Susa and the inscription of Darius I

The Palace at Susa: From the Book of Esther: Word for Word Bible Comic

The Palace at Susa: From the Book of Esther: Word for Word Bible Comic

Located in the lower Zagros Mountains in Iran, the modern town of Shush is located on the site of ancient Susa/Shushan, mentioned in the Books of Esther, Daniel, Nehemiah and Jubilees and "The Persians" a Greek tragedy from 472BC that is the oldest surviving play in the history of theatre.

Image 1: Map

Image 1: Map

In the Achaemenid period, Darius the Great commissioned a palace to be built in both Susa and Persepolis. The two palaces have a great deal of similarity, so the missing elements from excavations of Susa are hypothesised from its better-preserved sister palace. In Susa, a famous inscription written in Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite languages has been discovered upon many fragments in marble, clay and glazed tiles.

In this text Darius tells how he built the royal palace of Susa and imported products from all over his empire.   

This palace which I built at Susa, from afar its ornamentation was brought. Downward the earth was dug, until I reached rock in the earth. When the excavation had been made, then rubble was packed down, some 40 cubits in depth, another part 20 cubits in depth. On that rubble the palace was constructed. And that the earth was dug downward, and that the rubble was packed down, and that the sun-dried brick was molded, the Babylonian people performed these tasks.
The cedar timber, this was brought from a mountain named Lebanon. The Assyrian people brought it to Babylon; from Babylon the Carians and the Yaunâ [=Greeks] brought it to Susa. The yakâ-timber was brought from Gandara and from Carmania.
The gold was brought from Lydia and from Bactria, which here was wrought. The precious stone lapis lazuli and carnelian which was wrought here, this was brought from Sogdia. The precious stone turquoise, this was brought from Chorasmia, which was wrought here.
The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Yaunâ was brought. The ivory which was wrought here, was brought from Kush and from India and from Arachosia.
The stone columns which were here wrought, a village named Abirâdu, in Elam - from there were brought. The stone-cutters who wrought the stone, those were Yaunâ and Lydians.
The goldsmiths who wrought the gold, those were Medes and Egyptians. The men who wrought the wood, those were Lydians and Egyptians. The men who wrought the baked brick, those were Babylonians. The men who adorned the wall, those were Medes and Egyptians.
Darius the King says: At Susa a very excellent work was ordered, a very excellent work was brought to completion.

Translation: 
Pierre Lecoq, Les inscriptions de la Perse achéménide (1997 Paris)  

Image 2: Susa, DSf (Babylonian) ca. 520 BCE–486 BCE

Image 2: Susa, DSf (Babylonian) ca. 520 BCE–486 BCE

As you can see the empire of Darius and his successors included many peoples. In the below image, you can see the statue of Darius and then a list of 24 countries subject to Darius from the base of the 3-meter tall statue of Darius found at the Kings Gate of Susa.  

Image 3: Statue of Dar

Image 3: Statue of Dar

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Below are a few images of the floor plan of the Palace at Susa.

Image 5: Plan of Susa

Image 5: Plan of Susa

Image 6: Map of Susa, Achaemenid Palace

Image 6: Map of Susa, Achaemenid Palace

The Apadana (Great Hall) of Palace of Darius from the Word for Word Bible Comic.

The Apadana (Great Hall) of Palace of Darius from the Word for Word Bible Comic.






(Image 1 : Map :Attribution: File:Near East topographic map-blank.svgSémhur File:Elam-map-PL.svgWkotwica derivative work: Morningstar1814 Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

(Image 2: Attribution Jona Lendering
: Licence CC0 1.0 Universal)

(Image 3: Statue: Attribution: Fabien Dany - www.fabiendany.com / www.datka.kg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

(Image 4: Attribution: Davide Mauro: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)

(image 5: Map of Susa: Attribution: Jona Lendering, Licence CC0 1.0 Universal)

(Image 6: Map of Susa, Achaemenid Palace: Attribution: Jona Lendering, Licence CC0 1.0 Universal)

June Newsletter

(If you’d like to get this update as a monthly email sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bzpR9f )

Sneak peek at the Book of Esther


In this image, we look down into the Apadana (great hall) of the Palace of Susa. The columns of which stand over 70 feet tall!


Watch this YouTube video below for more information about the Apadana area, although their 3D model is not in the correct colours and more developed research has discovered they were likely this terracotta/red colour.

Video Documentary on Iranian history.
(Set to play at the point where they discuss the Apadana).

New Reddit 

If you like Reddit, you can now find us there and join the community! It will include info about us but also historical references, Bible discussion and more (like the Facebook group, but with some different stuff for Reddit fans). So join us invite your friends and get commenting, Patreon backers even get a cool badge when they comment. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/WordforWordBibleComic/
 

Patreon growing...


