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Testament VOL 01 Akedah [Paperback]

Douglas Rushkoff , Liam Sharp
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)


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Book Description

July 26, 2006 Testament (Book 1)
Written by Douglas Rushkoff Art and cover by Liam Sharp Collecting the acclaimed first 5-issue story arc of the revolutionary new series by best-selling author Douglas Rushkoff (Club Zero-G) and artist Liam Sharp (THE POSSESSED)! AKEDAH chronicles one man's quest for truth in a mind-bending future where high-tech repression and ancient Biblical conflicts are grimly intertwined.


Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Rushkoff sets two story lines going here. In one, the draft has been reinstated in a near-future U.S., and potential draftees are implanted with chips that make their whereabouts traceable and allow the government to compel compliance. The other consists of three episodes in the story of Abraham: the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the battle that Abraham leads to free his nephew, Lot (in Genesis, however, the battle precedes Sodom and Gomorrah). The two plots develop in tandem, with characters in one corresponding to those in the other, and the cosmic conflict between Jehovah and the combined forces of Astarte and Moloch framing both. The Isaac counterpart, grown to hunky young manhood, stars in the modern story, thereby allowing several steamy encounters with the young female characters. Well composed and drawn by Sharp, and gorgeously full colored, the whole thing is like nothing so much as Cecil B. DeMille's first Ten Commandments (1923), with its sin, skin, liminal piety, and double plot. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Paperback: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Vertigo; First Edition edition (July 26, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1401210635
  • ISBN-13: 978-1401210632
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.3 x 10.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #85,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.

His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today's complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He's now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.

He has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries - The Merchants of Cool looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture, and The Persuaders, about the cluttered landscape of marketing, and new efforts to overcome consumer resistance.

Rushkoff's commentaries air on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR's All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications from The New York Times to Time magazine. He wrote the first syndicated column on cyberculture for The New York Times and Guardian of London, as well as a column on wireless for The Feature and a new column for the music and culture magazine, Arthur.

Rushkoff founded the Narrative Lab at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and lectures about media, art, society, and change at conferences and universities around the world.

He is Advisor to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, on the Board of Directors of the Media Ecology Association, The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and as a founding member of Technorealism. He has been awarded Senior Fellowships by the Markle Foundation and the Center for Global Communications Fellow of the International University of Japan.

He regularly appears on TV shows from NBC Nightly News to Larry King and Bill Maher. He is writing a new monthly comic book for Vertigo, and developed the Electronic Oracle software series for HarperCollins Interactive.

Rushkoff is on the board of several new media non-profits and companies, and regularly consults on new media arts and ethics to museums, governments, synagogues, churches, and universities, as well as Sony, TCI, advertising agencies, and other Fortune 500 companies.

Rushkoff graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, received an MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts, a post-graduate fellowship (MFA) from The American Film Institute, and a Director's Grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has worked as a certified stage fight choreographer, and as keyboardist for the industrial band PsychicTV.

He lives in Park Slope Brooklyn with his wife, Barbara, and daughter Mamie.

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Check It Out, this changes everything... September 12, 2006
Format:Paperback
"the most assured and original project to emerge from Vertigo since SANDMAN." - Comic Buyer's Guide

"Make no mistake, The Greatest Story Ever Told continues right here?" - Grant Morrison

"A stunning, richly entertaining book!" - Robert Anton Wilson, co-author "The Illuminatus! Trilogy"

"Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers - and writers - of our time!" - Timothy Leary

"Impossible to put down... chock full of cool, forward-looking ideas. Grade: A" - VARIETY.COM

"Intriguing! Well worth the time to check out." - AIN'T IT COOL NEWS

Testament is a book about Humanity and Gods and the struggle between Evil and Good. The book moves seamlessly between three different times and planes of existence, which are Modern Present time (but it is set slightly in the future), Past Historical Biblical time, and the supernatural Realm of the Gods.

In the modern/future present time there are three major events taking place. One being the fact that the government requires that people have computer chips implanted in their bodies. The second is the emergence of artificial intelligence that has been created by a computer scientist but unfortunately has escaped from his computer into the Internet. The third event is a major corporation is beginning a move to usurp power by changing currency/money into a new very different form that I don't believe has been revealed yet but it sounds very spooky.

So basically there are college aged radicals who have refused to have the chips implanted and are living outside the law. One of these is the son of the creator of the computer chips, who when creating them had no notion that the government would actually use the chips beyond what he or most others believed was acceptable in a way I'll just say reminiscent of the Kent State Massacre on May 4 1970.

So what is taking place in the present events is a reflection of what had taken place in the Bible. Rushkoff does a few things here that I feel need mentioning, he shows us stories from the Bible but he doesn't either show them as or disregard their being sacred events, obviously he believes they are important because they are illustrations of the Gods attempts to influence humanity, but he tells both the modern and those past in a way that makes them both entertainingly modern, relevant, and human.

Basically the story jumps back and forth between what is happening "Now" and what happened in the Bible. Instead of Just God and Satan Rushkoff has Krishna the Hindu God on the side of good along with the Christian God or more specifically the Jewish God (because the comic only has to do with the old testament) and the Evil Gods I think are Egyptian, Hindu and third is Jewish. Like every character in the story the Gods are thankfully multidimensional that is to say they don't come across as 100 percent pure good or pure evil.

Douglas Rushkoff, uniquely qualified to write such a book, outside of comics might be consider a Futurist or a Media Guru, at least an expert on such topics in addition to Judaism, which he wrote a book on called "Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism" I've seen him on panels on CNN and speaking at Disinformation counterculture conferences, he is a what most would considered a modern day Renaissance Man. He writes books on Ecstasy eating Ravers, advises the United Nations, plays keyboards in the radical group Psychic TV, and writes comic books.

A Great story that makes one think about what these stories may actually be and makes one question what is the current real world's spiritual significance.

My review is based on the first 9 issues I've read only once but am looking forward to rereading them again.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Innovative and yet not quite awesome. February 12, 2007
Format:Paperback
Testament feels good. You end up knowing the take is different than anything you've read. It's propositive and gets you thinking about new ways to handle the myth. However, it fails to close completely. It's like it's a great concept behind, but the implementation is somewhat not as good. The storytelling is good, but characters aren't so fleshed out.

In other words, read it, though it could've been much more polished.

Haven't seen the second part, maybe it shouldn't be split.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Worth Checking Out. December 11, 2006
Format:Paperback
The Good: Intellectually challenging, and very intriguing. I really want to read more and find out what where this story is going. The writing is definitely literate. The art is excellent as well.

The Bad: It feels too much like the first third of a story. Primarily set up. Which is perfectly fine, since it's a collection of an ongoing comic book. However, after reading the entire thing there were more questions than answers, and my concern is that it might be unsatisfactory and turn off readers. It was kind of confusing. If I didn't know the Bible stories, I would be even more confused. The premise requires that you be familiar with the background material to begin with, and the hard balance is not having too much exposition to compensate. It's definitely high concept.

The Bottom Line: Ultimately, the question is, is it entertaining? I would say yes, so I definitely recommend this new book from Vertigo and hope that you would support this book as well. If it gets the chance to continue, I think the payoff will be well worth it.
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