I admit I'm a nerd -- readers to my blog will hardly be surprised. So I was excited when I read that Plough Publishing was giving the world the gift of this book. With the spate of publishing that has coincided with that 500th anniversary, I suppose it's only right that we have a graphic biography of Luther's life. I expected some of the highest quality from Plough, and I wasn't disappointed with this book.
What readers will find here is nothing short of a fresh, new and powerful telling of Luther's life story, complete with lots of the dialogue taken from Luther's own writing.
The dark colors of the panels only lend to growing an appreciation for the rough world into which Luther was born and in which he struggled with his terrified conscience to finally come to an understanding of his salvation, not as a matter of his own work but of God's work in Jesus Christ. The artwork here will give a liveliness to a story that even theologians think they know so well.
There are some gaps in the narrative of that story, to be sure, but Renegade was never meant to be an exhaustive biography. But what it does do it does with the grace that fills Luther's life.
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I received a free copy of this book from Plough Publishing in exchange for my honest review here.