Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown is best known for his sometimes jaw-droppingly candid comic book memoirs. His latest project, however, sees him bring his deceptively simple style to very different material. Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is subtitled Prostitution and Religious Obedience in the Bible. No surprise then that the result is provocative. But it is also clearly heartfelt.

Brown spoke to Graphic Content about his own religious beliefs and who draws the best God.

Where did your interest in the role of women in the Bible stories begin?

My interest in the five particular women I focus on in this book, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and the Virgin Mary, started back in the 1980s, when I read a book called The Illegitimacy Of Jesus by Jane Schaberg. She pointed out that the author of The Gospel Of Matthew had linked all five women together and Schaberg suggested that this had been done to indicate that Mary had been the victim of a rape, and that that rape had resulted in the birth of Jesus. It was an interesting theory, and I initially accepted Schaberg’s reasoning. But after a few years, I rethought that acceptance. Bathsheba might have been raped, but Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth hadn’t been. I came to believe, for reasons I explain in my book, that Matthew had used their stories to indicate something else: that Mary had been a prostitute. 

How difficult is it to be certain of the historical truth of the Biblical period? How limited are our sources?

It’s very difficult to be certain of the historical truth of most aspects of Bible. There are even scholars who claim that Jesus was a fictional creation, and, given the meagre sources, I can understand why some people have come to that conclusion. But there are little elements in the Biblical gospels that don’t seem like things you’d create for the fictional hero of an invented religion. Some of those elements I deal with in my book. I contend that there are indications in the Bible that Jesus and his mother had links to prostitution that the gospel writers were embarrassed about and tried to either downplay or cover up. That makes it seem like there was a historical reality behind the stories. Why would the creators of a fictional story include elements that embarrassed them?

What does it take to turn these stories into comic strips? 

I grew up in a religious family and my mother read children's versions of the biblical stories to me and my brother over and over. We loved them. Drawing this book felt very natural, almost like I was drawing stories from my own life. 

The Herald:

What were the questions you were asking yourself when you came to put lines on the page?

The best ever comic-strip adaptation of Biblical material is Robert Crumb’s The Book Of Genesis, and I was looking at that book a lot during the creation of my Mary Wept, so the question I was mostly asking myself was, “Why can’t I draw as well as Robert Crumb?”

Are you expecting people to take issue with your interpretation of the biblical stories?

Oh, of course. If you say that the Virgin Mary was a prostitute, you have to expect that a lot of Christians will be offended. But I think a quite a few non-Christians will recognize that my interpretations make a lot of sense. And I’m sure some Christians will be receptive to the book, too.

Are you yourself religious?

Yes, I believe there’s a God of some sort, and I tend to define myself as a Christian, although I should also add that I don’t think Jesus was divine. I’m not an atheist who’s trying to mock or trivialize religion. 

What is your own favourite artistic vision of God?

The problem with answering that question is that artists tend to shy away from depicting God-The-Father. While I just mentioned how much I love Crumb’s Genesis, in which God is depicted, I prefer how the Deity looks in Jack Chick’s weird comic-strip booklets. Chick draws Him with a glowing head, which looks odder and more mysterious than making Him an old white guy with a long beard. My favourite painter who regularly dealt with Christian themes is El Greco. I love how he distorts figures.



Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, by Chester Brown, is published by Drawn & Quarterly.