Our columnists are independent writers who choose subjects and write without editorial input from comiXology. The opinions expressed are the columnist's, and do not represent the opinion of comiXology.
There's something very contemporary about
Picture Stories from the Bible: Complete Old Testament Edition, copyrighted in 1943 to M. C. Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, even though the comics therein are more than 60 years old. It begins with the back cover copy, which is clearly attempting to create synergy with filmic Bible epics and superhero comic books: "The complete Old Testament Edition of PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE offers for the first time in one volume, all of the glamorous, romantic stories of the old familiar heroes — told in faithful detail — carefully illustrated in fast-moving action continuity — brought to life in glorious full color." (The back cover even jauntily features its cast of characters, such as Noah, Solomon, and Ruth, in circular portraits.)
The educational bait and switch is familiar too: if one swaps out some of the objects in this sentence in the inside cover blurb by Dr. William Ward Ayer, a member of the comics' editorial advisory board composed of 10 Jewish and Christian religious leaders — "Millions of young people in the United States are growing up without the Biblical knowledge that their parents had. I feel sure that PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE will be ‘eaten up' by these boys and girls, and I hope and believe that this book will cause many of them to go The Bible and read the original stories" — you have the 2009 battle cry of many a librarian and educator. And unfortunately, today's well-meaning comics publishers, writers and artists still haven't learned from
PSftB: COTE's major pedagogical pitfall, which is to turn something essentially very interesting into something very, very dull.
Some of
PSftB: COTE's overcautiousness might be attributed to the comic-book burnings which, according to David Hajdu's
The Ten Cent Plague, began in some Catholic schools as early 1945 (before this volume was completed); and, a reluctance to show some of the gore and violence of the Biblical stories depicted (Moses committing murder, animal sacrifice, Sodom, etc., etc.) because the horrors of WWII were just too immediate. That panel of 10 must have played no small part.
Still, so much of the Bible is such marvelous raw material for visual narrative (it hardly needs to be mentioned that it continues to inspire cartoonists as idiosyncratic as Basil Wolverton, Chester Brown and Robert Crumb), that it seems like some of the blame must fall squarely on writer Montgomery Mulford and artist Don Cameron. Cameron's art is stiffly graceless: his six-panel-grid page layouts contribute to Mulford's plodding pacing. (The contrast between the dramatic stories being told and the pedestrian tone can lead to some unintentional humor, such as when David comes home from a hard day of work, complaining to his wife that the King threw a spear at his head —
again. The wife responds that she's going to help him escape, probably sick of hearing about it.)
The comic features a lot of unnecessary caption boxes ("So-and-so Speaks" — is suspended over a headshot of a character with a word balloon) and close and medium shots of characters talking, talking, talking in Biblese. Entire wars are depicted by a few off-kilter men in a single panel, and judging by the execution, the tableaux that usually set fire to creators' imaginations, such as loading animals two-by-two into Noah's Ark, failed to excite Mulford and Cameron. The Pharaoh's defeat at the Red Sea, with disgruntled-looking men (and horses) armpit-deep in water, could easily be a Michael Kupperman panel [1].
Absent a muse, Cameron borrows visuals, probably from films, which can occasionally work for him — his Jezebel owes something to the Evil Queen in Disney's
Snow White, and there are times when his pages evoke a Western, which works well to depict the wandering of the tribes as they are enslaved, evicted, battle hostile environments and war over territory with others — and can occasionally work against him, such as Esther's just-below shoulder-length waved coif and blue eyeshadow.
After spending 232 pages with Cameron's art, though, his male characters' expressions, which generally vacillate between blank, devilish and dyspeptic, start to become a source of humor: on page 116, when God is commanding Samuel to fulfill the people's demands and find a king, it's obvious he's giving the prophet a migraine. (It's even funnier because Cameron chose not to draw God, but his word balloons have wiggly letters, which is probably supposed to make God "sound" impressive, but really gives the impression that he's brassy, hard-of-hearing or possibly a mentally off character, so one can just imagine those words vibrating right into Samuel's aching head.)
A terrible blankness afflicts some of Cameron's men and all of his women (which, again, can lead to hilarity, such as a panel where two men are panicking, afraid for their lives, while a woman stares unconcernedly away). (Although, looking very carefully, a Cameron woman's wickedness can be signaled slightly by the arch of her eyebrows, or if her hair color contrasts with a good woman). Visually, grief and fear are expressed via a single tear on otherwise unchanged faces.
Aging, too, is a bugbear for Cameron: with the males, he can cheat that some of his characters are 110 by gradually increasing their facial hair and subtly changing the color, but he's at a loss with his females. When Sarah has a baby at an advanced age, it's proof of a miracle: if the writing didn't clue readers in, it's possible they could have missed it, since the 90-year-old Sarah doesn't look a day over 25.
In fact, and a little tragically, it's hard to see how Gaines, Mulford and Cameron couldn't have failed in their goal to "educate the children," since not only is the comic seemingly a chore for everyone involved, the very basics of many of the stories are not clearly communicated, such as why it was so very brave of Esther to confess to the King why she was Jewish (which, as a side note,
I only know the basics of because I had access to an excellent and much-beloved Bible graphic novel as a child, which I read and read again until the covers fell off. So I actually have a soft spot for comics adaptations of the Bible).
In 1947, M.C. Gaines died:
Picture Stories from the Bible, the title that EC was best known for at the time, became his son William's birthright. "Bill" Gaines and EC, in turn, left a very different legacy: he would go on to publish comics vastly more Entertaining than Educational. And God bless him for that.
Note:
[1] It's also possible to see remnants of paste-up material reproduced, such as the outline tape that held up the page number, and off-register color. I personally enjoy these reminders of older production methods, so I found that rather charming (although, contrarian that I am, I also find the over-fetishization of this in reprints annoying).
Image credits:
All art [©1943 M. C. Gaines]
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
