Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations

Chester Brown adapted Gospel of Mark and part of the Gospel of Matthew to comics; installments appeared in his comic books Yummy Fur and Underwater. Brown ran the first installment of the Gospel of Mark in Yummy Fur #4 in 1987, and left Matthew unfinished after cancelling Underwater in 1997. Brown had planned to do all four of the canonical gospels, but in 2011 stated that it is unlikely he will finish even Matthew.

Brown was brought up in a strictly Christian Baptist household. Over his career, he has gone back and forth between belief and non-belief in Christianity.

Brown took on his retelling of the Gospels to try to figure out what he really believed.

Begun in issue #4 of Yummy Fur in 1987, Mark started as a more-or-less straight, abridged illustration of the Gospel of Mark. The adaptation became more idiosyncratic as it developed, however. On pages 55 and 56 Brown wove into the story a passage from the Secret Gospel of Mark, a highly contentious and disputed document said to have been written by Clement of Alexandria that Professor Morton Smith claimed to have discovered in 1958.

When asked, Brown wrote in Yummy Fur #15 that he had a large number of sources for his adaptation of Mark. The most books he referred to most frequently were:

The Gospel of Matthew started in issue #15 of Yummy Fur in 1989 and continued through to the premature end of Underwater in 1997. As of 2011, it has yet to be finished.

Brown's gospels gained a reputation for being "ingeniously blasphemous" mainly from his Matthew retellings. In contrast to Mark's Jesus, who is "serene and always in control," in Matthew he is a scowling, balding figure, and "there is a more radicalized disbelief and a greater focus on the fleshy and earthly aspects of the story." Brown's depiction of the Matthew's version of the Saviour is "a Jesus that shouts. He's a Jesus that screams", his face "haggard and worn, his dark hair matted and stringy".

...
Wikipedia