What if the Bible, Greek myths, and Zoroastrianism all contained true tales of the birth of human civilization? What if aliens discovered primitive humans, but couldn't keep it in their pants? Forming tells the crude and cosmic tale of humanity's origins.


Cartoonist (and Adventure Time storyboard artist) Jesse Moynihan spins a strange story that pulls strands from everything from Kabbalah to European folklore to and weaves them into a single epic that is at once highbrow and lowbrow. The alien Mithras plummets to Earth (Atlantis, to be precise) to enslave the human Atlanteans and mine the Earth's rich resources. Although Mithras is supposed to send his newfound riches back to his home planet, Mithras decides to keep them for himself, setting himself up as the god-king of Atlantis. He marries Gaia, a human woman whose face is covered with a star-shaped birthmark, and sires a freaky brood of superpowered children.

Meanwhile, a second group of aliens is having a human encounter of its own. Serapis the Androgyne and his Nephalim Guard arrive in Canaan with plans to extract Mithras and establish a mining colony of their own. There, they discover the Garden of Eden and the naked, telepathic Adam and Eve. Although Serapis is initially ordered to merely observe the native humans, he finds himself quickly enthralled with Eve, and soon he's busy mixing with the locals and fathering a half-human brood of his own.


But the Earth holds secrets that the alien invaders do not yet understand. Ghob, the Gnome King, long ago ordered Gaia to bear Mithras' children and create a more powerful human race. Gaia's secret lover Noah is a fatalist who is in communication with the Creator (or so he thinks).

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The Adversary (a.k.a. Lucifer) has broken off from Ain Soph, the universal consciousness, but after a battle with Michael, who also emerged from Ain Soph, Lucifer is trapped within the Earth, and believes that one of Mithras's children is the key to his escape.

Forming is a smart comedy, and not just because you can spend long hours Googling all of Moynihan's references. There are hilarious meditations on metaphysics, but they're punctuated with a healthy dose of juvenile humor from the scatological (Adam never got the hang of advanced toilet functions) to the onanistic (Noah finds a rather innovative path to God). And then there's the occasional battle between aliens and woolly mammoths – an essential part of any origin story.


The first volume of Forming is also available in print.

[Forming (NSFW)]