| Dust Press |
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| Posted by Kris Bather |
08:18 AM Wednesday, 28 November 2007 |
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Dust Press are telling the oldest story. The Original Epic. Yep the Bible in comics form. Of course, this isn't the first time this has been done. The Bible works well enough to stand up to every medium and artform the world invents, but the passionate crew behind Dust believe that this is more than just a story. Their aim is to bring Scripture to people that may ordinarily have nothing to do with it. They're confident in their product and their mission, so much so that you can download free issues of both their published books, Fire From Heaven and The Blessed Curse. If you like what you see you can also support the cause. I sat down with Dust's Managing Director Mark Carpenter to discuss the unique vision of this new comic book company and what it means to tackle the "greatest story ever told."
say, TV or music? Comics, or sequential art, is a powerful story telling medium. They allow you to move back and forth in time, to change perspective and draw in the reader because the changes demand his attention. Even the space between the panels has meaning and begs of the reader to investigate. The medium is also great because the production costs are lower than film. Comics can be printed in almost any country and we hope ours are. We also add the corresponding text from the Bible and commentary. How do you select what stories to tell? It seems that you could work your way through the whole Bible. We hope we do work our way through the entire Bible, That means that Dust continues long past my life, there's just that many stories. We select them because 1) we are avoiding the well known stuff like the flood, the garden and such, 2) the story has to have content that will work really well in the comic book, like the story of the left handed Benjamite and 3) the story has content that is relevant to our culture today. Given those criteria we can actually pick 95% of the text. We're also likely going to switch to a model that has our fans pick the stories we do.  How did yourself and artist Alan Close come on to the project? Have you both been looking for something to
collobarate on for a while?After the idea came to me, I prayed about it and discovered that I had been called to do this. I then began to tell everyone of my dream. People began to show up, like Alan. It's been a constant stream of God events since then. Prior to Dust I had never met or heard of Alan. What's the response been like so far? Well, varied. I have had a few people tell me that it's too violent. Can you imagine? Apparently they are embarrassed about the roots of their faith, because an honest person has to admit that it's there in black and white. But that's the minority by far. The majority are really excited and receptive. They wish we had more books done (we wish the same). When we have more books several key markets will open for us: youth workers and retail both need more issues in order to justify buying Dust. The economics are tough for them with only 1 book. We think that the tipping point will be the 3rd or 4th book. Then we have a real shot at being the best selling comic book in the world. And we should be, we have the best material to work with, the market needs this and it works - kids (and adults) see the relevance of the text like never before. Any stories from readers that have really encouraged you and cemented your desire to tell stories from scripture? I have moms telling me that their kids never liked the Bible until Dust. Now that has changed. We have kids that tell us they love Dust constantly. When we sign their books they tell their parents, who then tell us, that meeting us was the best day of their life! Yeah, we aren't going to stop. That's not going to happen. Their MySpace page
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