“Yesterday’s” Comic> The True Story Of Easter

You know when I should have reviewed this? LAST EASTER!

The True Story Of Easter

Golden Kid Comics (2020)

WRITER/ARTIST: Joshua 1:9 Holley

I don’t think I have to summarize this story. If you don’t know the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection by now you’re more out of the loop than I am. Instead, I’m going to just review the presentation.

The comic is in black and white, and follows the Bible from Jesus sending two of His disciples to fetch the donkey until His resurrection and ascension. The comic’s goal appears to be to teach kids about the Easter story. I can certainly support that as a Christian. However, I’m reviewing this as a critic and there are some problems.

The art style isn’t terrible but it’s definitely going to be up to the reader if they like it. I’m neutral on it myself. It works better than the artist’s attempt to update Golden age hero The Flame, but what you see on the cover is in the book. It does look like hobbits are portraying the people of the story, including Jesus Himself. Whether or not your okay with that will come down to personal preference. This is meant for kids and I see what he was going for, but it didn’t wow or annoy me.

The problem lies in the writing. The writer clearly knows the Scripture and which parts Jesus was fulfilling, pointing to the passages of the Old Testament fulfilled in this part of the New Testament. The issue is the presentation is very verbose, which will lose the younger readers, and takes up so much page space that art isn’t allowed to be anything more than there, which loses the older readers. This is an all-ages book but I was losing interest as an adult trying to read all the text. The writer really cares about the teachings of Jesus, but more focus on the visual presentation would have been nice.

In short, the creator of this book would have been better off making an illustrated booklet, highlighting the scene on the page in the art and letting the text take up its proper spot in the page, with the references in a corner for older readers to look up late because odds are the kids won’t. It’s the presentation that hurts this overall. I’m always happy to see someone legitimately trying to find new ways to preach the Word to a new generation, especially in comics given how much I enjoy comics, but in the end this site is about the storytelling experience itself, and sadly this comic fell short on that. There are better presentations out there.