RE V IE W S

JOSEPH SMITH
AND THE
MORMONS
Laura Paul | August 25, 2022 | 1 comment

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE

MORMONS
NOAH VAN SCIVER
Abrams
$29.99
464 pages

Buy Now

Noah Van Sciver’s newest entry in a series of

graphic novels on the legendary great men
of America may come as a surprise. He
started his professional publishing career
with a comic on Abraham Lincoln’s emo
days and continued with Johnny
Appleseed’s cultural influence. Now, he
dives deep into the life of Joseph Smith,
called a charlatan by some and a prophet by
others. The book announces itself from the
outset by its size. While the more well-
known figures garnered slimmer volumes
(Johnny Appleseed is barely over 100 pages),
his newest venture is more than double
what he allotted towards our nation’s 16th
president (The Hypo, 192 pages). At a
whopping 464 pages, Joseph Smith and the
Mormons may not be all you wanted to know
about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints, but it's more than you wished
you knew.

Van Sciver has been adamant that this is a

personal project, as detailed in interviews
and the extensive notes filling the back of
the book. His ancestors were early followers
of the Mormon church and maintains a
blood relation back to Brigham Young.
However, he writes this story without
narration boxes, attempting to separate his
opinions from historical facts. While this
may be a bid for greater objectivity, how he
portrays the characters, especially
expressions of skepticism and anger, and
how he writes the dialogue creates a
thoroughly idiosyncratic take.

The story opens in 1823 in upstate New

York, which some might not realize was the
birthplace of a belief system that was chased
west until concentrating in Utah. Joseph
Smith is introduced as a poor and illiterate
young man. He makes money by treasure
hunting—i.e. rooking people with a seer
stone—something that was a typical practice
during the Second Great Awakening (1790-
1840). Van Sciver leaves out how common
this was in the story, saving clarification for
the notes in the back. Nonetheless,
detaching the man from his context further
props up what Joseph Smith built rather
than what he was influenced by - namely, a
period in time when such magical
worldviews ran rampant and led many to
become itinerant quasi-Protestant
preachers.

Loosely defined apparitions appear early in

the text, both from Joseph and his father.
The convention Van Sciver uses is to render
these visions in monochrome cyan outlines,
as if the rumored dreams and imaginings
are to become the blueprints of the future.
It’s a stylistic move that provides gorgeous
relief in a marathon of a book, but the
framework is expressed inconsistently.
Angelic figures and omens sometimes slip
in, drawn in full color. It appears that visions
are only tentative if one person has
experienced them. Shared delusions, on the
other hand, are rendered in a range of hues.

Joseph sees a way out of his drudgery by

posing as a spiritual authority; his sex, race,
and posturing are used to override class
divisions. He woos a literate woman, Emma
Hale, who can write for him. He recounts to
her his divine discovery of unseen golden
plates. They marry, and he leverages taking
his new wife away from her family to force
his father-in-law into helping him get into
business. Things seem to be looking up for
Joseph as he claims newfound attention
with his mystical artifact that no one else is
allowed to see, not even Emma.

As long as Joseph has stories to tell and

manuscripts to publish, he will be funded -
an unfortunate reality not exclusive to the
past. Joseph Smith was early to discover
that there is no easier move than to reboot a
preexisting franchise, especially one held in
the public domain, so he continues with his
Old Testament-meets-War of 1812 fanfic
from behind a sheet, so Emma can’t see
what he’s “reading” as he recites his version
of scripture for a newly-founded American
audience. Translating the golden book from
“Reformed Egyptian,” he turns Native
Americans into a fantastical race of Hebrew
descendants called the “Lamanites,” who
are wicked and cursed with black skin. In
his effort to ground Christianity on a
continent foreign to those of English
descent, white supremacy can’t be
separated from the speculative and
apocalyptic.

Van Sciver makes a point of showing that

not everyone’s having it, though, by
including his detractors throughout the
book. A financer’s wife, Lucy Harris, almost
prevents his testimony from being printed
by destroying the only copy. Instead of
thwarting Joseph’s plans, it gives him an
excuse to do another rewrite. A panel shows
pages raining down from heaven into the
household, or perhaps are delivered up;
later, we see a newspaper headline about
Joseph’s tarnished reputation as a
blasphemer. The burgeoning sect has got to
move to find more supporters and better
establish their new Zion. It’s hard to think of
people calling Ohio the promised land, but
these were different times.

In Ohio, we get the first glimpses into Joseph

Smith’s infamous exploits in polygamy.
What starts as somewhat discreet flirtations
boils up into full-on threats and dictums
demanding subservience. A young woman
joins the Smith household to help with
chores, but after Joseph starts sleeping with
her, he comes up with a new commandment
that men should take multiple wives. From
this point on, Van Sciver dots the story with
occasional vignettes of Smith’s escapades
with the opposite sex, making it impossible
for readers to ignore what was then
occurring clandestinely.

Joseph confides this to Brigham Young, who

would eventually succeed him as church
president; Young tells Smith it’s a false
revelation. It doesn’t deter him. Joseph
explicitly authorizes his behavior by a
backroom decree with the other men. To be
clear, Joseph Smith was not advocating for
free love, but the accumulation of women as
his property. He menaces those who turn
him down by saying that the gate to Heaven
will be closed to them for good. This
includes his own wife, even after Emma
inquires about the rumors of these secret
violations. Van Sciver includes that Joseph
Smith may have taken 20 consorts; another
man, John C. Bennett, is reported to have
coerced at least seven. But Joseph lies to
Emma, denying it all.

It seems cosplaying as saints has really gone

too far. Joseph gets tarred and feathered as
threats of violence build. Under his
leadership, the church defrauds investors in
a similar trick from his grifting days. When
the coffers are found to be filled with sand,
not gold, Joseph runs from the law. Power
struggles among the men ensue in the
wreckage of soiled reputations. Van Sciver
shows Joseph dressed in epaulettes as he
takes the title not only of religious leader but
of mayor and general of his own army as
well. It seems that a man who pushed for the
women-as-chattel, natives-as-heathens
mindset did not include violence-as-
doctrine accidentally, but that it was the
bedrock of the entire theology. It proves
fatal, as an angry mob of detractors kills him
at the age of 38.

By the end, Van Sciver’s longstanding

preoccupation seems to be less with great
men and more with how often they claim to
be. Who would have thought this would
unite both Joseph Smith and Fante
Bukowski? In the case of the amalgamated
character of Bukowski, however, we get
much more intimacy and depth compared
to Smith. It turns out that not all desires for
greatness are equally relatable or quite so
humorous. Thankfully, Noah Van Sciver was
willing to face this history’s complex and
uncomfortable truths.

[Ed: This review originally stated that

Noah Van Sciver had thanked BYU for
funding his work. Van Sciver thanked
BYU in his 2017 book, Johnny Appleseed.
This work, Joseph Smith and the
Mormons, is an independent art project
not oNcially endorsed by the university.]

RE V IE W E D BY
Laura Paul

POSTE D
August 25, 2022

TOPICS
Abrams ComicArts, Noah Van Sciver

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AJ Frost − ⚑
18 days ago

Good review! One factual point: This book wasn't

funded by BYU. Rather, the original pages from
the book were donated to the BYU library. This
work is not endorsed by any entity of the LDS
Church as far as I know.
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