The Patreon has continued to grow. We are now 8th highest listing on a search for "Bible" (just 7 more patrons to get to 7th) and if we had just 3 more patrons we could be listed on the first page of a search for "comic"! 

Can you join us for just $1 a month (or more)? Even with $1 you get great two pages a month of the book in development, you are credited as a patron in the book, you are invited to the quarterly video conferencing (our second one is only a few weeks away) and it helps bump up our rating! 

We'd love you consider becoming a monthly patron of the comic and help us make it to March 2020 without a Kickstarter.

https://www.patreon.com/WordforWordBibleComic

What is Patreon? (Video explaining Patreon in general) 


Events


Big Church Day Out 

BCDO was a really great event for us, short and sweet, lots of people and a great atmosphere. I even got to see Rend Collective perform in the evening. Here's a couple of images from the rare moments I got away from the stall. I met many of you there, so welcome to the newsletter!

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The Gathering CVM

At the end of this month, I'll be in a field near Swindon with a couple of thousand blokes. This is one of my favourite events and if you'd like to come you still can, you can also help steward for a very cheap ticket. I'm going to try and get in on the sword fighting and axe throwing workshops this year. 


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Progress and Prayer

The book is complete, all the extra pages are done and the colours are done too! I am just trying to get an official offer from Zondervan to use the NIV in the USA, this is the last huddle if they agree we'll go ahead with the NIV, if not we may have to carry on with the World English for a while. Please pray that they will agree very soon or if it is not the Lord will to use the NIV, then it gets shut down clearly and quickly soon too.  


Also, please continue to pray for God's provision to meet our needs financially in order to keep progressing well with this project, and that we can continue to build his Kingdom with the work. 

If you’d like to get this update as a monthly email sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bzpR9f

HAVE YOUR SAY: Cover Design for Esther

Please have a look through these few rough cover designs and tell me which you like the best and why? Any suggestions for different elements to combine, and if you dislike any elements that shouldn’t be included.

Despite the book being 2,500 years old, I don’t really want spoilers on the cover as the idea is that people who don’t know the story will be reading it. That’s why I thought having Esther as a silhouette or not a queen would be a good option.

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APRIL: Prospects, Palace, Patreon and Progress.

This month is prospects, palace, Patreon and Progress.

Prospect and Prayer 


Tomorrow (Wednesday 3rd) I have a big meeting with a large Christian charity about the prospect of partnering up on the Word for Word Bible Comic. We are not sure how it's going to go but it has great potential! Please pray that God would come alongside us there so that we can work out a way for this to be truly beneficial to both parties and ultimately allow us to combine forces to get the Bible in the hands of more and more adults, young adults and teens! 

Please continue to pray about this over the next few weeks as it will likely take a little while to work out whatever happens. 

Palace: Sneak peek at the Book of Esther

The Palace of Darius at Susa. Below you can see a couple of archaeological floor plans of the palace too. 

Palace of Darius and Xerxes at Susa shush Shushan Word for Word bible Comic

Find a whole host of images on our Pinterest board on the Palace of Susa
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/wforwbiblecomic/susa/

In this video, you can learn all about this Palace and King Ahasuerus

View the first Esther Patreon Video as an example of what you receive at the $5+ levels.

Patreon Push!

We are over half way through our 15-day Patreon promotional drive! During the week we've had Live videos, an interview, cross-promotion with other Patreon projects and more info on the benefits for patrons!

Creating a comic page: 'Facebook-Live' recording.

Blog about why your patronage is so important


Live Hangout! 

Become a patron today and join us on this Thursday (4th) at 9pm GMT for the first Patreon exclusive hangout, it will be like a conference call using Zoom.us software. 

Why even $1/month is a great help! 

Firstly, of course, every little helps. Secondly, as a patron you are able to see some of the work before anyone else and can give valuable feedback and comments, even join the live patron hangout quarterly. Thirdly, on Patreon the search function is ranked by 'number of patrons', so your backing raises our profile and will help us be discovered by other people browsing for interesting projects to support. If we can get to 55 backers we will be one of the highest Patreons on the search "Bible" and one the first results page for "Comic". I'm quite pleased that we have passed "Drunken Bible study" on the rankings already. 

If even 2% of those on our mailing list did so we could easily reach this target. 

https://www.patreon.com/WordforWordBibleComic

List of all the benefits...

Progress

Surprisingly work on drawing the pages of Esther is nearing completion! The pie chart shows all the pages including the covers, introduction and notes which should take too long to finish.  We are now working hard to get all the pages coloured quickly to have the book printed and out to Kickstarter backers asap. 

Esther Progress apr.jpg

In trying to ensure the colouring on Esther is completed on time I have brought in a third colourist to help us out on this book...

