FLOWER MOUND, Texas (ABP) — Robert Luedke loved drawing and reading comic books when he was a boy. Years later, he became a Christian. Now Luedke is bringing both passions together for a career.
Luedke, president of Texas-based Head Press Publishing, is pioneering a new literary genre called illustrated Christian fiction. The author of Eye Witness — A Fictional Tale of Absolute Truth and Eye Witness Book Two — Acts of the Spirit, Luedke's books are graphic novels with a Christian twist.
“A groundswell of creativity is occurring,” Luedke said. “Creative people from all walks of the entertainment industry are being drawn to be a witness through their artistic ability. The graphic novel offers a wonderfully effective tool for sharing God's Word and story with young readers.”
A graphic novel is like a comic book, but it is usually more than 100 pages, tells a more complex story, is written for an older audience, and is bound like a book. The term “graphic novel” is often used to imply that the content is more serious or mature than that of comic books, although both genres contain drawings.
Luedke bases his story lines on Scripture, but he adds characterization and a modern adventure story to make the novels unique and intriguing to readers who don't know much about the Bible.
While comics have been collected in book form since the 19th century, several graphic novel prototypes emerged in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1950, St. John Publications produced It Rhymes with Lust, “an original full-length novel” about a feisty redhead named Rust. The 128-page comic book by pseudonymous writer Drake Waller experienced such success that it led to a second picture novel by the same author and countless emulators.
After comic books rose in popularity during the 1960s, the term “graphic novel” appeared in 1978 on the cover of A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories. Thanks to that novel, A Contract with God author Will Eisner became a legendary artist and author who worked to gain recognition for the field of graphic novels.
Eisner said he wrote the story and coined the term because he realized conventional comic books had lost appeal for the adults who had grown up reading them.
“I reasoned that the 13-year-old kids that I'd been writing to back in the 1940s were no longer 13-year-old kids, they were now 30, 40 years old,” Eisner said in a 2002 keynote address at the University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels. “They would want something more than two heroes, two supermen, crashing against each other. I began working on a book that dealt with a subject that I felt had never been tried by comics before, and that was man's relationship with God.”
In those days, Eisner said, the graphic novel was not considered a valid art form. He, however, pushed for his editors to realize “that this strange, marvelous combination of words and images that were laid out in an intelligent sequence was a true art form or literary form, as I like to put it.”
Indeed, graphic novels have not emerged without dissidents. Some critics argue that the term “graphic novel” is a misnomer used for marketing purposes, while others think of the comic novel as limited, gimmicky and contrived.
Despite the critics — past and present — graphic novels have become a recognized medium, attracting young artists like Luedke, who experimented with his craft in secular comics for 15 years.
Always skeptical about religion, Luedke had pursued his career in the secular comic book industry, but despite his success, he still wanted something more out of life. It wasn't until the deaths of his father, a close friend and a co-worker — all within six months of each other — that Luedke realized he needed Jesus.
In 1999, Luedke attended Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, where he heard an apologetic presentation of the archeological and medical evidence for the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. The evidence he heard solidified his faith.
“Someone needs to put this evidence into an illustrated form,” Luedke recalled thinking. But he didn't consider doing it himself until later.
The concept behind the Eye Witness novels — the first two of a trilogy — originated in 2000. But Luedke continued to mull over the idea two more years before he began writing. He released his first book in 2004, and the second volume came out this summer.
On average, each graphic novel takes Luedke 18 months to complete, with the first three months dedicated to writing the story and the rest spent drawing the pictures by hand and then scanning them into a computer. Luedke expects to complete the trilogy in 2008.
While Leudke's first book focuses on the crucifixion, book two begins with the resurrection of Jesus and follows Saul's conversion and the development of the early Christian church.
Now Leudke said he hopes the compelling graphics and fast-paced story line can help other young artists and art-lovers learn about Jesus.
“I grew up as a lover of comic books and graphic novels,” Luedke said. “If I would have had access to something like Eye Witness when I was in my teens, I might not have waited until I was almost 40 to explore what Jesus was all about.”
And all the time he spends working on his books is worth it to Luedke, who said that in addition to reaching teenagers, he wants to push this new form of literature to other publishers.
“I look at this project as a ministry,” he said. “The graphic novel is my method of reaching out to young people in a very culturally relevant way and to share God's glory.”
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— Hannah Elliott of Associated Baptist Press contributed to this story