In response to Noah Van Sciver’s comic “Book of Mormon Origins,” Sunstone received the following.

Graphic Novel

The Sacred Grove is strangely young—devoid of foliage,

with spindly, half-grown trees. And awkward, teen-age

Joseph, on his knees—trapped inside the walls

of his own comic strip—has coal-black hair,

and fuller lips than we recall. Is all of this

a horror tale? His pale countenance

is dipped in wash of pen-and-ink, encroaching

menace of the adversary’s darkness

that surrounds him. The vision’s blackest blacks

and whitest whites reveal his face as stark

and vulnerable—he swims in waves

of perspiration. Perhaps we, too, should

be afraid, since comic art defies an orthodox

interpretation. Blinding light that’s soon to vanquish

fleeing vestiges of Satan’s power, and then to manifest

a Father God presumed ‘til now as dead,  will also testify

the boy and Deity converse in charming lunacy

of ordinary speech—preserved and read

in dialogue balloons. Trite—the superhero

cartoon-god is old, and whiter still than any ghost.

But almost lost in shadow, the story’s one

authentic flesh-and-bone anomaly, the Son—

swarthy, plain, Semitic, real—no form

or comeliness we should desire.

How is it, cartoon-Joseph seems to know him?

Paul Swenson