In the spirit of full disclosure I must confess that the idea of doing a graphic novel based on one of the Gospels of the Bible was not mine. The original concept came from two friends at Seabury, Ken Arnold and Lucas Smith,. I mention this only because it’s important to understand where my heart was at when I first started working on the project. As an illustrator I live and die by deadlines. So when I started working on “Marked”,  I assumed that even though I’m a practicing Christian , I would approach it like most of my other projects; that is,  from a secular, even mercenary  frame of mind.  Write the story, draw the pictures, cash the check.

However, when I started doing research for the book, which entailed actually reading the Gospel of Mark, I was shocked at how much I did not know about my own faith. And it was this uncomfortable confrontation with my own Biblical illiteracy that altered the course of the project for me. It doesn’t take more than a few pages in to realize this is not a traditional, even linear, retelling of the Gospel story. Because, instead of  an illustration of the Gospel, as I had originally planned, I chose to respond to the Gospel of Mark.

What do I mean by a response to the Gospel? A good example is Mel Gibson’s movie "Passion of the Christ", which I actually used as an anti-model, a model of what I didn’t want to do. I felt that Mr. Gibson essentially pandered to his audience. Although he retold his version of the  Passion narrative with a lot of creative embellishments, he made sure he never challenged his audience’s core assumption that they already knew the story. In contrast to  Mr. Gibson’s approach, I wanted my audience to question, to rethink their assumptions about the Gospel story.

Anyone who doesn't think the Gospel of Mark is weird, just isn't paying attention. But it's a weirdness that has such truth at it's core that it deserves to have that strangeness kept intact, not sanitized away. And if the weirdness makes people question, that is a good thing.  Anyone who takes their faith seriously must wrestle with doubt every day. To paraphrase the theologian Paul Tillich, "the opposite of Faith is not Doubt. It's Certainty"

Review copies, interviews and excerpts available upon request from the publisher. Please contact William Falvey, 212-592-9416, wfalvey@cpg.org,  Seabury Books, 445 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016