Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations

Brown began his adaptation of the Gospel of Mark in issue #4 of Yummy Fur in 1987. It ran alongside his surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown serial, which led readers to expect a similar treat of the Gospel;^[9] instead, he provided a straight adaptation,^[9][10] running to issue #14 of Yummy Fur. Brown lays out the story at six equal panels per page, each panel illustrating one verse of the Gospel of Mark.^[9] On the final page of the final installment, Brown stops illustrating the story after Mark 16:8, where the myrrhbearers flee Jesus's empty tomb. The final four panels are of an unnamed old man reciting the final verses against a black background.^[11] These four panels are of what scholars believe is an extended ending to Mark's Gospel.^[12]

The adaptation became more idiosyncratic as it developed: On pages 55 and 56 Brown wove into the story a passage from the Secret Gospel of Mark, a highly contentious and disputed document said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria that Professor Morton Smith claimed to have discovered in 1958.

The Gospel of Matthew started in issue #15 of Yummy Fur in 1989 and continued through to the premature end of Underwater in 1997. As of 2011, it has yet to be finished.

Brown's gospels gained a reputation for being "ingeniously blasphemous" mainly from his Matthew retellings. In contrast to Mark's Jesus, who is "serene and always in control," in Matthew he is a scowling, balding figure, and "there is a more radicalized disbelief and a greater focus on the fleshy and earthly aspects of the story."^[14] Brown's depiction of the Matthew's version of the Saviour is "a Jesus that shouts. He's a Jesus that screams", his face "haggard and worn, his dark hair matted and stringy".^[3]

The disciples are depicted as awkward, fearful and full of doubt, who are "barely able to reconcile the greatness of God with the miseries of their existence".^[3]

As Brown has pointed out, starting with the full-issue installment of Matthew in Yummy Fur #32, he deliberately changed Jesus's third-person references to himself to first-person references in the dialogue.^[15]

The Gospel adaptations have generally been well-accepted by fans and critics. John Bell calls them Brown's most important uncollected work.^[17]

To Francis Hwang of City Pages, "the paradox of faith is brilliantly, heartbreakingly depicted" in the Gospel of Matthew.^[3]

Religious and biblical elements have found their way into almost all of Brown's work:

• "The Twin", a story of young Jesus adapted from a story from the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia, which appears in The Little Man^[18]
• Various religious imagery in Ed the Happy Clown, especially Jesus' quote, "If thy hand offend thee cut it off", and the character Chet's religious remorse over having sex with Josie the vampire that leads to him murdering her
• his thinking about buying an issue of Playboy while sitting in church that opens The Playboy
• his battles with his mother over wearing his Sunday clothes in I Never Liked You
• Louis Riel's talking with God in the graphic novel of the same name.
• Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, which features adaptation of various biblical episodes

• Alternative comics
• The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb
• Unfinished creative work