Samson

"For thousands of years, Jews and Christians have been retelling the life of Samson in new and imaginative ways, using narrative, painting, music, film and other artistic media to create an untold number of new stories out of the biblical text. Justin Reed develops this tradition in an exciting new way, producing a bracing new version of Samson's story in the form of a graphic novel. Other scriptural stories have found new life in the graphic novel genre as well, but of all the characters to appear in biblical narrative, Samson may well be the best suited for the graphic novel, a figure on the borderline between sacred history and the realm of the comic book. Reed skillfully taps into its potential by drawing on a wide range of sources--archaeology, literary analysis, Jewish and Christian interpretive tradition and his own personal experience--to fill out the visual dimensions of the story. The result is both erudite and very cool."

--Dr. Steven Weitzman, Daniel E. Koshland Professor of Jewish Culture and Religion, Stanford University