Twitter is a strange place. The more I invest myself in keeping up @ReligiousGames, the more I discover that research on religion and video games doesn't make much sense unless it can segue coherently into several worlds of popular culture simultaneously. The loyalties and rivalries of fans, cross marketing opportunism, copyright disputes, the perversity of even well-meant adaptations, all of these issues comprise the shifting background upon which the possibility of religious game creation continues to develop.
      Comics have become a particular focus, partially because adaptation controversies are so visible there, but mostly because I love them. I am a late fan, only getting curious, really, when my daughter came home from kindergarten asking "What is the Hulk?" But I accidentally fell into the Marvel Wiki while trying to find an answer, and have read a hundreds of comics and graphic novels since then, trying to get my bearings.
          This morning I found myself curious about a very specific, rather objective question: Where comics draw upon mythology, folklore, and religion, how do rival comic giants Marvel and DC differently depict the same traditions?
         The good people at Public Domain Super Heroes maintain lists of un-copyrightable characters in both Marvel and DC comics, so I decided to collate them. Here, then, are 186 characters that cross between two different comic multiverses as well as the worlds of readerly belief smoothly, without need for dramatic crossover events. It is odd company, with historical, mythological, and literary characters side-by-side with cryptids, euphemisms, rhymes and various unruly hybrids. In many cases the adaptations go in radically different directions; Marvel Jesus presents a pious retelling of the Bible, while DC Jesus is the center of a heretical Church cover-up.
              If you know of any overlapping stories not on this list, or discover interesting patterns between the various adaptations, please send word.

A Abraham Van Helsing

• Adolf Hitler
  
• Aladdin
• Alan-a-Dale
• Ali Baba
• Anansi
• Annie Oakley
• Apollo
• Argonauts
• Arthur of Camelot
• Athena (Folklore)
• Atlas (Mythology)
• Attila the Hun
• Aunt Em & Uncle Henry

B Baba Yaga

• Bagheera
• Baloo
• Beauty and the Beast
• Beowulf
• Bigfoot
• Billy the Kid
• Black Dragon Society
• Blackbeard
• Bloody Mary
• Blue
• Bo Peep
• Brer Rabbit
• Bride of Frankenstein's Monster

C Captain Hook

• Captain Kidd (Pirate)
• Captain Tootsie
• Caterpillar
• Cinderella
• Claude Frollo
• Cleopatra
• Clock
• Conan the Barbarian
• Count of Monte Cristo
• Cowardly Lion

D David (Biblical)

• Dejah Thoris
• Doctor Moreau
• Dorothy
• Dracula

 
E Easter Bunny

• Esméralda

 
F Fairy Godmother

• Father Time
• Faust
• Frankenstein's Monster
• Friar Tuck
• Fu Manchu

 
G Genghis Khan

• Georgie Porgie
• Geppetto
• Geronimo
• God
• Goliath (Biblical)
• Good Witch of the North
• Good Witch of the South

 
H Hatter

• Hephaestus
• Hercules (Folklore)
• Herne the Hunter
• Hippolyta
• Hugo Danner
• Hunchback of Notre-Dame

 
I   Ichabod Crane

• Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
• Irene Adler
• Ivanhoe

J       Jack-in-the-Box

• Jack (Beanstalk)
• Jack Frost
• Jack Horner
• Jack Pumpkinhead
• Jack Sprat and his Wife
• Jack and Jill
• Jack the Ripper
• Jacob Marley
• Jane Porter
• Jesse James
• Jesus
• John Carter, Warlord of Mars
• John Henry
• John Seward
• Jonathan Harker
• Julius Caesar

K  Kaa

• Kay
• King of Hearts
• King of Truands
• Kit Carson

L     La of Opar

• Lady of the Lake
• Lancelot
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Little John
• Little Mermaid
• Loch Ness Monster
• Loki
• Long John Silver
• Lord Ruthven
• Lucifer
• Lucy Westenra

M Maid Marian

• Man in the Moon
• March Hare
• Mars (Folklore)
• Mary & her Lamb
• Mary (Nursery Rhyme)
• Medusa
• Mercury (Folklore)
• Merlin (Legend)
• Merry Men
• Mina Murray
• Miss Muffet
• Mona Lisa
• Mordred
• Morgan le Fay
• Mother Nature
• Mowgli
• Mrs. Claus
• Mulan

 
N Natty Bumppo

• Neptune
• Nero
• Nome King

O Odin

• Old King Cole
• Old Mother Hubbard & her Dog
• Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe
• Ozma of Oz

P    Papa Legba

• Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (Folk Legend)
• Pecos Bill
• Peter the Pumpkin-Eater
• Phoebus
• Pinocchio
• Pluto of Hades
• Pocahontas
• Professor Moriarty
• Professor Wogglebug

