Classic Bible Stories: Jesus - The Road of Courage/Mark the Youngest Disciple
As publishers scour the vast, creaking attic of comic history, Titan has dusted off Eagle, a British comics weekly that began in 1950 and established some of the country’s top talent. Reprinted here are “Jesus: The Road of Courage” and “Mark: The Youngest Disciple.” The stories, both written by men of the cloth, are done in strip form and are uncommonly literate for comics of the era. But although they’re packed with events, they’re rather unsubtle and do not exactly attempt to blaze new trails of biblical interpretation. Of great note, however, is the artwork for the Jesus story, produced by Hampson, creator of Dan Dare. Though hemmed in by the page-length strip composition, the illustrations are lavish in detail, brilliantly lighted, and far beyond their time in the realism with which the figures move and express themselves. Bellavitis’s illustrations for the Mark story are absolutely competent but pale in comparison to the glow of Hampson’s, which especially dazzle in the book’s oversized format. Grades 6-9. --Jesse Karp