It’s been five hundred years since Martin Luther changed the world by hammering his ninety-five Theses to the doors of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, in Saxony. Those events split the Roman Catholic Church into two and started a reformation which still has an impact on our lives today.
On this anniversary of those events, there’s been a lot of reflection on Luther’s radical actions, including a slew of new biographies and even a new graphic novel called Renegade: Martin Luther.
Renegade is an intriguing book. It’s respectful but not blindly so. It brings the reader closer to understanding and identifying with the man while using an art style that distances the reader. It attempts to set the man in the context of his times while often presenting those times as just slightly out of reach. It also presents a portrait of a man with significant personality flaws and quirks.
Written by Dacia Palmerino with painted art by Andrea Ciponte, Renegade begins with oppression and ends with revolution. Palmerino and Ciponte create a world in the late 1400s in which the Catholic church is rampant with superstitious events like witch-burning. Oppression reigns. Young Luther is a steadfast and religious boy, called to the priesthood but shaken by the terrible human horrors of the Black Plague. It’s in these early sections of the book that Palmerino and Ciponte present their strongest work, allowing the reader to get inside the head of this complicated man and presenting him as thoughtful and comprehensible by modern minds.
As they move towards the middle of the book, the creators shift to a discussion of Luther’s doubts about the teachings of the church. For instance, when viewing relics, he wonders why they should be revered above prayer.
Maybe the book’s strongest moment comes during Luther’s long, quiet stay at Wartburg Castle in 1521. At that time Luther was declared a heretic and removed from the church. He was refused food, drink and human contact. The ecstatic vision of the Devil that Luther sees during that time helps him to understand the power of his thought and leads to the vision of his history-changing Theses.
From there, the book loses a good amount of its focus because it seems to want to have things two ways. On one hand, Palmerino and Ciponte want to show the revolution that Luther’s thoughts inspired, showing his wider impact on the world. On the other, they want to show the impact on Luther’s own life. In focusing too broadly, they satisfy neither itch. That means the book falters even when it should soar the most.
In fact, that unevenness plagues this book for me. Ciponte’s painted art is lovely and thoughtful at times, but sometimes distances the reader from the story’s events with burry faces and vague settings. The scenes at Wartburg Castle are wonderful, an explosion of color and impact, but scenes of German revolution are underplayed. In fact, there seems to be a number of places where the art is intended to make an allusion to a historical event but little context is included for those who don’t know Luther’s story well. Dialogue is stiff at times, most likely because of the translation, but events are also compressed and relationships don’t receive the attention they deserve. For instance it’s never clear why Luther marries his wife or how close they are throughout his travails.
Even with my complaints, this is a fascinating look at the life of Martin Luther. It appears to be the first graphic novel published by Plough Publishing, an international collective community dedicated to following Jesus together. Maybe their next book could be a profile of that fascinating-sounding community.
Hi Jason. Love the site and am always interested in anything you review, but I can’t read a review of any modern work on Luther without wondering: does it touch on his rabid anti-semitism? Because no honest book dealing with him should leave out the terrifying influence he had on Germany — and Christianity’s — relationship with the Jews.
Hi Jeremy, yes, the book does touch on Luther’s anti-Semitism, but only briefly and only in sort of a tangential way. In the final few pages, the creators show the bloody wars and reign of terror that Germany experienced due to Luther’s influence, but the book focuses more on Luther’s declining health than on the anti-Semitism.
I would have liked to read much more about that. Frankly, as a Jew, that segment of the book bothered me more than any other, and the pogroms scared me worse than any horror novel I’ve read.
But in the end, though I was deeply frustrated by the lack of depth in that area, I felt obligated as a reviewer to comment on the book in front of me rather than the book I wanted to read. I had to review the book as presented and hope to find another realistic portrayal of Luther’s complex influence on the world.
Hi Jason — I couldn’t imagine the book didn’t at least touch on the subject: any recent work regarding Luther that didn’t would have to be deeply dishonest and — frankly — despicable. I remember being drawn to the man when I first read about him, partly because his initial relationship with Judaism seemed remarkably forward thinking, even enlightened, for his time. But there just doesn’t seem to be any defending later Luther, and the very first question that pops into my mind when the man’s name comes up is: given what he became, how does Lutheranism still exist as a living church when its namesake ended up becoming such an outright horror. Don’t get me wrong: I definitely think there’s a graphic novel in the guy, but as a reader reading your review, the thing I most need to know about any book on Luther is exactly where its creators are coming from, and who their book is for. For instance, you might expect one written by Lutherans and aimed at children to leave out his having written a book called On The Jews And Their Lies; it wouldn’t be okay, but you might expect it, even as you discounted it as not just worthless but deliberately and disgustingly misleading.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I understand why a reviewer who is Jewish might tiptoe around the subject so as not to appear partisan or unfairly political, but Luther’s antisemitism is integral. As a book that doesn’t broach it is not a Luther book someone seriously interested in this figure can trust, a review of a Luther book that doesn’t at least mention Judaism leaves a prospective purchaser in the dark about just what kind of Luther book is being discussed. Much of your reply to my query really should be part of the main review in order for it to be helpful.
By the way, I was in contact with you before about certain of your articles on what I think of as auterism in mainstream comics of the late sixties, seventies and eighties, and the effect of the counterculture on factory funny books. I keep hoping I’m going to see a book from you that treats people like Don McGregor, Doug Moench and Steve Gerber in the way Cahiers Du Cinema dealt with maverick directors whose personalities were strong enough to imprint thsemselves despite the limitations imposed by studio assembly line practices. With a few exceptions (like Russel’s Killraven, Smith’s Conan, and Thorne’s Red Sonja), I was never really interested in Marvel Comics of the seventies, but the idea that there was a time at Marvel when so much material was being produced under so little editorial oversight or interest that things like McGregor’s Black Panther cold happen — and lead to things like his later Sabre — is utterly fascinating to me.