Crowdfunding Spotlight: Biblical Volume 1 – The Holy and the Dead

By John Freeman on May 19, 2017

Working with Rats & Crows Publishing, artist and writer Tzvi Lebetkin has just launched a modest Kickstarter to collect his Biblical comic strips for the first time, which has already reached its first “stretch goal” marker.

The “fiercely Biblically accurate comic series with no preaching or polemic agenda – iust a great story well told” has earned high praise from a number of comic creators, including Leah Moore and Si Spencer.

Tzvi’s Biblical has gained a good following after much hard work

The project has earned Tzvi a hard-won following, offering stories based on plenty of research from many different sources, not just re-telling the bible stories you may have read or been taught about growing up, and the crowdfunding campaign has already hit its first “stretch goal”, offering a further chapter in the collection, “The Truth of All Things”.

“A lot of people, quite understandably have a bit a problem with Biblical stories, because normally when you hear them someone is trying to convince you of something,” says Tzvi, “Which is a bit of a pity, because whatever else the Bible is – it’s just an awesome, intricate, enthralling, epic tale.

“On the other hand, if you’re a person of faith, most modern interpretations of the Bible are just incredibly frustrating as they so often completely betray the source material, and makes you wondered why they bothered in the first place.

“So we’ve used ancient kabbalistic Biblical commentaries as a scalpel, to dissect the characters, their motivations and world they lived. To present them as real, flawed, three dimensional people… We created Biblical: Bible stories for atheists, creationists, rationalists and rogues!”

The little known tale of the Raven, Noah and the Dove is retold in Biblical #3, revealing their titanic struggle for the soul of the world.

I think this is great project, and as it’s a straightforward collection of already-released material, barring Tzvi being struck by lightning, sent ten plagues or getting swallowed by a whale, it’s pretty certain the project will be going ahead!

• Check it out and give it your backing here on Kickstarter

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.