New Colourist for The Book of Esther - Dr. Chris! 

https://talkingcomicssite.wordpress.com/

https://talkingcomicssite.wordpress.com/

I met Chris McAuley (aka Dr. Chris) through a connection at Geek Syndicate (the podcast/website/geek hub) when he reviewed The Gospel of Mark comic last year. He's been developing his colourist portfolio recently and I asked him if he'd like to help us by doing a dozen or so of the pages. Here's a summary Chris wrote about some of the stuff he's doing at the moment...

"I'm a video game designer / Programmer for Digiplay, consultant for Bioware in Edmonton and Technical specialist for Utomik (a subscription-based gaming company).  I've recently flatted for Marvel (Hulkverines, Deadpool) and 2000AD(Judge Dredd and Roy of the Rovers)  I am the chief colourist for a Scottish project called The Lang Walk Hame - which is up for an arts award and I've been helping Warner Bros with Batman: Hush." 



Upcoming Events


Swansea Comic Con 6th April

This Saturday, I will have a stand at Swansea Comic Con! It's another event I haven't done before so I'm hoping it will go well and meet lots of new people. 

Portsmouth Comic Con May 4th and 5th. 

Plymouth Comic Con May 12th

Elim Leadership Conference May 14th-15th (Harrogate) 



Big Church Day Out May 25th- 26th (West Sussex) 

WHY DO WE USE PATREON? HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE PROJECT?

In this blog I'm going to talk a bit about why we want to use Patreon to help fund the Word for Word Bible Comic. 
 
Firstly lets share our vision for the Word for Word Bible Comic, we believe that through presenting the unabridged bible in a graphic novel format will open up the word of God to those who might never have looked inside a standard bible. Our hope is that in doing this many will come to a better understanding of God’s word and therefore a more open heart.
 
Our hearts are all for this mission and we celebrate that we get to work on this project everyday however we need funds to keep the project going and there are a number of way that we can do that.
 
We manage the money we get from the Kickstarters extremely carefully, but there's no slack, for example, there's not enough money to hire in an admin person to fulfil orders or handle social media, so it comes down to us, (that’s me, the artist, and my wonderful wife and sometimes even our two young boys).
 
With regular funds through a platform like Patreon it can take some of the pressure off. A regular and reliable income means we can plan. We could hire an extra colourist to help complete new books faster. We could pay for some advertising to reach people who don’t even know these books exist yet, which in turn would lead to more sales and so the effect snowballs. We could book into more events (conferences and comic cons) and talk to people about the books face to face.
 
As an example of this, we'd love to run an advert in the handbook at UK's biggest youth and youth leaders event, but it costs £900 ($1,200) and so we just don't have the breathing space to put the investment in, even if it would lead to long-term gain. 
 
At this time the business is growing at a healthy rate. We are gradually getting more and more followers and sales through new channels that are opening up all the time, like suppliers for book shops and greater reach on platforms Amazon, Kindle and Comichaus etc.
 
We have been so blessed with the patrons and supporters we have, and we sense that we are at a tipping point where we could grow the business greatly with a little more investment here and there, which could bring exponential growth. 
 

If you have been following our posts on social media over the last week or so you will know that Patreon, in a similar way to Kickstarter, offers rewards and privileges so we hope that there is something that might interest you. Also for every Patreon who wants it, your name will be listed as a supporter in the books! 

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We are super keen for fans to become patrons even at the lowest level. Here are a few reasons that even a $1 monthly pledge can be a big help to us. Firstly, of course, every little helps. Secondly, as a patron you are able to see some of the work before anyone else and can give valuable feedback and comments, even join the patron hangout quarterly. Thirdly, on Patreon the search function is ranked by 'number of patrons', so your backing raises our profile and will help us be discovered by other people browsing for interesting projects to support. If we can get to 55 backers we will be the sixth highest Patreon on the seach "Bible" and one the first page of "Comic". I'm quite pleased that we have passed "Drunken Bible study" on the rankings already. 

If even 2% of those on our mailing list did so we could easily reach this target. 

Check out the page for all the options!

https://www.patreon.com/WordforWordBibleComic



Other ways to support 


Now I know that for a lot of people even a $1 patronage would be unviable but there are still a number of ways to support the project. 

1) Add a review to the books on Amazon and Good Reads. A massive help for ranking and customer confidence. 


https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B01LHK7LLW

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14772138.Simon_Amadeus_Pillario


2) Follow us on social media and regularly like and comment on posts to help them get more prominence. 



Facebook Page- https://www.facebook.com/wordforwordbiblecomic 
Twitter - https://twitter.com/WforWBibleComic
Pinterest - https://uk.pinterest.com/wforwbiblecomic/
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/c/wordforwordbiblecomic
Tumblr - http://wordforwordbiblecomic.tumblr.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wordforwordbiblecomic/
Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Word4WordBibleComic



3) Pray! Please do keep us in your prayers, please pray for our provision and guidance into making the comic as accurate as possible. 