Q Queen of Hearts

• Quincey Morris

R   Rasputin

• Red Riding Hood
• Red Riding Hood's Grandmother
• Red Riding Hood's Lumberjack
• Robin Hood (Legend)
• Robinson Crusoe

 
S  Saint George

• Samson (Biblical)
• Sancho Panza
• Santa Claus
• Santa Claus' Reindeer
• Saw-Horse
• Scarecrow (Oz)
• Scheherazade
• Shango
• Shere Khan
• Sheriff of Nottingham
• Sherlock Holmes
• Sigurd
• Sinbad the Sailor
• Stingy Jack

T     Talia

• Talking Cricket
• Tars Tarkas
• Tarzan
• Thor (Norse God)
• Three Musketeers
• Tinker Bell
• Tom Sawyer
• Toto
• Twelve Olympians

U     Uncle Sam (US Government Poster) 

V      Venus

W Weird Sisters

• White Rabbit
• Wicked Witch of the East
• Wicked Witch of the North
• Wicked Witch of the West
• Winged Monkeys
• Wizard of Oz
• Wyatt Earp

Z    Zeus

     In preparing to guest teach Dr. Alison Joseph's "Bible in Popular Culture" course at Swarthmore (remotely), I decided to add some titles that had been shaping my thinking on religious gaming, but which were not yet in the Index. Adding just 12 games, I now have entries for eight new gaming platforms.
 Most readers will recognize the 3DO, Game Gear, Game Cube, Linux, and XBox One, but there were also religious titles for the lesser known MSX, SG-1000, MSX, and Super Cassette Vision.
     
    To share some highlights from these new platforms:  Linux was added to the list with the inclusion of "The Minstrel's Song" by C. J. S. Hayward (1998). As a great lover of both procedurally generated game worlds and theologically deliberative game design, I am very glad to share his work here. Still, it pains me to have only one roguelike  in the index ("The Binding of Isaac" doesn't count). Perhaps more are hiding in the wilds of Linux gaming? Here's hoping.

    Second, "Rene Van Dale no Hoshiuranai: Milky Princess" (1985) was a fortune telling game that came packed with the only gender specific game console I know of: The Super Lady's Cassette Vision. Pink, translucent, and shipped in a special case with an adorable fortune telling princess game. This is the console I never knew I always wanted. 
     This rarity, and much of the diversity now appearing in the Index comes from the excellent research of Shuhei Fujii on religious games in Japan. Because I am unable to read Japanese, it is only with his assistance that the Index is beginning to map out a world of fortune telling games that English-only players could miss entirely. With entries as early as 1983, this tradition is just as old as the first Christian and Jewish games, and it appears on systems like the MSX, 3DO, and several others that seem never to have hosted a Biblical game.
     Thank you, Shuhei Fujii, and welcome to the team.

      And finally, "G Prime: Into the Rain" is the first religious game documented for XBox One, and part of the growing coterie of religious titles for Steam. When I attended the Christian Game Developers Conference in 2011, researching for my dissertation, I was fortunate to interview Soma Games' founder Chris Skaggs. He taught me much about the conference itself and was very gracious in sharing his creative process, so I am very happy to see his project thriving, and "G" reborn on new platforms. Congratulations, Soma Games.

      New platforms are exciting, but they are relatively easy to add, as they do not require color coding for the big timeline. Being pretty much out of colors, and facing a category crisis at the edge of Jewish gaming, my next task, adding Kabbalah games, will be significantly more complicated. Well, that's enough for now. I have  a presentation to prepare.

    This image represents the 1185 religious video games that were cataloged in Index (v.2) as of 10/8/2016, and it links to an interactive chart that will automatically update to match the Progressive Index's current development.
     While the chart of Index (v.1) in my last blog post allows us to see some of the forces that shape the creation of religious games, such as the popularization of the Internet or the release of easy to use programming tools, this chart adds both a few hundred extra games as well as strong influence from the state of ongoing research. The huge dip in 2011, for instance, does not represent a drought in religious video game production. On the contrary, 2011, saw so much religious software released for Android devices that I stopped quantifying production for a few years to focus on analysis. As the data in Index (v.2) grows more and more complete, that valley will become a mountain. 
     Stay tuned for ongoing developments, and please use the "Contact" page to send in any games not yet included.

     My last two posts have shown yearly trends in game production, faith-by-faith. That quantified view grants some valuable perspective, but it necessarily flattens out the staggering uniqueness of the individual games. This, then, is counterpoint: A photo album from my adventures through Christian game worlds. These images do not add up to a representative sample, but they should give a sense of how diverse (and occasionally mind-blowing) religious games are.