Spotlight: Pariah, Beast of the Unholy Seven

Revelation 13:1 “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.”

Before writing the script, I spent a year studying Jesus and Revelation. I listened to hundreds of hours of sermons from every denomination I could find. Every preacher has a different take on Revelation, and they all seem to struggle when it comes to explaining the seven-headed, ten-horned Beast of prophecy.

Because they cannot envision such a creature, they say it’s symbolic. The horns mean countries, the heads represent some other crap. Fortunately, we have Mortimer Glum to envision it for us.

The funny part is, Escape From Jesus Island is a much more literal interpretation of the prophecies in Revelation than any of the predictions I heard in a year of obsessively listening to sermons. Revelation is crazy and we pillage a lot of great material from it.

The Beast was created after Mortimer designed a badass three-headed mutant named Pariah. Our letterist, Peeter Parkker, suggested giving it seven faces, for reasons that will emerge as the story unfolds. We then had Mortimer add horns on each elbow and knee, to bring the total to ten. The Beast was born.

The chance to appear as one of the heads of Pariah was one of my very favorite Kickstarter rewards and they went fast. Appearing as Pariah in Escape From Jesus Island will be Daniel Lovasz, Jennifer Hagopian, Juan Ayala, Dylan Gemmell, Leo Beaucage and Bryan Sinagra.

We’re keeping details of Pariah’s role in the story under wraps for the time being, but the Beast makes a memorable first appearance in Issue 3.