Appealing to a small crowd, Dust, created and illustrated in part by Alan Close, is a comic book series for Christians who actually like comics, not a lame attempt at marketing Jesus to parents who think anything from a store other than the "Family Christian Store" is demonic. Dust is a comic book series that recreates old stories from the Bible that are often left, quite literally, in the dust. It visualizes them and tells them in a unique way, taking the story in context of the passages referring to it and in context of the historical facts.
Fire From Heaven is a story about the prophet, Elijah, who challenges a false idol with strength from the Judeo-Christian God. It carefully analyzes and retells the story in an appealing way, teaching about the bible but also entertaining audiences. A sample can be read here:
http://goo.gl/IEXp The Blessed Curse is about one of the most infamous stories in the bible: a lesson taught through Balaam's ass. A sample here:
http://goo.gl/NpD0 The Seven Sons is a story about seven brothers who are roaming around the town after Jesus' death and resurrection, they come upon demon possessed souls and use knowledge from St. Paul to protect themselves. (No sample available but images of the comic can be found on their myspace.)
Here is the self-description found on their myspace (
http://www.myspace.com/dustpress ):
"Dust is designed to engage kids of all ages with the thrill of discovering the Bible. We start with stories you may have forgotten about. Then we show you the context of the stories and how these stories might have happened. You can decide for yourself what to think. That's right - we trust you to think and decide. One thing is for sure though, you will never forget these Bible stories again. Dust believes that talking about the Bible is good. We want to start a lot of conversations about the Bible."
Whether Christian or not, Dust is a series to be enjoyed for the storytelling, visual art, and intuition of taking something from the Bible and actually portraying it in a way anyone can get into. Why didn't anyone pick it up? The series is much stronger and more intuitive than "Bible Man." The best thing about Dust is that anyone who picks the comic up doesn't have to put it down thinking it is a second rate attempt at an "altar call." Dust, though ironically failing to escape its title, is one of the best ideas in Christian media in a very long time.
So what do you think? Would you read more of Dust? Should Christian media get "Dusty" or was Dust's attempt at offering an alternative for Christians and others a path that never should have been tread? I don't know about you, but I sure would rather read a comic book than read tiny columned words cramped inside a 1500+ page book.