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A review by watercolorstain
Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament by Mike Matthews, Kim Deitch, Steve Gibson, Arthur Ranson, Peter Rigg, Graham Higgins, Alan Moore, Hunt Emerson, Julie Hollings, Neil Gaiman, Donald Rooum, Dave Gibbons, Dave McKean
2.0
Neil Gaiman wasn't involved in writing every every comic included in this anthology (he authored six of the fourteen stories), but it was his retelling of a story from the Book of Judges that came close to having a Swedish publisher jailed.
As the title states, it unapologetically and very graphically illustrates what's written in the Old Testament—it does not interpret, it simply depicts, taking the words and displaying them as images. It's all black and white, ranges widely in drawing styles, and yes, it's probably offensive to most, religious or not, for different reasons; it raises interesting questions about censorship and why certain things are okay to be published and propagated in scripture, but "outrageous" in the context of a comic.
Among many other scenes, it includes a whimsical and cynical retelling of Creation, a recounting of the fall of Man and the expulsion from Eden featuring Gandalf from Lord of the Rings as God, and a gory tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Leviticus... it takes balls to publish something like this, especially at the time of its original publication in 1987, but I can't really say that I enjoyed it much. If I had to pick a favorite it would easily be The Prophet Who Came to Dinner, written by Neil and illustrated by Dave McKean, but as a whole, I felt that it relied almost exclusively on shock value, without much substance.
As the title states, it unapologetically and very graphically illustrates what's written in the Old Testament—it does not interpret, it simply depicts, taking the words and displaying them as images. It's all black and white, ranges widely in drawing styles, and yes, it's probably offensive to most, religious or not, for different reasons; it raises interesting questions about censorship and why certain things are okay to be published and propagated in scripture, but "outrageous" in the context of a comic.
Among many other scenes, it includes a whimsical and cynical retelling of Creation, a recounting of the fall of Man and the expulsion from Eden featuring Gandalf from Lord of the Rings as God, and a gory tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Leviticus... it takes balls to publish something like this, especially at the time of its original publication in 1987, but I can't really say that I enjoyed it much. If I had to pick a favorite it would easily be The Prophet Who Came to Dinner, written by Neil and illustrated by Dave McKean, but as a whole, I felt that it relied almost exclusively on shock value, without much substance.