I love my comic book store...

[Jonathan Winters]

From the web site of my comic store.

This is taken from http://www.astrolib.com/

This is from Paul, one of the owners, who likes to digress while announcing what is coming up in comics (what he calls Astronotes)...

Enjoy!

***

One of my regular reads is "Blogging The Bible", David Plotz's fascinating look at the Bible through modern eyes, which runs regularly in Slate.
Here's a snippet from "More Proof That God Loves Bald Men", which ran December 4th:

The Book of 2 Kings
Chapter 1

I'd hoped that 2 Kings would be like Spider-Man 2 -smarter, bolder, sexier, and more fun than the first one. Unfortunately, it seems more like Jaws 2, a dumb sequel that lamely retreads the best bits of the original and then adds a bunch of new junk.
The book does begin with a promising action sequence. Clumsy King Ahaziah (Israel's Gerald Ford) falls through a window. As he lies there injured, he asks Baal if he will recover. Bad move, King. Elijah cheerfully informs Ahaziah's flunkies that because he prayed to the wrong God, he'll die.
Hoping for a stay of execution, Ahaziah dispatches 50 men to arrest Elijah. The prophet has them incinerated with divine fire. Another 50 men are sent, and there's another 50-man barbecue. Elijah finally agrees to accompany the third squadron back to Ahaziah. The prophet tells the king again that he's doomed for Baal-worshipping. Ahaziah dies.

Chapter 2
This chapter ends with one of the weirdest, most gruesome passages in the entire Bible, but it starts innocently enough. Elijah is dying, and his disciple Elisha refuses to leave his side. Elijah strikes the river Jordan with his mantle, the water parts, and they cross on dry land. (Oh, that old trick!) As they're walking along, a "chariot of fire" swoops down and carts Elijah up to heaven in "a whirlwind."
Let's pause here and consider how unusual Elijah's death is. First, where did this "chariot of fire" come from? There's been nothing remotely like it in the Bible so far. When people die, they just -die. Even when prophets and patriarchs die, they simply expire and are buried. Corporeal ascent is a new trick. Why would Elijah qualify for special thanatic transportation when even Moses didn't? Any why a chariot of fire? This is a spectacular and memorable image, but again it comes from nowhere. God and His angels have never ridden in chariots before now. (I assume, incidentally, that this is the source of William Blake's chariot of fire. Right?)
Second, what's this "heaven" Elijah is ascending to? Until now, the only afterlife mentioned is Sheol, which is definitively down in the ground, and also a place where bad people end up. I suppose Elijah's heaven could simply be heaven in the secular sense, as in "the heavens." But that's not what it sounds like. It sounds like a special destination, a holy place. Is it possible that Jews actually have a developed notion of heaven, up in the sky, where God's favorites go when they die? If so, it is news to meùand not good news. I have always enjoyed Judaism's focus on the here and now. If Jewish heaven exists, who gets to go there? Just hall-of-famers like Elijah? Or all good people? And what happens there?
In the chaos, Elijah drops his mantle. Elisha picks it up. He strikes the river with it. The waters part for Elisha, too! So this is where the phrase "picking up the mantle of the prophet" comes from. (This episode has been ripped off by countless myths and movies since, in which the young disciple grabs the magic sword, takes a practice swing, and learns that the power flows through him now.) Elijah's other disciples acknowledge Elisha's elevation, and announce that he has inherited Elijah's spirit. Elisha starts experimenting with this miraculous power: He throws some salt in a foul spring and the water turns sweet.
At last, we've reached the crazy, horrifying, inexplicable finale. As Elisha is walking to Bethel, a group of boys -"small boys"- start mocking him: "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" I've written before about the Lord's profound affection for bald men. Here He demonstrates that His fondness for cue balls has veered into dementia. Elisha turns around and curses the boys in the name of the Lord. After his curse, "two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys."
Yep, you read it right. The Lord sends bears to commit a mass mauling, all because of a bald joke.

After much head-scratching (bald-head-scratching, since I'm a bit of a ping-pong ball myself) I realized there's one possibly sympathetic interpretation of Elisha's behavior. He's new at this prophet thing. He hasn't learned his own powers yet. Until he picked up Elijah's mantle, he was a regular guy. His curses had no more effect than ours did. But now he has superpowers, and his every action has consequences. His passing curse (presumably tossed off the way you might give the finger to a tailgater) suddenly has potency it never had before. He learns the hard way (or rather, the 42 boys learn the hard way) that "with great power comes great responsibility." (Oh wait, maybe this is like Spider-Man.) You can't go around crippling every tyke who insults your haircut. In this charitable interpretation of the baldie-bear story, we must assume that Elisha is as horrified by the episode as we are, and that it helps him learn that he must only use his powers sparingly, and for good.