Manga hagiography

All you really need to know about the Manga-style comic book treatment of Saint Paul's life by writer Matthew Salisbury and artist Sean Lam is that 12-year-old Thomas thought they did a great job on volume one ("Tarsus to Redemption").

Salisbury's story adds to bit of conjecture to what we actually know of Paul's life, but for understandable reasons (he would have had a best friend, right?). The story sometimes seems frenetic, but given the genre and the zest with which author and illustrator mix-and-match panel sizes for the different scenes, that's to be expected.

Sean Lam is a talented illustrator who has obviously mastered the manga conventions (sharp noses, big expressive eyes, heart-shaped faces, and wild hair that on certain heads seems a character in its own right).

Apart from one instance where the perspective on a foreshortened arm holding a drawn sword makes the arm look more like an antique table leg, Lam draws everything well. He also deserves kudos for changing his drawing style for the three pages it takes to tell about Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus: Drawings in that section are shaded more lightly than elsewhere, in a none-too-subtle nod to the radiance of the risen Christ, and it works.

Thomas and I agree that the only thing we wanted that the book did not have was color on its inside pages.

"Biblical Manga" has a bright future in the hands of Salisbury and Lam, whose ambitious collaborative work is published in handsomely-bound paperback by Atiqtuq.