Many times throughout this graphic novel, I found myself looking up additional information and context, and that's a good thing! I was curious and wanted to understand. Meanwhile, I've had maybe 2 - 3 copies of The Book of Mormon, and never did finish it. A unique work. ( )

Noah Van Sciver’s Joseph Smith and the Mormons traces the history of the church from Joseph Smith’s youth through his death, primarily focusing on events from Smith’s perspective. The story touches on some of the controversies of the early church, but Van Sciver writes more as an author creating a book for members of the church than as an historian. A true examination of Mormon history would benefit from a background analysis of their place in the Second Great Awakening amid other fledgling religions – such as the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Public Universal Friend – all of whom laid down roots in the religious soil of upstate New York and its burned over district.

Van Sciver takes a great deal at face value, giving this book the appearance of an apologia. For example, he portrays the Mormons receiving divine revelation either in the form of angelic visitation or prophetic dreams, but those like William Law who doubt or question receive nothing when they pray on the issues that trouble them. His one conceit is to portray Smith’s initial revelations secondhand, with Smith relating them as he claimed they occurred. Further, Van Sciver depicts those who object to the new religion’s tenets as physically ugly (pgs. 9, 77, 217, 251, 286, 373, 379, 407). The most significant controversy that Van Sciver discusses is the practice of “spiritual marriage,” a religious form of polygamy. In this, Van Sciver accurately portrays Smith as a philandering man who justified his urges through his position in the religion he founded (pgs. 169, 207, 224, 227-229, 303, 307, 330, 339, 359). Though minor, Van Sciver also portrays the fraud of the Kirtland Safety-Society, but he shows Smith’s involvement as minimal and aboveboard (pgs. 208, 234).

In reproducing the white supremacy at the heart of the Mormon church’s founding, Van Sciver only depicts Black Americans as voiceless characters laboring in the background (pgs. 6, 217, 283, 387). Native Americans similarly appear either as passive recipients of Smith’s book or as misappropriated human remains that the early Mormons repurposed as proof of their beliefs (pgs. 145, 199, 322). In this, the book reproduces the fan-fiction style alternate history of Native Americans that Smith promulgated in which he claimed that belief would make them “a white and delightsome people” (pg. 145). These beliefs later led to the Mormons’ abuses under the Indian Placement Program from 1954-1996. Van Sciver explains this horrendous history in his notes (pg. 444-445), but more skepticism when describing the events themselves would have been appropriate.

As he explains in his author’s note, Van Sciver wrote this during an attempt to better understand the faith he was raised in as a child and had grown away from. Joseph Smith and the Mormons works well as a basic introduction to the history of a religious movement, but those who want to know more about the church and its place within the Second Great Awakening and early nineteenth century history should continue their research. ( )

My knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is limited to HBO's Big Love and Broadway's The Book of Mormon. The church sent me a free copy of their book once after I jokingly called an 800 number from a late-night TV commercial, but I only flipped through it for a couple minutes and put on a bookshelf in case I ever had need to reference it . . . and that has never happened.

I'm grateful to have this graphic novel dramatization of the life of Joseph Smith to give me a little firmer grip on what was sort of going on there. It's not great on providing a lot of context to events, relying purely on character dialogue, but it paints an interesting portrait of Smith as a charlatan, swindler, crook and fraud (words directly from p. 265). Like a lot of religious leaders he abused his position to accumulate wealth, influence government, and seduce members of his flock.

At the same time, the book sort of has a neutral tone, and I wonder if Smith's followers might be able to read it and see it as a mostly positive look at a complex but devout prophet and martyr who was unjustly persecuted by his enemies.

The execution of story and art reminds me strongly of Chester Brown's Louis Riel graphic biography from two decades ago. This drags a little more though, taking me maybe four or five hours to read, and I found it hard sometimes to tell apart the dozens of white men with their various facial hair permutations. I've never been much of a fan of Noah Van Sciver, but I do admire the effort he poured into this brick of a book. ( )