Professor H's Wayback Machine: Bible Stories, 2009

(Continued from 2008)

Another new era begins for the BOYS' LIFE series. "Bible Heroes" reverts to its previous title of "Bible Stories", as new artist Graeme Hewitson makes his debut. While Anthony Castrillo had made extensive use of "overdone" Photoshop coloring and textures, as well as photographic skylines, Hewitson does his art entirely in computer 3D modeling! One only wonders why this didn't start in January to give it a clean break?

Otherwise, the series picks up right where the previous installment left off, with the debut of "The Exiles Return" and "Nehemiah", 2 stories that had somehow NEVER been covered in BL before this!

Then it jumps back again, and a brand-new version of "Joseph" follows, the 10th time this material was covered in BOYS' LIFE, going back to May 1953. Strangely, it started with "Part 2". When "Part 3" was published, a cartoon of the magazine's mascot "Pedro" was plastered on top of it, telling readers to go to their website to read the missing installment. Putting this blog page together, I found that 4 years after-the-fact, it was still there. And so, for the convenience of anyone reading this here, I've slotted it in sequence where it SHOULD have been in the first place.

I find it curious that in this new version, Pontifar's wife is said to try to tempt Joseph "to do wrong", but doesn't mention that she was ATTRACTED to him. More modern-day censorship? There sure seem to be a lot of scheming women in these stories (but then, the same goes for the men).

2 more differences in this version... Joseph is show revealing himself to his brothers immediately, rather than putting them through months of hell and uncertainty in repayment for the evil they did to him. This makes him seem like a total sap. Also, the new version describes the Egyptians "hating" Joseph's family on finding out they were "lowly shepherds". This has the effect of painting all the Egyptians as evil, rather than what happens generations later as being simply the result of one horribly misguided ruler. Which is rather xenophobic (and rather "neo-con"-ish), to say the least. I find these drastic changes in the retellings bizarre and somewhat disturbing.

Story by (??) / Art by GRAEME HEWITSON
BOYS' LIFE / December 2008

BOYS' LIFE / January 2009

BOYS' LIFE / February 2009

BOYS' LIFE / March 2009

BOYS' LIFE / April 2009

Here's the episode that was "missing" from the magazine. Personally, I think this may have been an attempt to draw attention to the website, but who knows?