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A review by rachelhelps
Joseph Smith and the Mormons by Noah Van Sciver
4.0
I don't think that Joseph Smith's life is very book-friendly. There isn't a neat narrative arc if you are telling the story of his life. There are just too many weird and interesting things to say. It's so caught up in the history of the church, too, that it's difficult to tell the story of his life without getting into the entire early history of the church. I do a lot of summarizing of secondary sources in my Wikipedia work, and it ends up being extremely dry. This is my roundabout way of saying that... I found parts of this book a little boring, mostly because it was difficult for me to hold the narrative threads together, despite me knowing a lot about Mormon history. I don't fault Van Sciver for that. It is because the history is just that complicated.
That said, I loved how Van Sciver treated the visions with his blue-outlines of the vision-receiver relaying the story to another person. I feel like it really encapsulated something about most visionary experiences, which are that we have to imagine them for ourselves. The way Joseph Smith goes about trying to found the bank, despite having no expertise in it, is portrayed sympathetically. At the same time, I was like "what about all the speculators on the Mormon side of things?" I know that Van Sciver had to skip over a LOT of things and combine people and simplify for the sake of storytelling. The way he portrayed Joseph Smith getting into polygamy was interesting too. It definitely brings up topics that any church history buff would want to discuss. Van Sciver presents them in a neutral way, like I would in my Wikipedia writing, but of course, there is bias in what ideas and incidents we choose to include. I think Van Sciver tried to do a very fair portrayal of Joseph Smith, and I admire that.
THE ARTWORK is incredible. Van Sciver is a complete pro, and the whole thing is in COLOR. He can summon the emotions of panic or peace with a mere palette selection, but he goes further than that. The facial expressions of the characters, the line art, and the pacing of the action between the panels all work together to create settings that drip with expressiveness. There are a lot of talking heads. But they are interspersed with panels that take up an entire page and could be framed art on your walls at home.
The book design of this graphic novel is another very pleasing part of it. The foam layer in the front hard cover, the ribbon bookmark, the gilded edges, the brown of the book that is reminiscent of the brown of the first edition of the Book of Mormon--they combine to create a beautiful, serious-looking graphic novel.
That said, I loved how Van Sciver treated the visions with his blue-outlines of the vision-receiver relaying the story to another person. I feel like it really encapsulated something about most visionary experiences, which are that we have to imagine them for ourselves. The way Joseph Smith goes about trying to found the bank, despite having no expertise in it, is portrayed sympathetically. At the same time, I was like "what about all the speculators on the Mormon side of things?" I know that Van Sciver had to skip over a LOT of things and combine people and simplify for the sake of storytelling. The way he portrayed Joseph Smith getting into polygamy was interesting too. It definitely brings up topics that any church history buff would want to discuss. Van Sciver presents them in a neutral way, like I would in my Wikipedia writing, but of course, there is bias in what ideas and incidents we choose to include. I think Van Sciver tried to do a very fair portrayal of Joseph Smith, and I admire that.
THE ARTWORK is incredible. Van Sciver is a complete pro, and the whole thing is in COLOR. He can summon the emotions of panic or peace with a mere palette selection, but he goes further than that. The facial expressions of the characters, the line art, and the pacing of the action between the panels all work together to create settings that drip with expressiveness. There are a lot of talking heads. But they are interspersed with panels that take up an entire page and could be framed art on your walls at home.
The book design of this graphic novel is another very pleasing part of it. The foam layer in the front hard cover, the ribbon bookmark, the gilded edges, the brown of the book that is reminiscent of the brown of the first edition of the Book of Mormon--they combine to create a beautiful, serious-looking graphic novel.