March: cons, patrons and your opinions  

Sneak peek at the Book of Esther


In this image (now in colour), we can see some of the Greek troops who fight against Xerxes at Thermopylae, which features as a brief cut scene in the book of Esther. 

KICKSTARTER BACKER NOTE: All backers who are due to receive digital copies of Esther as it progresses, will be getting the first instalment sent through very soon!

thermopylae word for word bible comic

This image and the rest of the page was released to our patrons recently.


Patreon 

In order to make it to March 2020 without a Kickstarter, we need your help and so we'd love you consider becoming a monthly patron of the comic! 

Aside from supporting us, you will get access to pages before anyone, be part of the creative process from just $1 a month!
https://www.patreon.com/WordforWordBibleComic

Have your Say: What book do you want to see? 

I am currently running poll on Facebook for you to give your opinions on which book you think we should do after we've completed Esther and then done another Gospel. We'd love you to vote and to leave comments about which you think would be the best and why. 

Events


ICE Brighton

This weekend I went to the International Comic Expo in Brighton. I met an artist whose comics I've been reading for years, read about that below... 

https://wordforwordbiblecomic.squarespace.com/blog/meeting-your-heroes-glenn-fabry-artist-of-sline-and-more

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Swansea Comic Con

On the 6th of April, I will have a stand at Swansea Comic Con! It's another event I haven't done before so I'm hoping it will go well and meet lots of new people. 

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Progress and Prayer


The artwork has been progressing steadily and the colouring is coming along. Page 45, that I have just been working on, is the start if Chapter 6 in the book. 

progress Esther


Prayer 

Firstly, please pray for Ryan the colourist who has injured his wrist and is currently unable to colour. Pray he recovers well. Please also pray for Leslie, the other colourist who has applied for another day job which will hopefully have her more time to work on pages for the comic. 

Lastly, please continue to pray for God's provision to meet our needs financially in order to keep progressing well with this project, and that we can continue to build his Kingdom with the work. 

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Meeting your heroes: Glenn Fabry artist of Sláine and more.

Slaine+by+Glenn+Fabry he didn't think it too many

On Saturday I was at ICE (International Comics Expo) in Brighton. One of the guests was old school legend Glenn Fabry (cover artist for Preacher and Constantine and classic Sláine artist). I realised that one of the classic Sláine comics I had done a little homage to within my own Book of Judges was drawn by him! So later I got a chance to show him. Here hit is...

Shamgar son of Anath Word for Word Bible Comic

He liked that I’d done an homage to his wrk and he told me a funny anecdote about that short comic. He said he’d been drawing Sláine day and night so much, at the time, that he’d started dreaming about it too. When he told Pat Mills (his editor) about this he asked him what the dream was. Glenn told him the premise that it starts with a fly sat on an open eye, it pans out and there are several bodies, it pans out more and there’s a pile of them, panning across there are thousands of bodies lying in mountains, then at the end it pans onto Sláine just standing with his axe. And Pat Mill just said “great you should do it”. 

Glenn fabry Slaine mountain of bodies - he didnt think it too many.

Glenn said that he did so and was really pleased as when it came out he’d also be credited as the writer for it too. But then, at the least minute, Pat’s wife, Angie Mills, said “At the end it should say ‘He didn’t think it too many’” and as a result she got credited as the “writer”, and Glenn was like, “It was my £#€<ing dream!”. 

Here’s a picture of him with my book, he was really pleased…honest.

Glenn+Fabry+with+The+word+for+Word+bible+comic

Anyway. Great bloke and I was very pleased he let me take this picture and told me this tale :) 


You can buy a copy of the comic here :

https://wordforwordbiblecomic.squarespace.com/buy




WHAT BOOK DO YOU WANT TO SEE NEXT?

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Once I have completed Esther I plan to produce Matthew's Gospel, God willing. After that, I can tackle a new book, potentially a longish one. Two of the top contenders would be Acts or The Book of Revelation. But let's hear which Books you'd like to see?


Considerations: I will have already done Judges, Joshua, Ruth, Mark, Esther and Matthew by then, so which books may go well with them? Many key characters have been pictured already within these books and this could help the creation of the next book.


Some books are too long to fit in one volume so Genesis, for example, will likely have to come out in three volumes, Exodus or 1 Samuel in two volumes and so on. 
Use this link to see how long each book is... https://overviewbible.com/word-counts-books-of-bible/


One day I may do the prophets but this will be after I do the history book (Kings, Chronicles etc) which covered the time period they prophesy into.


You can vote on the poll on Facebook in our group. I'd love to see comments about why that would be a good option. Feel free to add suggestions to the poll.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wordforwordbiblecomiccommunity/permalink/2876104775748184/


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