| "Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations" thematic stories | |||
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Brown's depiction of Jesus in the Gospels of Mark (left) and Matthew (right) |
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| First appearance | Yummy Fur #4 (April 1987) | ||
| Created by | Chester Brown | ||
| Publication information | |||
| Publisher | Vortex Comics Drawn and Quarterly |
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| Schedule | irregular | ||
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| Genre | Christian Based on the Gospels |
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| Publication date | April 1987 | ||
| Creative team | |||
| Creator(s) | Chester Brown | ||
Chester Brown's "eccentric adaptations"[1] of some of the Gospels appeared in his comic books Yummy Fur and Underwater starting with the Gospel of Mark in Yummy Fur #4 in 1987.
So far, Brown has finished his Gospel of Mark but not his Gospel of Matthew, and hasn't tackled the other gospels. The stories have been on hiatus since 1997. Brown had planned to do all four of the official gospels,[2] but in 2011 stated that it's unlikely he will finish even Matthew.[3]
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Brown was brought up in a strictly Christian Baptist[2] household.[4] Over his career, he has gone back and forth between belief and non-belief in Christianity.[5][6]
Brown took on his retelling of the Gospels to try to figure out what he really believed.[7]
| Appearances of The Gospel of Mark | ||
| Issue | Date | Passages[8] |
|---|---|---|
| Yummy Fur # 4 | April 1987 | Mark 1:01-39 |
| Yummy Fur # 5 | June 1987 | Mark 1:40-3:12 |
| Yummy Fur # 6 | August 1987 | Mark 3:13-4:14 |
| Yummy Fur # 7 | 1987[9] | Mark 5:1-6:6 |
| Yummy Fur # 8 | November 1987 | Mark 6:6-7:23 |
| Yummy Fur # 9 | March 1988 | Mark 7:24-8:21 |
| Yummy Fur #10 | May 1988 | Mark 8:22-9:13 |
| Yummy Fur #11 | July 1988 | Mark 9:14-10:34 |
| Yummy Fur #12 | September 1988 | Mark 10:35-12:27 |
| Yummy Fur #13 | November 1988 | Mark 12:28-14:52 |
| Yummy Fur #14 | January 1989 | Mark 14:53-16:20 |
Begun in issue #4 of Yummy Fur in 1987, Mark started as a more-or-less straight, abridged illustration[10] of the Gospel of Mark. The adaptation became more idiosyncratic as it developed, however. On pages 55 and 56 Brown wove into the story a passage from the Secret Gospel of Mark, a highly contentious and disputed document said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria that Professor Robert Morton claimed to have discovered in 1958.
When asked, Brown wrote in Yummy Fur #15 that he had a large number of sources for his adaptation of Mark. The most books he referred to most frequently were:[11]
The Gospel of Matthew started in issue #15 of Yummy Fur in 1989 and continued through to the premature end of Underwater in 1997. As of 2011, it has yet to be finished.
Brown's gospels gained a reputation for being "ingeniously blasphemous" mainly from his Matthew retellings. In contrast to Mark's Jesus, who is "serene and always in control," in Matthew he is a scowling, balding figure, and "there is a more radicalized disbelief and a greater focus on the fleshy and earthly aspects of the story."[12] Brown's depiction of the Matthew's version of the Saviour is "a Jesus that shouts. He's a Jesus that screams," his face "haggard and worn, his dark hair matted and stringy."[4]
The disciples are depicted as awkward, fearful and full of doubt, who are "barely able to reconcile the greatness of God with the miseries of their existence."[4]
As Brown has pointed out, starting with the full-issue installment of Matthew in Yummy Fur #32, he deliberately changed Jesus' third-person references to himself to first-person references in the dialogue.[13]
Amongst the books Brown cited for his Matthew adaptation are:
Matthew has been on hiatus since 1997, with the story left with Jesus about to enter Jerusalem. Brown had long said he planned on coming back to the story, but in an interview at The Comics Journal in 2011, he said he would not likely finish it, as his heart was no longer in it.[3]
The Gospel adaptations have generally been well-accepted by fans and critics. John Bell calls them Brown's most important uncollected work.[15]
To Francis Hwang of City Pages, "the paradox of faith is brilliantly, heartbreakingly depicted"[4] in the Gospel of Matthew.
Religious and biblical elements have found their way into almost all of Brown's work:
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