Joseph Smith and the Mormons

Joseph Smith and the Mormons is Noah Van Sciver’s monument—a breathtaking 464-page full-color graphic biography that took decades to make and feels like it contains multitudes. As a cartoonist raised in the LDS Church, Van Sciver brings something rare to this towering work: the intimate knowing of an insider braided with the clear-eyed rigor of a historian. He spent years researching and drawing this book, and every page thrums with that devotion.

The Story

The story gallops from Smith’s teenage years as a treasure hunter roaming Upstate New York through the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the feverish building of Zion, the shadowy practice of plural marriage, a quixotic run for the presidency, and finally his murder by an armed mob in 1844 at just 38 years old. Visually, Van Sciver works magic: supernatural visions and angelic visitations shimmer in ghostly blue outlines, giving the miraculous a haunting, almost tactile presence, while his cross-hatched, characterful linework keeps every panel rooted in raw human emotion. You feel the struggle, the conviction, the doubt.

Critical Reception

Published by Abrams ComicArts, the book earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called it “a nuanced graphic biography” that “expertly threads the needle, allowing space for genuine belief while highlighting human moments of doubt, dissembling, and anger.” The review placed it alongside Chester Brown’s Louis Riel as “an exemplar graphic narrative” that “will resonate with both believers and skeptics.”

The Comics Journal homed in on the book’s fierce personal stakes: “Van Sciver has been adamant that this is a personal project. His ancestors were early followers of the Mormon church.” The volume’s extensive backmatter—detailed notes on Van Sciver’s research process and his own family’s tangled history with the faith—deepens the sense that you’re holding something excavated from the artist’s marrow.

“I needed to draw this book because I needed to know who Joseph Smith was,” Van Sciver told Publishers Weekly. “I inhabit things through my comics. I could read and watch movies about Joseph Smith, but if I’m reading and drawing it, I am Joseph Smith. That’s what comics are: a machine of empathy.”

Perfect for fans of Chester Brown’s Louis Riel, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and anyone hungry for graphic novels that wrestle with faith, history, and the messy complexity of belief.