Joseph Smith and the Mormons

Starred review from June 6, 2022
Van Sciver (One Dirty Tree) pulls off an ambitious feat: a nuanced graphic biography of Mormonism’s founder. In 1825, treasure hunter Joseph Smith (1805–1844) tells Emma Hale about his visions of an ancient record etched on gold plates. Against her family’s wishes, they marry and return to Smith’s home in Upstate New York to dig it up. Smith, using a seer stone, translates the record and publishes it as the Book of Mormon. He gains followers preaching about “Zion” and establishes a community in Kirtland, Ohio (though the locals tar and feather him). After his upstart bank fails, he decamps with believers to Illinois, where the recently converted, scheming John Cook Bennett helps establish a new city with sweeping political independence. After Bennett is ousted for immorality, and some leaders vehemently reject Smith’s teaching on polygamy, Smith ends up murdered by a mob. Van Sciver captures how the faithful hung on Smith’s charismatic oratory, and depicts spiritual innovations such as God as a deified human and baptism on the behalf of dead relatives. Van Sciver makes an intriguing artistic choice to present supernatural events, like Joseph’s visions of angels, in blue outline, and his oddly proportioned, oft-grimacing character drawings add levity and personality. Van Sciver was raised Mormon and expertly threads the needle here, allowing space for genuine belief while highlighting human moments of doubt, dissembling, and anger in the Latter-day Saint prophet. It’s an exemplar graphic narrative, reminiscent of Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, and will resonate with both believers and skeptics. Agent: Matthew Carnicelli, Carnicelli Literary Management.

June 1, 2022
A graphic novelist takes a deep dive into the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "I was born the eighth of nine children into an LDS family," writes Van Sciver in the author's note, going on to describe how his "faith evaporated" even as he still maintained interest in the church since childhood. "I spent years immersed in an independent study on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," he writes. "I traveled to historic sites all over the country and read books, went to church, listened to hymns, and wrote and drew like the Devil was chasing me." This graphic history/biography is intensive with dialogue and text, but it's particularly eloquent on the wordless pages, which allow Van Sciver's artistry to shine through. The author ably captures the world in which Joseph Smith and his followers made their way west through the wilderness, facing persecution and charges of perfidy at every turn. (Van Sciver takes Smith and his followers to Missouri, ending well before they continued to Utah after his death.) Though the book will likely displease strict LDS followers, the author insists that he seeks to tell the story "as straightforwardly as I can and to let readers draw their own conclusions." The book suggests that the young Smith was something of a con man, perhaps from a family of swindlers, well before he allegedly experienced heavenly visions. Van Sciver renders those visions expertly, the illustrations cast in a ghostly blue and white, providing a pleasing contrast with the otherwise full-color narrative. As the author shows, Smith was duplicitous in wooing his wife and keeping from her the sexual dalliances that led to a doctrine of polygamy. Furthermore, his bank cheated depositors, and his deceptions were spread by muckraking newspapers. One page proclaims him, "Swindler, Charlatan, Crook, Fraud," as if the universe itself were passing judgment. Beautifully drawn, contentious, and word-heavy, offering everything about early Mormonism that anyone might like to know.

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Starred review from July 1, 2022
Award-winning Van Sciver shares in his author's note he was born into an LDS family descended from a husband of Brigham Young's daughter, Elizabeth. After his parents' divorce when he was 12, he began to learn "about Joseph Smith and everything that [his] Sunday school lessons never mentioned." He eventually "immersed" himself in a years-long independent study to create this title: "I needed to draw this book because I needed to know who Joseph Smith was." The result is an extraordinary, full-color chronicle about an almost illiterate teen from a "scrying" family (the Smiths, reputed to be frauds, used a "seer" stone to allegedly locate treasures), who managed to convince thousands that he was a prophet in direct communication with God, despite committing acts of financial, legal, moral, and marital fraud. Although Van Sciver insists "this is not a work of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but an independent art project," the publication page states--most interestingly--in bold, "The original art for this book resides in the library of Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, and is available for study on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Van Sciver's approach here is "to tell the story of Joseph Smith as straightforwardly as [he could] and let readers draw their own conclusions." Gobsmacked reactions indubitably await.

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