The Bible, whatever it's other flaws or virtues, is undeniably an impressive compendium of entertaining stories. Of course, it can be tough slogging to read the whole thing from start to finish, suffused as it is with miscellaneous begats and exhortations against the eating of shellfish. Fortunately, you can now get your Bible stories in easily-digestible comic form, from Holy Bibble. Cannan and Lucas have set themselves the task of rewriting the entire bible as humorous sequential art. Admittedly, some poetic license is occasionally taken with the material -- I'm pretty sure there was no trip to Japan in the original Scriptures. But all of the stories are based on real Bible narratives, and you do learn a lot by reading them.
For example, we've all heard the story of Lot and his wife. Yahweh had decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their various sinful activities. Lot, being virtuous, was given advance warning, and fled with his wife and two daughters. But his wife couldn't resist looking back one last time, and was turned into a pillar of salt. God works in mysterious ways. But the afterstory is so much more interesting. Lot and his daughters apparently thought they were completely alone, and there was some question as to how the family line would be able to continue. The women decided to take matters into their own hands -- they got their father drunk and raped him in order to get themselves pregnant. The scheme worked, and they eventually gave birth to sons who fathered the Moabites and the Ammonites, two rival tribes to Israel. The unwitting seductions actually happened on two successive nights, so one may question whether Lot shouldn't have figured out what was going on. On the other hand, his daughters may have had some issues, as Lot had previously offered them up to a rampaging mob of Sodomites. At least, that's what I gather from the comics; but apparently it's all in the book. Cain's trip to Japan, though -- pretty sure they made that up. Update: David Plotz at Slateblogs the Bible!
