Joseph Smith And The Birth Of Mormonism Told Through Graphic Novelist Noah Van Sciver
(REVIEW) In the beginning, Noah Van Sciver’s “Joseph Smith and the Mormons” asks you a favor: For just a moment put away all your assumptions about the polygamous leader of a faith that would lead to a plethora of wealthy tradwife-momfluencers and X posts about Mitt Romney’s underwear. Instead, watch a young boy from a poor family as he helps his father in the stunning wilderness of 1800s New England.
Now, Van Sciver (look for my podcast interview with him here or the video above) will get to polygamy and he will get to Mormon finances (thankfully, he makes no mention of underwear), but he earns his credibility to comment on these things because he does the work to put them in their proper context. And, according to multiple reviews from LDS writers and an extensive bibliography, his research is solid.
Van Sciver grew up in the LDS church until age 12 when his parents were divorced and his mom began “separating her children from the faith as best she could.” In the back of the book, he says of Joseph Smith, “I could read everything written about him and do endless research, but that wasn't enough for me. I needed to be him, to inhabit the man through my art and act out the events of his life with my pen. I wanted to know how that would feel, and whether, after learning all about him, I would gain some special insight into and understanding of where the faith I grew up in came from.”
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This “let’s see what happens” approach toward his research gives the novel a very unafraid attitude. Van Sciver is not professing to be a Mormon, so he has no fear of the LDS church should he learn something disturbing about their leader. And he is not claiming some totally anti-religious stance, so he has no secular worldview which finding God would destroy. In this way, he tells the story of Smith with caution, curiosity and very little moralization.
“Joseph Smith and the Mormons” recounts how young Joseph and his father would convince wealthy individuals to pay them for Joseph’s supposed ability to locate hidden treasure. As he gets older, Joseph becomes quite religious and puts away the trickery. But, when an angel reveals to him that there are sacred writings hidden in the woods near his house, Joseph’s entire trajectory becomes not just as a passive church member, but the founder of the LDS Church.
The novel also covers violence against the Mormons, the creation of the Mormon bank and currency, the tumultuous relationship some of the early members had with the church, and, of course, Joseph’s marital issues as a result of his convictions about polyamory.
The Smith that Van Sciver presents is readable as simple and as highly complex. There is a simple reading of the novel which says Joseph was taught to be a grifter at a young age, as he got older he thought up a grift that could be more profitable, and he used that grift to accumulate influence, money and, ultimately, women.
A more complex analysis might say that Joseph’s intentions were muddied all throughout his life. Perhaps the debt-ridden home Joseph grew up in and the faux supernatural seeing he performed as a child created a man who sought stability and may have legitimately believed himself capable of seeing things others couldn’t. Yet, power corrupted benign intentions.
There is, of course, the third reading of the novel, which presents all that occurs as factual and real. However, this seems unlikely. While often Joseph is portrayed as pious and thoughtful. And while many of his followers are consistently ardent, Van Sciver does not overlook or excuse Smith’s more obvious faults. The story that he tells in the latter half of the novel is one corrupted by lust. Van Sciver makes clear his thoughts on this tenant of the faith by his exploration of Emma Smith, Joseph Smith’s wife.
Image courtesy of “Joseph Smith and the Mormons”/Harry N. Abrams
Though the addition of wives by Joseph and the other saints was meant to be a fairly covert practice, Emma eventually finds out and, horrified, says she will not “share” her husband. However, as often happens very conveniently when Joseph needs to solve a problem in his marriage, he receives a message from God. The message tells Emma that if she doesn’t accept that having multiple wives is something Joseph is commanded to do, God will “destroy” her. The scene shows Emma devastated and emotionless in a dark room as glass-like cracks web across her figure.
Despite the generally amoral approach, polygamy, which is naturally everybody’s most common qualm with the LDS religion, is very much framed as obviously problematic. Young women are approached by men privately and asked—or pressured—into marrying them “cosmically.”
Now, first and foremost, whether or not Joseph had sex with all or any of his plural wives is debated. And, secondly, it seems that typically a proposal was not done in secret, but involved family members of the women. Regardless of what Joseph’s intentions were, Van Sciver presents this new commandment as sowing fear and creating a sort of rape culture — especially for those who were obviously involved in mormonism for their own gain.
There are more subtle criticisms of the faith as well, such as a panel of missionaries preaching to Native Americans and quoting the Book of Mormon saying “they shall be a white and delightsome people” followed by a panel of Native Americans giving blank stares. To be clear, the word “white” has now been changed to “pure.”
When it comes to why Mormonism might be problematic, Van Sciver is most concerned about Joseph’s treatment of women. He even includes a widely disputed occurrence in which Joseph has an affair with his children’s nanny and is discovered by Emma. This took place years before he would begin to urge many to partake in similar practices.
Image courtesy of “Joseph Smith and the Mormons”/Harry N. Abrams
Van Sciver has been an incredibly prolific writer at only age 40. He’s drawn numerous comic strips and several graphic novels. Two of these graphic novels that he authored and illustrated were historical fiction. With one covering Abraham Lincoln’s battle with depression and the other on Johnny Appleseed. But it is possible that Noah may have started writing “Joseph Smith and The Mormons,” which was published in 2022, back in 2011, when he first published a short Joseph Smith comic as part of a larger project.
And, if it really did take him eleven years to create, no reader could be too surprised. The book is over 400 pages of hand-drawn panels and extensive dialogue. On top of all that, the book is in color. The actual physical hardcover is quite interesting. It is a leather-like material with faux-gilded pages and a ribbon bookmark. In other words, it is reminiscent of a holy book.
Its Biblical heft must have been necessary for Van Sciver, whose style combines panel after panel of wobbly cartoon characters with full-page illustrations of bucolic scenes. It is almost reminiscent of “Bone” or “Buddha” in this combination of a detailed natural world and more simplified, cartoonish characters.
The scale of the book’s art absolutely justifies its potential decade long construction. The autumnal color palette gives every page of the novel a nostalgic feel which aids the amoral mission of this story. The colors of the whole novel are never flashy and always warm, which allows for it to prioritize history over entertainment.
In “Joseph Smith and the Mormons,” Van Sciver has cautiously critiqued Mormonism and has earned that critique by the genuine effort to pursue empathy and the genuine effort to understand what factually occurred. What it lacks in the brevity and accessibility which characterize most comics, it makes up for in beauty and integrity.
Matthew Peterson is currently the John McCandlish Phillips intern at Religion Unplugged. He is a student at Baruch College in New York City.