by Toussaint Egan

As the traditional models of production and distribution begin to fall apart or become increasingly more risk-averse in the wake of industry-wide consolidation, ambitious young storytellers and veteran animators are turning to more and more unconventional means to tell defiantly more adventurous stories. Case in Point: Jesus 2, the latest pilot short from animator illustrator Jesse Moynihan (Adventure Time, The Midnight Gospel).

Set thousands of years in the future, the short follows Sunday and Monday — two brothers who escape from the slum planet Earth to strike out on their own as space pirates. After being contacted by Angelic Beings, the brothers are charged with freeing the universe from the curse of eternal life, which has trapped the denizens of Earth in an existential cycle of banality and bacchanalia. There’s just one problem: They’ll have to defeat Jesus 2, a malevolent trickster resurrected by the zombie president Doc Green, who flies across space aboard a black comet spraying his magic fluids across colonized space, bestowing involuntary eternal earthly life to any and every being who encounters him.

As the YouTube description for the short explains, Moynihan had originally conceived and developed Jesus 2 as a children’s show in development at Cartoon Network before taking the idea to Netflix after his work as an art director on The Midnight Gospel. Given the uh, esotericism and eccentricity of the short’s concept, it’s no wonder that Cartoon Network and Netflix both ultimately passed on the project. Undeterred, Moynihan raised the money to create a pilot designed to, “see if any of these ideas about death and our connection to the sublime and the grotesque would resonate with anyone else.” Sure enough, they did; After playing at several festivals including Sundance and Fantastic Fest, Jesus 2 is now eligible to make this year’s Oscars nominee list — a pretty astounding feat in and of itself for such an odd and original film.

I love the psychedelic, unrestrained aesthetic on display here. If you consider yourself a fan of The Midnight Gospel, you’ll feel right at home here on Jesus 2’s version of Earth — a planet covered in a sprawling metropolis of pointy skyscrapers packed with surly inhabitants duking it out with each other out of sheer boredom and blind antagonism. It all has the vibe of a particularly unhinged, avant-garde underground comic, which isn’t all that surprising given Moynihan’s past work as the author of the graphic novel Forming published by Fantagraphics. Regardless of its Oscar prospects, I’m looking forward to what the future holds for Moynihan and his career.