The Old Testament has recently been characterised by Spike Milligan as being full of grimness, slaughter and blood up to our (or at any rate, their) necks. It may be an over-simplified view of what is in fact a collection of 39 books, but it goes some way towards explaining the appeal of these ancient narratives to writers and artists who work in the genre of the graphic novel. Passions are raw and high; love and hate are explored in a series of personal, familial and tribal histories; idealism and beauty, degradation and squalor, interweave. In brief, we have here the most intoxicating of stories, crying out for a pictorial representation to match their energy and diversity.
The graphic novel approach of Anderson and Maddox, deriving much of its stylistic inspiration from the format of the comic strip, is typified by an impressively inventive level of verbal and visual dynamism. Their tone is established at the outset with end-papers which suggest a swirling cosmos of blues and reds and purples, the prelude to their depiction of the act of creation by which light and darkness are differentiated.
The text accompanying these first unsullied days is selectively quoted from Genesis (in the Authorised Version) and placed in rectangular frames within the pictures; but with the appearance of Adam and Eve come the captions, the thought bubbles and the speech balloons, imposing their own colloquial flavour and providing the more formal basic narrative with a playful, often witty, counterpoint.
As readers of this complex and richly textured "Bible" we are, therefore, both in the picture and out of it, an effect heightened by an artistic and literary technique which owes much to cinematic influence. In moving from Eden, via the Flood, to a sequence of frames focusing on the great patriarchal figures of the original stories, we are made to confront dramatic close-ups, bustling crowd scenes, panoramic tracking shots and numerous unorthodox uses of perspective, all often enhanced by striking lighting effects.
Occasionally, the drama is tellingly underplayed: the vices of Sodom and Gomorrah are dealt with in one pictorial frame, though admittedly a very suggestive one. In the main, however, the full histrionic potential of events is exploited: the Joseph, Moses, Samson and Samuel stories remain compulsively absorbing.
The transition from Old to New Testament comes by way of Malachi's prophecies: this is the new beginning, in which there was the word. In the Anderson and Maddox version, the essential journey is again from darkness to light, ending in a single totally white page and the promise of another coming. There is no diminution in linguistic or aesthetic effect as we travel the road which takes us from Bethlehem cattle-shed to Golgotha hillside, and there are some truly spectacular scenes: see (and hear) the transformation by which evil spirits afflicting the man called Legion are transferred to the herd of squealing pigs and enjoy the wry comment that this was "a fact not unnoticed by the pig keeper", who, as he leaves us, screams, in the idiom of the genre, "Yaaargg!"
The two pages devoted to St Paul's epistles are a triumph of encapsulation - and not without their mischief. Writing to the Galatians, he reminds them of the exaggerated emphasis given by some to circumcision, adding: "If those people are so keen on circumcision, then I wish they'd go the whole way! Why stop with circumcision? Why not cut the WHOLE LOT off?!!" And then - sotto voce - he further adds: "Ahem." For many, "Ahem" will serve as a perfect monosyllabic response to this fascinating publishing, writing and illustrating enterprise.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin
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