When I was a young boy I used to like bible stories and when I was quite young my parents gave me a book called ‘Picture Stories From The Bible’. It was appropriately heavy with a burgundy cover with its title in gold letters and inside it contained water colour comic strip style stories of the scriptures. God was depicted as a booming voice from heaven, angels would swoop about in the sky and occasionally descend to earth to give helpful advice or deliver messages and the stories were full of sagely old men with kind faces, white beards and flowing robes.
I read the stories over and over again, for me some of the best were David and the slaying of Goliath, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea and then, there was Samson who used his tremendous strength to defeat his enemies and perform other heroic feats such as wrestling a lion, killing an entire army with nothing more than a donkey’s jawbone, and tearing down an entire building with his bare hands.
At the time my favourite was always the story of Noah and his Ark and I can remember being slightly sceptical to read that he allegedly lived until he was nine hundred and fifty years old which even at seven years old seemed a bit farfetched to me. Adam, the first man, did nearly as well but only lived until he was nine hundred and thirty.
My favourite story about Noah now however, is not the Ark, but the fact that after the great flood he settled down and became a farmer, experimented by planting some vines and invented wine. We should all be eternally grateful to him for that!
Inside the front cover, on the copyright page it says that the book was produced in 1943 and was the work of M C Gaines and was published by Bible Pictures Incorporated Ltd of East Street, Oadby, Leicester. It turns out that this was in fact an American publication and that Maxwell Charles Gaines was a pioneering figure in the creation of the modern comic book. He was co-publisher of All-American Publications, a comic-book company that introduced fictional characters as Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Hawkman. He went on to found Educational Comics and reproductions of the classics in picture format and ‘Picture Stories from the Bible’ was a collection of individual comic style weeklies.
The Old Testament and the New Testament were sold as separate books but my volume has them both in the same book. I imagined that it might be rare and valuable but research shows that there are a lot of them for sale on ebay and other auction sites so sadly I am not going to make my fortune by selling it!
M C Gaines died in a motorboat accident on Lake Placid on 20th August 1947.
If you like Bible Stories then take a look at this:
The Miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand
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Picture Stories From The Bible
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Age of Innocence 
cool post – and glad you get to keep your book (you know – cause if it was worth lot you’d likely sell it – lol) – but interesting to know the history with it. I watched a documentary on the history of comic books (last year) but did not recall hearing about M C Gaines… but it looks like he was in fact a pioneer. and what a nice keepsake.
I used to go to this cool used bookstore where I found many inexpensive books front eh 40s, 50s, and 60s. and some of them really amaze me at how different times were – and one of my favs is an out of print book called “new every morning”
anyhow, fun post!
I am going to pass it on to my granddaughter when I am sure that she is old enough to take care of it!
Lovely posts. Make sure your little grand daughter sees your drawing too! An early lesson in minimalism ( and possibly maths!).
Thanks Gill!