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Two Gods present show-and-tell to their teacher while a third God doth hang out. They appear to be working on projects that consist of conceptual art forms. Zantek sets out to take control over all the silicon particles in the universe and constructs elegant four-dimensional shapes. Ablavar, who seems a bit dim-witted, makes the Earth and animal life upon it. Like a petulant child, Z is jealous and competitive with A. He finds the animal forms dirty and irritating. Z is kind of an asshole. In order to cause trouble for the animals, Z creates a few homo sapiens to muck with A’s world and taunts them into violence. And he rains some crap down on the Earth to kill off A’s dinosaurs. This is the story of creation according to Jesse Jacobs in By This Shall You Know Him.

The idea of Gods competing in some sort of game that leads to the creation of the Earth or the universe isn’t original, but the execution in this beautiful graphic novel certainly is. The Gods are peculiar in their childishness. The art is weirdly beautiful, colored in tasteful shades of blue, pink, and black. If M.C. Escher made a graphic novel, it might look something like By This Shall You Know Him. I quite enjoyed the weirdness of this piece. It’s rather disturbing.






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