In traditional Christian teachings, followers are told that the Bible should be understood as the “word of God.” Belief in this direct transmission, however, negates consideration of the Bible’s authorship. Elimination of the human intermediary positions readers of religious texts as receivers rather than conduits, minimizing the opportunity for personal interpretation and instead advancing literalist readings. Liana Finck’s Let There Be Light challenges conventions of both the comic and Biblical genres by retelling the story of Genesis as a graphic narrative. As opposed to purely textual works, the comic medium not only encourages, but requires creative involvement of the audience. Finck uses the Biblical she-demon Lilith to represent, and subsequently interrogate, the importance of reader imagination to the creation of the comic form and, by extension, to finding meaning in religious texts. By ultimately granting Lilith the power of creation, Finck subverts the relationship that typically exists between Biblical narratives and their audiences, instead permitting the reader to interpret, and therefore create, religion for themselves.

 

The comic form inherently depends on the reader as an active collaborator in its completion. As described by Scott McCloud in his work Understanding Comics, authors of comics construct narratives by placing separate images in “deliberate sequence” with one another (9). Distribution of a storyline across sequential panels, however, requires that the author fragment this storyline into distinct instants. In deciding which moments to depict, the comic author selects against the depiction of other moments, creating conceptual gaps between panels where the authorial intention cannot be witnessed and must be inferred. Therefore, when reading a comic, one experiences not the intact narrative typically presented by purely written works but a collection of “unconnected moments” from which one must recollect the “unified reality” intended by the author (McCloud 67). Readers thus complete the comic by performing “closure,” the process by which one perceives a whole from its observed, unconnected parts (McCloud 63). The blank spaces between adjacent panels, referred to as gutters, literally reflect the withdrawal of authorial direction, providing space for the reader to imagine connections between panels that are not explicitly present. Thus, in contrast to other literary forms, comics rely on the imagination of the reader to bring them into existence by creating a unified narrative.

 

Despite the importance of closure as the mechanism by which a reader participates in the synthesis of the comic narrative from its parts, Let There Be Light contains few gutters between panels, a creative decision which saturates the existing gutters with symbolic significance. In place of gutters, most pages feature a singular block of imagery divided into distinct panels by perpendicular lines. Though this lack of gutters may seem to indicate an imposition of the author on the physical space designated for audience interpretation, fragmentation of a continuous narrative across panels necessitates closure on the part of the reader regardless of whether panels adjoin. Closure, an unavoidable element of the comic form, does not depend on the existence of the gutter, as it occurs within images as well as between them. Despite this fact, the gutter retains significance as the representation of that which cannot be illustrated but must be imagined. Thus, the gutter symbolically denotes the withdrawal of authorial direction and, subsequently, the importance of the reader as a “collaborator” with the medium (65). Given the infrequency with which Finck includes gutters between panels, an examination of existing gutters provides critical insight into the relationship encouraged between Genesis and its readers.

 

Finck’s decision to insert Lilith into the space of the gutter on page 38 and to draw attention to this insertion inextricably relates Lilith to the process of closure, as the author positions her as an agent of the reader’s imaginative process. Page 38 includes two smaller, equally sized panels above a larger third panel. While the first and second panels conjoin, a thin, shaded gutter separates these first two panels from the third, bottommost panel. This shaded gutter extends to frame the perimeter of the third panel. As the panels occupy only the central portion of the page, inches of imposing blank space between the border of the panel block and the end of the page surround them on all sides. The contrast between the darker shaded frame and surrounding whiteness emphasizes the third panel against the page’s surface. As the reader progresses through the sequence, the lack of text in the third panel quells the narrative voice, generating a deliberate pause that slows the pace to create a breathless moment of standstill. This sense of suspension, in conjunction with the starkness of the framing and the panel’s large size, highlights the panel as worthy of select attention. From the top right corner of the frame, Lilith’s arm extends to meet the woman’s hand, which reaches upwards from the bottom left. Finck shades the figures of both Lilith and the woman to exactly match the darkness of the gutter. Though the lines of the woman’s body overlap rather than merging with the frame, Lilith’s arm disappears into a collection of leaves that obscure the top corner of the panel. In this way, Finck depicts Lilith as one with the gutter and, therefore, the frame, reaching out from the space between panels. Because Lilith not only projects from but also becomes the gutter, the interpretive space reserved for the reader in the absence of the writer, one can view her action in this moment as an extension of the imaginative process that occurs in the mind of the audience.

