Or would it be too boring for readers? What if you could make it fun, making stories that go around it? To prove God exists and that there is no doubt about it? Maybe having some athiest characters question God's existiance and then through research the Christain characters show the athiests proof of God that they would have a hard time denying?
I think it would also make Christian comics more intelligent and possibly be taken more seriously like many graphic novels today.
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Hi Gerard. Well I am pretty behind in my work. But I have seen your work on Cyberlight and thought it was pretty interesting. I haven't listened to Focus On The Family in some time. And I will be careful on making unbelievers very evil. Thanks for the ideas! :)
Gerard Lee said:
Hi David,
How is this project going? I tried to do something like this. The result was not publishable, but I put it up on the internet. http://TheEdgeoftheFlock.com if you are curious how someone else tried to do what you are considering. I had(have) no writing background and my drawing is strictly amateur, I must warn you.
I'd love to hear more about your project! Here are some thoughts I had as I read your posts.
Don't make the mistake of making the unbelievers so 'evil' that they are unlikable. If the reader can't step into the shoes of the unbeliever, they won't follow them through the ego crushing process of repentance and submitting to God.
Did you ever listen to Focus on the Family's 'Adventures in Odyssey'? The early stories involving a pre-Christian Connie Kendall made us care about the character, up to, and in my case through the Salvation process in episodes "Connie: Part I" and "Connie: Part II". I know it's a radio drama and not a comic, but it kind of makes me think 'Christian Talking heads' -can- work, but probably are harder to pull off then other kinds of books...what do you think?
Part of my idea was to make a supporting cast of unbelievers coming from different backgrounds (Occultist/ Atheist/ Cultural 'Christian') so that many kinds of topics and issues could come up. I think if you decide to go with a graphic novel or mini-series this might work better than having random unbelievers engage the protagonist?
In the end, I think what you should aim at is catching the interest of the reader for the Bible and learning more about Christianity. While I know many folk were walked through apologetics to embrace Jesus Christ, many accept Him for other reasons too, especially over emotional and spiritual beliefs. No comic can ever replace the Bible, so it's rather freeing that you don't really have to try, but rather support the Gospel and point to the source:)
Anyways, I am hoping your project prospers! I don't have any pro-level skills, but if I can help in any way, let me know!
Merry Christmas!
God bless you and yours,
Gerry Lee
There's a couple different approaches to this. It depends on if you're doing it in the context of a story, or an educational presentation, or an evangelistic tract.
One way is to tell a story and have the apologetics material included as part of the character interaction. This is hard to do well, as having talking heads preach to each other tends to feel... well... preachy, regardless of what topic the author is soapboxing on, and tends to stop the story dead in its tracks. (Bob Luedke's "Eyewitness" series is one of the rare ones to do this well; by setting a story within a historical adventure framework, it is able to communicate historical apologetics material without interrupting the flow of the story.) Another format that might work for this is biographical comics telling stories from the lives of real Christians and showing what changed their minds and brought them to faith. If the story is about a character coming to faith, then the arguments/challenges that bring him to that point can be made relevant to the story and not just be an author's soapbox preaching at the reader.
In contrast to the "show don't tell" rule of fiction, the educational comic approach doesn't attempt wrap itself in a story and doesn't need to. It simply presents itself as educational non-fiction, presenting facts in an illustrated comics format. The Intervarsity Press comic book series "Doctor Doctrine's Christian Comix" by Dr. Fred Sanders was a very good example of this. (Non-Christian examples of educational non-fiction comics include the "Cartoon History of the Universe" by Larry Gonick, any of Scott McCloud's books on comics, or the newer ongoing series from O'Reilly Media of "The Manga Guide to Calculus", "The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology", etc.)
The evangelistic tract is another apologetics option. These tend to be either very short simple stories to communicate a message, or a "talking head" lecture presenting facts in an illustrated fashion. They can be very effective for what they are. Readers may not want to pay $15 to have a graphic novel preach at them, but may be receptive to a free pamphlet explaining the author's viewpoint on subjects XYZ.
(I've done one such tract as an 8-page photocopied ashcan that I've given away as freebies at comic conventions, illustrating the basics of "textual criticism". As a tract, it's not about plot or characterization, it's about posing a direct question to the reader -- Has the Bible been changed? -- and then answering it in an illustrated comic format.)
I think B.C. has been doing this forever.
Christopher Haupt said:
Elgin bolling said:
Is it strictly entertainment, or is there an underlying purpose for creating the work.
With Eye Witness (www.headpress.info) I tried to walk the narrow path between apologetics/evangalism and entertainment. Why? Because I wanted the books to not only be educational and enlightening for those who might have never really dug into the events surrounding the birth of the faith, but also with enough "umph" to attract the casual comic/gn reader.
R.J. Luedke
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