Finding Salvation
People look for salvation in all kinds of places. In their work, their family, their possessions, etc. Everyone is looking for that one thing that will make their life complete, that will rescue them from insecurity and doubt. When things are tough, people head for their real god. Life is difficult, so I’ll find god at the bottom of the bottle. Life is tough so I’ll go out and find god through meaningless sex. Life is hard to I will search for god through hard work and super annuation. We look for salvation in all kinds of places. Except for the place where real salvation can be found – Jesus Christ.
X-Factor #43 shows us this truth in just one panel.
(click to make larger)
Jamie (the guy with the M over his eye) finds his salvation in the kiss of a woman. This is what makes him complete. This is what rescues him. This is not real. This is a false salvation. This is salvation that doesn’t truly save.
When we look for salvation outside of Jesus, we putting our faith and trust in falsehood. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me.”(John 14:6)
Sorry Jamie. You haven’t found salvation. Because that woman’s embrace is nothing compared to Jesus
Pop Culture Christ 
Oh, why stop there? There’s more to critique in that frame.
I started rereading all my old comic books about two years ago and I noticed something important about what makes a good comic. The best ones don’t do what this frame does– bury us in captions. If a writer wants to put a lot of prose on the paper, he needs a medium other than comics. Even word baloons, if overused, become tedious and boring. A good comic relies on the pictures to do the bulk of the story telling, with word balloons added in and captions appearing sparingly. Often the most powerful frame in a comic book has no words at all; just a picture showing the right action at the right time. There have been experimental stories– even in mainstream comic books– that use no words at all, just pictures. Larry Hama used to do that a lot, and somehow they were always good, memorable stories.
Secondly, why shouldn’t he have to look outside himself? What a ridiculous thing to say. Self-awareness and introspection are vital to a person’s development, but they are by no means the only thing in life, nor are they the path to happiness. There is a world out there, and we each need to come to terms with it. Some of the answers we seek simply do not exist “in here”; they are to be found “out there”.
As far as findng salvation in a woman, there might be something here in a different sort of way. It is not good for man to be alone. Man does not find salvation in a woman, but he might find a sort of completeness, and perhaps a redemption, depending on what he’s been through. Jamie, not being a theologian (I assume), is unlikely to use salvation in a technically correct sense, and it’s quite likely that he’s found completeness or redemption and is expressing it imperfectly.
That explains away the use of the word “salvation” but it doesn’t defend it. Unless there is a good reason for Jamie to be sloppy in his words, it is up to the writer to express Jamie’s thoughts more carefully. Wording things the way Jamie would word them is not an excuse for slip-shod writing. I am reminded of a commentary I read about “Huckleberry Finn” once. It was said that the way Huck spoke– with his particular vocabulary and grammatical structures– was the way a boy of his background would speak, if that boy happened to be a literary genius. Jamie’s use of the wrong word in this frame does not reflect on Jamie, it reflects on the writer.
So, we have the wrong words and too many of them. Besides that the panel is fine.