 

Lilith closes the gaps between God and her people, illuminating God’s unknown intention in a way that further associates her with the process of closure. The third panel on page 38 illustrates the portion of the Genesis narrative wherein the serpent impels the women to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the image, Lilith passes the fruit, depicted here as a bright red apple, to the woman, urging her to “take it” (Finck 38). Upon eating the apple, the woman, in keeping with the traditional narrative, becomes knowledgeable. Like the process of closure, which defines for the individual reader what the author has left undefined, the passing of the apple to the woman illuminates for her what God has previously obscured. This parallel corroborates the association established by Finck’s portrayal of Lilith in the gutter to further compare Lilith’s function as instigator in the text to the role of the reader as a participant in the creation of the comic. Working in tandem with their respective rulers (God in the case of Lilith and Finck in the case of the reader,) both Lilith and the reader are mechanistic in advancing the plot and reducing the disparity between what is known and what is unknown. In two other instances, Lilith makes humanity aware of the realities of their God. Following the loss of Abraham’s faith, Lilith brings his soul to see God, instructing that, while God can only be “glimpsed indirectly” by man, she can be seen by the “soul” (187). This reconciliation with God emulates the process of closure by which the imagination allows for “indirect glimpses” of an unknown purpose that the reader cannot view directly. Lilith’s role as facilitator of this reconciliation thus reinforces her as a medium of the reader’s imaginative process. Lilith leads Abraham’s soul to the conclusion that “God is a girl” (187). Similarly, in response to the treatment of Noah’s nameless wife by her husband, Lilith informs her that “God is a woman” (85). In these instances, Lilith makes the humans aware of God’s true nature by revealing to them that God is female. Therefore, by closing the gap between the people and God, Lilith performs an act of closure in a secondary sense.

 

By anthropomorphizing the process of closure in the form of the she-demon Lilith, who brings awareness to that which God obscures, Finck draws parallels between Godliness and authorship, further equating the phenomenon of closure with belief in God. As the comic author constructs an incomplete narrative, so too does God, and the human imagination must then elucidate what is not particularized. In his discussion of closure, McCloud argues that the generation of thematic narrative from individual moments occurs despite the fact that “nothing is seen between the two panels” because “experience tells you that something must be there” (67). Religious faith is similarly predicated upon the belief that, though “nothing is seen” directly, experience of God in indirect ways informs the conclusion that “something” exists beyond oneself. In this sense, belief in God, because it requires imagination of a concept one sees, not directly, but in pieces, is an act of closure, an “act of faith based on mere fragments” (McCloud 62). Thus, by reinventing the creation story in a comic form, Finck not only offers a non-traditional recapitulation of the Biblical narrative but also uses the medium itself to equate belief in God with the reader’s performance of closure when reading a comic. 

 

By legitimizing Lilith, a representation of the reader’s imaginative process, Finck, as a creator, suggests that interpretation is sufficient for creation, further encouraging the reader to create God in their own image. Page 325 of Let there Be Light, similarly to page 13, characterizes Lilith as a God-like creator. Page 13, which describes God’s creation of man and Lilith from the soil, presents a gutterless block of six, evenly sized panels positioned across three rows. Whereas panel three shows God’s full body, knelt on the ground with a single arm outstretched, panels four and five narrow directly to her hands as they collect and compile dirt. This lens widens in the final panel to show God’s face and hands. This drastic variation in magnification across the panels, which collectively render a brief moment in time, is replicated almost exactly on page 325. Page 325, the final page, similarly breaks the narrative across six conjoined panels of equal size. Each of the six panels depict Lilith as she scoops a mound of dirt from the ground. As the sequence of panels progresses, the scope of the frame narrows from her whole body to her hands before broadening to her face and hands to show her wonder, an expansion of perspective that is almost perfectly replicated on page 13. Interestingly, while page 13 contains textual narration, page 325 is silent, evoking a sense of reminiscence. Careful examination of the pages side by side, however, reveals that the textual narration of the panels on page 13 applies directly to the panels on page 325 such that the words from page 13 could feasibly overlay the images from page 325. For example, the fifth panel on page 13 reads “she combined them into a big pile,” an explanation that also aptly describes the fifth panel on page 325. By paralleling God’s creation of humanity from the soil with a scene in which Lilith grabs a mound of dirt, Finck substitutes Lilith in place of God. Thus, Finck further suggests that Lilith, like God, has the power to create. More broadly, by attributing the power of creation to Lilith, a representation of the imaginative process of closure, the book concludes that imagination can create. The phenomenon of closure emphasizes the importance of the reader such that the comic form retains no meaning in their absence. Thus, Finck validates closure as a means of creation, returning agency to the reader and encouraging them to imagine God for themselves. Let There Be Light therefore motivates its readers to reshape or reinterpret God from their own experiences. Imagination, the work argues, is a legitimate means of engaging with Biblical narratives.

 

By retelling Genesis as a comic, a uniquely interactive and interpretive medium, Finck suggests that fundamental texts should be told and retold from the myriad perspectives of those who interpret them. Interestingly, though Lilith typically exists in the Biblical text as a primordial demon, the characterization of Lilith as representative of the reader’s imaginative process mediates the conveyance of this ultimate message. Thus, Finck’s treatment of the narrative, which positions Lilith as uniquely agentic and creative, critiques both the erasure of women from discussions of religious texts and the systemic devaluing of women’s art. By legitimizing Lilith as a creator in the book’s final pages, Finck validates not just the right of the reader to create a God in their image but, more specifically, the right of female readers, who are traditionally neglected by representations of God, to do the same.