Biblical inspiration
Charlottetown artist creates comic about Barabbas, the man spared when Jesus was crucified
For anyone who has read the New Testament, the name Barabbas may ring a bell.
The Bible says Barabbas was held by the Romans the same time as Jesus. During the Jewish holiday of Passover, Barabbas was released while Jesus remained imprisoned.
Although the ending of that story is well-known, Charlottetown cartoonist Liam McKenna is telling the story of Barabbas and his struggle in a pre-Christian society as he navigates Jerusalem.
McKenna, who has an undergraduate degree in history and teaches high school, has never taken any formal training in illustration. But, he says he’s been drawing his whole life with a renewed interest in comics a few years ago.
“I started to take drawing serious again when I was 25. That’s when I started to get back into comics.”
McKenna thought since he was good at drawing, comics would be easy. He quickly realized that was not the case.
“I wasn’t ready.”
Now 31, McKenna still isn’t sure he is completely ready, but the feedback he has been getting on his web comic, “Release Barabbas”, has been overwhelmingly positive.
He came up with the idea for the comic around Easter.
“I’m not really religious anymore – I’m kind of a lapsed Catholic – but I always enjoyed studying religion in general and history,” said McKenna, who became interested in pop culture variations of religious figures and imagined having fun with them.
“Oh, wouldn’t it be funny to
wear a T-shirt that said, ‘Team Barabbas’ to church?”
McKenna noticed the way religious stories were presented in cartoon form, such as Hanna-Barbera cartoons graphically depicting scenes from the Bible.
“Sometimes I’ll watch kids’ cartoons about the crucifixion, which cracks me up because they are so brutally violent. It’s the story of an execution.”
Besides the spouting blood from Goliath’s head as David took him down with a rock, McKenna noticed how depictions of the Jewish population and their religion could be anti-Semitic.
“I did not want Barabbas to be any of those things,” McKenna said.
Instead, he is using the story of Barabbas as an opportunity to take religious material and treat is as something free of religion.
“It’s the story of Jesus without Jesus in it. It is a story based in the time period of the crucifixion through the eyes of someone who doesn’t understand the significance.”
There is a lot of debate around Barabbas, said McKenna. Some think he is a fictional figure put in place by writers of the Bible as an obstruction for Jesus. Sometimes
Barabbas is described as a bandit. But, McKenna said if Barabbas did exist he was most likely a rebel against the Romans, part of a Jewish uprising.
Though religion frames the story of Barabbas, McKenna doesn’t want it to scare his potential audience away.
“It’s not a religious comic, and I don’t want people to feel like they have to have read the Bible to understand it. Once Barabbas is released, the comic diverges entirely from the biblical narrative,”
McKenna said.
McKenna’s wife, Holly, is his editor. He said she helped him come up with an ending, but he doesn’t specifically plan out how to get there.
“Part of the fun for me is not scripting it out super tightly. I also think it’s good for readers of the script. I’ve never worked at something in comic form this long. I am having fun putting it together.”
McKenna uploads a new part to “Release Barabbas” three times a week and expects it will run for 40 to 50 pages.
After that, McKenna says he has many more stories to tell.