Apparently the Catholilc Church found these fairly acceptable because I have only found Catholic Bible comics that have been published recently, 2018. It is not that Catholics have not produced comics, we have actually produced a lot, particularly back in the nineteen fourties, fifties, and sixties. But the Church in the past has seemingly been happy to let the Protestants do the Bible.
This means that the deuterocanonical books, that the Protestants call the apocrypha, have not to the best of my knowledge been put in comic book form. This is an obvious thing for a Catholic publisher to do.
Let me note that comic book Bibles are almost always not Bibles. They are collections of Bible stories. They leave a lot out. This is done to save space but also to make the material more appropriate for their target audience, children. Children's picture Bibles do the same thing. Picture Bibles are sometimes called Bible story books to make it clear that they are a collection of stories taken from the Bible. Comic book Bibles are also Bible story books.
Children's picture Bibles are great and there are many of them, some of them I believe are Catholic. As long as you can keep your children interested in them that is good. Exploit their interest in picture Bibles as long as you can. But when they began to resist picture bibles as too babyish, comics with word ballons can provide an easy transition until they are ready for an easy reading text Bible. Because of the way our culture developed word ballons make picture books cool, it does not make sense, but we make use of what we are given.
Comics provide a great transition between picture books and text. This site provides direction to other comics resources.
This site also has a page on Comics by and for Catholics and long form sophisticated comics called graphic novels which support the Christian faith I also have an index page on comics for Catholics, a page on how to convince your public library to include religious comics and other media in the collection, and two successful letters which got ten comic book Bibles in public library branches.
I have not read all of it yet, but so far I have found little to object too. Like all the other Comic Book Bibles put out by the Protestants it does not include the deuterocanonical books. However, it does suggest that miracles in what the Protestants call the Intertestimental period are authentic.
So far it seems to be a rather Catholic friendly Protestant Bible.
The Action Bible is about 832 pages long and relatively inexpensive at $16 for the hard cover on Amazon.
You can evaluate The Action Bible on Amazon. You can view the first 23 pages of the book for free. It is likely to be in your public library but you may have to wait.
Here is the link to The Action Bible on Amazon.
Still for what it is worth here is the link to The Picture Bible on Amazon.
As a Catholic I found little to object to in The Picture Bible. It does have one page which deals with what they call the intertestamental period. 1st and 2nd Maccabees, which are part of the Catholic Bible, are in this intertestamental period. So this implies that 1st and 2nd Maccabees are not part of the Bible. The fact that the other deuterocanonical books are not included might imply the same thing. But as this is for children who probably would not notice this. Most Catholic parents would probably see this as only a slight problem.
People have objected because The Picture Bible includes a couple of very short pious tales about Abraham that are not in the scripture. These are a bit aggravating, but the message is usually something uncontroversial like trust God. The Picture Bible originally came out in installments. I suspect they got complaints. In the rest of the book they stuck closely to the actual text of the Bible.
It was also pointed out to me in my guest book that the Picture Bible gives the ten commandments in their Protestant form, combining the two covet commandments. Same commandments just a little different numbering system.
As The Picture Bible has been such a big success it is not surprising that it comes in many different formats which you can find at Amazon, and that are frequently available at Bible bookstores. It is 800 pages long, the pages are in color and a little smaller than a normal comic. The price on Amazon is currently $12.50. This is an amazingly cheap price per page. Comics these days are averaging about twenty cents a page the Picture Bible in its cheaper forms is less than two cents per page.
In the past The Action Bible and The Picture Bible were the most successful comic book Bibles. They had two virtues, they were longer and they were inexpensive per page. The Kingstone Bible Trilogy in inexpensive per page and is much longer. So far it has not taken over as the most successful, but it has the virtues of the previous champions.
Heroes of the Bible was done by Evangelical Protestants and goes out of its way to say that Mary had other children and interprets the feast of Canna as a conflict between Jesus and Mary. There are two objectionable pages out of about 400. For home and church use you could simply felt tip over a few words.
Heroes of the Bible is not aimed at children, and Catholic parents who are trying to reach children would have little reason to choose it over The Action Bible or Iva Hoth's The Picture Bible.
The style of Heroes of the Bible does appeal to older teenage boys and young adults. In my local public library Heroes of the Bible is very successful in the young adult, read teen, section. The Picture Bible was not so successful in the young adult section, but was very successful in the children's section. It could be argued that Catholic teens are able to understand that other churches believe different things about the Virgin Mary.
We can complain about how other churches treat our theology, but it does bring us back to the point of why we have not produced our own comic book Bible. After all, half the world's Christians are Catholic, but the Protestant minority has produced many comic book Bibles while we have produced none. We prefer to use theirs and produce comics on the Saints and other specifically Catholic topics.
Heroes of the Bible retails new at Amazon for 10 to 11 dollars and is about 400 pages long in full color. The pages are a little smaller than an ordinary comic. It is not quite as cheap per page as The Picture Bible but it is much cheaper than most other comics secular or religious.
Finally let me add that this is the only comic book Bible that I have read all the way through. I have tried to read others, but I lose interest. I also let a teenage boy read it, he sat down and devoured it cover to cover.
I bought the Manga Messiah. The Manga Messiah is 288 pages long and has a recommended retail price of thirteen dollars.
While Heroes of the Bible may be oriented toward the male teen, this is perhaps slanted toward the female teen. Manga and anime are particularly popular with teenage girls. I polled a number of children at church and they liked this style of drawing.
I have read about 75 pages of the 288 so let me provide a preliminary report. The traditions of Manga at times provide a vibe that is a bit different from what we might normally expect with a Bible story. Mary is shown as a really cute, chipper teen. She is a lot like a typical anime good girl. Joseph is a cute teen also.
Also in line with Manga traditions people have a wide range of emotions. When they get excited a picture is shown that does not look much like the character, just a face screaming.
While some may object to these manga conventions, the more evangelical Catholics will probably accept these things because the Manga style is very popular with many young people and this might well be read where other Bibles, even other comic book Bibles will not.
What follows is some short notes on Comic Bibles I have not bought.
There are various other comic books that cover part of the Bible, perhaps I will get to some of them at a future date.
If you want more Christian entertainment for yourself, your family, or even your community, I have a couple of web pages on religious movies: a list of religious movies nominated for major Oscars and tips on getting libraries to include Catholic movies in their video collections.
I also have a page on Christian and Catholic video that is free with Amazon Prime. For families I would particularly recommend ""The Miracle Maker" and ""Testament: The Animated Bible." But there is a lot more that you can check out.
Page last updated November 4, 2019
Successful letters that got religious comics into libraries.
Religious movies nominated for Oscars
Catholic movies and TV shows free with Amazon Prime
Convincing librarians to include Catholic books into public libraries.
Getting Catholic movies into libraries