Josh and Caleb Chapter 6: Judgment Episode 01

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Director's Commentary: Love the colouring across the board here, but I hate the line art in the first image. Much happier with the second strip. By this point, I'd settled on a design for Moses, just in time to never draw him again. I really like the clean approach I took here. Again, much of the dialogue is taken from Eugene Peterson's The Message.

Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 07

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Director's Commentary: Sorry about the lack of update yesterday - Blogger's dashboard was down, so I couldn't update.
And here we come to the doubling of episodes. There are two of the original episodes on this page. At this point in the series, I made the decision to change the orientation of the strips to reflect the design of the original Gotthammer site. This ensured people didn't have to scroll to see the episode art. Sadly, it doesn't work so well for Blogger, but c'est la vie. You can just click on the images to see the art in all its full-sized glory, or lack thereof.
I was reading On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem when I was writing these strips, which is why I chose the Shekinah as the manifestation of YHWH in these episodes. Moses' speech is a paraphrase of a section of Scholem's book.
While I'm not thrilled that Moses is changing his look yet again (different eyes from last page), I like everything else about these strips. I really like the second episode as Igal picks up Josh's sword, with ill intent in his eyes. Very happy with the reflection of the flames in the sword.
The lines spoken by the Shekinah are from Eugene Peterson's dynamic translation of the Bible, The Message.

Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 06

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Director's Commentary: I hate how I kept changing Moses's look. On this page, he's clearly Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. I should have had him say "Takin' it to the streets" or "Yah mo be there" at some point. I also didn't make Caleb's line clear enough to be a joke - they're in a burning ring of fire - get it? As to why Josh is injured, who knows? After all, the rock hit him in the head. Maybe somebody stepped on him. It's a gong show on this page, folks.

Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 05

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Director's Commentary: I love this page. There isn't a thing I'd change about it, short of having had hours instead of one hour to do the line art. One of the ongoing challenges of making Josh and Caleb was always time. Sequential art is a big time investment.

Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 04

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Director's Commentary: While I'm not thrilled with my line art on this page, the coloring and "post-production" elements are among my favorites in the series. My coloring for the Ark of the Covenant led me to throw out the line art in that panel entirely, except for the bottom of the curtains. For those unfamiliar with Jewish theology, the curtain separated the people from the Holy of Holies - here we see it blowing back, and the glory of God coming down like a pillar of white fire, in response to Caleb's call.

Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 03

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Director's commentary: The wheels fell off in April, as they always do. It gets so busy, even just updating a pre-made post is too much! My apologies to everyone who was faithfully following along with Josh and Caleb for this "re-release."
I'm feeling pretty reticent about posting the rest, given recent events in the world. Osama bin Laden's death has reminded me yet again about religious violence. Ultimately, I've decided to continue with the repostings, mainly because Josh's attitude comes to mirror Sun Tzu's in The Art of War: "Treat your victory as a funeral." In other words, don't be gleeful at the death of your enemy. It's been sobering, looking at these comics with hindsight, and the eyes of a post-evangelical. Hopefully this commentary adds to the conversation in a real-world way.