Saturday, October 18, 2014

Recommendation : The Bible: Volume 1 : The Beginning : From Kingstone Media

The Bible: Volume 1: The Beginning

The Bible: Volume 1: The Beginning is the first work in a graphic novel anthology from Kingstone Media, who is adapting the entire Holy Bible into a 12-volume set. This  first piece—and I assume the others—will contain some of the standalone issues already released by Art Ayris and his team, but the stories will now be contextualized into the overarching narrative of Scripture.

This first entry shows the creative license necessary in adaption while maintaining the attention to interpretation and contextual detail that one can expect from Kingstone’s work. This first volume contains the stories of Creation, The Fall, The Flood, Babel, and Job (the last of these I recommended, here).

The time and space necessary to touch on each of these sections individually is better used by discussing the book as a whole. The writers bring fresh ideas to the stories of Genesis, such as spending more time with Noah’s sons and also providing keen insight on oral tradition. I bring attention to this because they do, and it’s useful in making God a continuous central figure throughout the various episodes with men.

The one point of criticism I have with the book is merely nitpicking. God’s voice appears in different fonts and bubble-shapes in the different stories, and a cohesive font and style across the entire 12-volume tome would have been wonderful for maintaining consistency to God’s personhood—if only through the fact that his speech would always appear in the same manner (carrying this over to Christ in the New Testament would have also been a strong artistic stroke). This aside, the books is consistently strong and interesting. 

Granted, the text only covers a dozen or so chapters in Genesis as well as the story of Job; however, these are not easy stories to tell. The art and presentation make the books accessible for that 10 and over crowd toward whom so many comics are geared, and I would recommend this for youth leaders trying to get their kids into some level of Biblical literacy. The text is easy to engage, and the art is on par with the comics you’ll find in your local shop.

Once again Kingstone proves successful with another excellent volume in their growing library. You can The Bible: Volume 1 : The Beginning at Amazon.


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