Bible Stories, 1994

(Continued from 1993)

The story of "King Josiah" continues.  This marked the 2nd time the BOYS' LIFE series would cover this material.  As before, the stories of "Daniel" (5th version), "Jonah" (4th version), and, yet again,
"The Creation" (8th version) and "The Garden Of Eden" (7th version) follow.

The trend of REUSED text and NEW art continues. If you click "Open Link In New Window" for each pair, you can flip between them and compare.

January 1994 with January 1984

The February 1984 installment, "Nebuchadnezzar Destroys Jerusalem", was skipped this time.  Does it seem to anyone else that BL have been skipping the really "downbeat" episodes?

February 1994 with March 1984

The April 1984 installment, "Nebuchadnezzar Orders The Death Of The Wise Men Of Babylon" was also skipped this time.  See my above comment.
 
March 1994 with May 1984
April 1994 with June 1984
May 1994 with July 1984
June 1994 with August 1984

August 1994 with September 1984
September 1994 with October 1984
October 1994 with November 1984

The December 1984 episode, "Jonah Is Angry That Ninevah is Spared", was skipped this time.  Once again, it seems some editorializing was going on somewhere, combined with some totally uncalled-for "political correctness".  The specific episodes SKIPPED repeatedly are those in which characters in The BIBLE are shown in a BAD light.  It seems clear someone was trying to "clean things up" (or perhaps "water it down" would be a more appropriate description).

November 1994 with January 1985
December 1994 with February 1985

Unless my eyes are deceiving me, it looks like with the January 1994 issue, BOYS' LIFE switched from newsprint to glossy white "magazine" paper.  Many comic-books did this around the same time, as I recall.  I say this because all of a sudden, the images I'm finding at the BL "Wayback Machine" website are a LOT brighter... although, STILL in need of some clean-up.  (The whites may look white now, but the colors are STILL too dark. Plus, the skin tones tend to be way too yellow.)

Story by (??)  /  Art by FRANK BOLLE
BOYS' LIFE  /  January 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  February 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  March 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  April 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  May 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  June 1994

For the first time since 1974, there was no BIBLE STORIES episode.
It seems particularly annoying for them to do this in the middle of a story...

BOYS' LIFE  /  August 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  September 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  October 1994

Once more, we reach the story of "Jonah", and it's the signal to START OVER again from the beginning.  I can't help but wonder... aren't there any BIBLE STORIES considered worth telling after "Jonah"?  "The Maccabees" (the details of which I can never seem to remember, despite multiple readings on my part) have only been featured ONCE since the BOYS' LIFE series started in 1952, and stories of "Jesus" have been featured only on the rarest of occasions.  Even "The Nativity" hasn't been seen since 1964.


Now why does this latest version of "The Creation" look Stanley Kubrick-inspired?

BOYS' LIFE  /  November 1994

BOYS' LIFE  /  December 1994

Above, I mentioned it looked like someone was trying to "clean things up". 
"The Garden of Eden" is another example of this.  The text is IDENTICAL to the previous version, EXCEPT, the entire last paragraph is MISSING:  "And the man and the woman were naked.  But they were not ashamed."  Can it be any more OBVIOUS that something is going on here???

(Continued in 1995)

Copyright (C) BOY'S LIFE Magazine
Restorations by Henry Kujawa

Read the Bob LeRose page at Wikipedia
Visit Frank Bolle's website!
See a collection of Frank Bolle's TIM HOLT covers at this very blog!