings. Example.
- A Hell Of A Heaven: In the earlier version, all souls have to look forward to in heaven was being locked in jail cells for all eternity. The latest version subverts this by having the afterlife being essentially being stuck in a resort/country club for all eternity.
- A Hell of a Time: Hell for mortal souls is basically eternity in Vegas.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Michael's first and last resort in all situations is murder, but ultimately he's still more concerned with God's plan than most other characters.
- Humongous Mecha: God builds the giant robot exoskeleton, Metatron.
- Jerkass Gods: Seeing how many of the "gods" are demons in disguise...
- King of All Cosmos: God seems a little off. He randomly offers angels ice cream and ecstasy, and one of the first things he created in the universe was a tiki-bar.
- Lovable Sex Maniac:
- Shamash, Lilith/Ishtar's djinn servant, is obsessed with sex. In fact, he starts pestering Lilith to do him right after finding out that they're apparently trapped in Heaven for eternity.
- Lilith herself can be pretty sex-obsessed, but still not as much as Shamash.
- Mama Bear: Eve threatens Lilith with an arrow when the latter tries to seduce Cain.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Adam tries to invoke this when Eve reveals that she is pregnant. Needless to say, she isn't amused.
- Mistaken Identity: The Canaanites assume Yahweh is Elohim because Sariel claimed Elohim was "older than time", and they think Yahweh looks "as old as time."
- Opposite-Sex Clone: Eve is portrayed as Adam's clone (she was made from his rib, after all). Due to the comic's simplistic art style, this is primarily shown by her having a similar curly forelock to him.
- Order Versus Chaos: Fallen Angels live in a tropical resort, the angels in a gigantic bureaucratic office.
- Playing with Fire: Uriel loves burning things. Even ice.
- Pyromaniac: Uriel only smiles when he is about to set something on fire.
- Really Gets Around: Gilgamesh, at least until Enkidu brings out his nicer side. Shamhat puts it best:[...] he's also my boyfriend, and he's actually also everyone's boyfriend.
- Satan Is Good: Kind of. He's kind of an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk, but he's actually a lot nicer to humans than most of the demonic or angelic cast and generally means well in his own way.
- Stuffed into a Locker: Abel invented the locker just to do this.
- Took a Level in Badass: Eve suddenly threatens Lilith with an arrow when the latter tries to seduce Cain. Lampshaded by Lilith:Lilith: When did Eve become a badass?
