The Manga Bible

[Mulboyne]

Marquette Tribune: British artist creates Japanese comic book form of the Bible
...British artist Siku, creator of The Manga Bible, said on the Bible's Web site that earlier attempts to use Western artwork to attract younger audiences to the Bible were dated. Manga, he said, penetrated into Western pop culture through cartoons, blockbuster movies like "The Matrix" and "Kill Bill" and music group Gorillaz's animated personas. It was the most cutting-edge option for his Bible, he said. In The Manga Bible, Siku said the depictions of Jesus and other biblical characters were inspired by super heroes. In Jesus' first appearance, he is silhouetted to give him a "hard-edged, gritty, stranger-walks-into-town" image...more...

The New Testament version of "The Manga Bible" was actually published a year ago in Britain and is only now getting a US release, The Old Testament version is also available in Britain. There appear to be a few other manga versions of Bible stories already out there including this one illustrated by Masakazu Higuchi but this seems to be the first attempt to include the full Bible text alongside the cartoons. There are some layouts from the book in PDF form here.

[GuyJean]

That's pretty fucking cool!

The bible has great manga fodder; rape, killing, torture, and the sacrificing of small animals.. Like, I bet when Moses comes down from the mountain and witnesses the people worshiping a golden calf and commiting lechery, there's some serious tentacle porn goin' on..

GJ

[Mulboyne]

IHT: In manga Bible, the tough guy is Jesus

Ajinbayo Akinsiku wants the world to know Jesus Christ - just not the gentle, blue-eyed Christ of old Hollywood movies and many illustrated Bibles. Akinsiku says his Son of God is "a samurai stranger who's come to town, in silhouette," here to shake things up in a new, much-abridged version of the Bible rooted in manga, the Japanese form of graphic novels. "We present things in a very brazen way," said Akinsiku, who hopes to become an Anglican priest and who is the author of "The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation." "Christ is a hard guy, seeking revolution and revolt, a tough guy." Publishers with an eye for evangelism and for markets have long profited by directing Bibles at niche markets: just-married couples, teenage boys, teenage girls, recovering addicts. Often the lure is cosmetic, like a jazzy new cover. Sales of graphic novels, too, have grown by double digits in recent years. So it makes sense that a convergence is under way, as graphic novels take up stories from the Bible, often in startling ways. In the last year, several major religious and secular publishing houses have announced or released manga religious stories...more...

[omae mona]

I kind of think that if you're going to take western culture and turn it into Manga, it should be South Park, not the Bible.

[emperor]

...so the extermination of the tentacle-rape monsters of Sodom & [size=-1]Gomorrah[/size] is carried out by Gods' fleet of holy-war-mechs?






awesome!

[American Oyaji]

I must admit....

...I'm intrigued.

I'm also interested in reading that manga with Buddha and Jesus.