Elwood, “The Glass Looker: The Collected Tales of Joseph Smith Vol.1” (Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton)

Review
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Title: The Glass Looker: The Collected Tales of Joseph Smith Vol 1
Author: Mark Elwood
Publisher: Luman Books
Genre: Historical Graphic Novel
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 150+
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-1-7378392-0-0
Price: 35.00

Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton for the Association of Mormon Letters 

As I was writing this review of Mark Elwood’s fantastic graphic novel The Glass Looker: The Collected Tales of Joseph Smith, my curiosity got the better of me.  I went to the Salt Lake City Library website and did a search for “Joseph Smith,” which produced 589 results. I did not spend much time looking into these results. Some of those 589 hits were likely duplicates. And some may have had nothing to do with the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Regardless, Joseph Smith’s story has been told MANY times. SO, it is easy to ask, “does the world really need another book (and a comic book at that!) on Joseph Smith?” In the case of The Glass Looker, the answer is a VERY LOUD YES!

I’m trying very hard to keep this sounding like a book review and not a sales pitch, but that isn’t easy because The Glass Looker blew me away. Simply put, I found it to be AMAZING in every detail. I had the luck to visit with author Mark Elwood at Sunstone, where he was kind enough to give me an early copy.  I have read it multiple times and have enjoyed every reading. Please allow  me to tell you about several of the things that I LOVED about this book. 

IT’S hard to say if I was more impressed by Elwood’s research and writing or the beauty of his art; both were excellent. I’ll start with the writing and the stories in The Glass Looker (emphasis on the “ies,” it is, after all, the COLLECTED Tales of Joseph Smith). Elwood did his homework and did it well. The Glass Looker is as thoroughly researched as any major academic biography of Joseph Smith. The stories in it incorporate many sources and hard-to-find facts. The Glass Looker may be a graphic novel, but it contains important and fascinating history. In his introduction, Elwood states:

Joseph Smith’s origin story is extraordinary! Joseph Smith was an American farm boy who became a prophet of God. Along the way, he had many adventures involving seer stones, magic circles, treasure digging, diving rods, angelic visitations, persecutors, talking toads, and demon swarms. Today, no one agrees that all of the above took place…So, I have compiled the tales that the residents of Palmyra recounted, with the contradictions, animosity, partiality, and the fog of memory that is inherent in human recollections. I have taken the words of Joseph Smith’s contemporaries …as true, while reconciling the contradictions into a cohesive narrative as best as possible. (no page number, probably ii)

Elwood did an excellent job with all of his outlined points. As told in The Glass Looker, the story of Joseph Smith’s “origin” IS extraordinary. I’m honest when I say that I could not put it down until I finished.  As I read, I was fascinated by the way that Elwood told Smith’s story.  I’m almost 50.  I grew up Mormon.  I have read most of the major Joseph Smith biographies and many of the minor ones too.  I have all of the Joseph Smith Papers books.  I’m very familiar with Joseph Smith’s story. Despite my life-long familiarity with the material, in The Glass Looker, Elwood narrates Joseph Smith’s experiences in a way that gave me a fresh perspective.  

A major point of the book’s introduction was that many of the stories that Elwood found contradicted each other. This has long been a difficulty in understanding Joseph Smith’s life, especially his early days. The tales that Smith’s former neighbors recalled about his teenage years, usually many decades after they happened, run from mildly disagreeing with each other to outright contradiction. In my view, Elwood was very successful in his goal to “reconcile the contradictions into a cohesive narrative as best as possible.” He does not wait long to tackle these contradictions. In the first story about Smith in The Glass Looker, he is a hardworking young man who is supervising a group of young men working in a cornfield. The story ends with Smith carrying their young sister home when they refuse to help her. In the next story, Smith is not known for doing physical work because of his lame leg, but he is known for being a very studious reader. A few pages later, another person recalls that Smith was “illiterate” (p 63). Some recall him as trustworthy, others as a trickster.  BUT Elwood makes all of these stories work together. Not only does his narrative flows despite the contradictions, I felt like it gave me a more complete picture of Joseph Smith’s early days and how people understood and perceived him.    

I enjoyed all of the stories in The Glass Looker, but I particularly enjoyed the tales involving Luman Walters and Sally Chase. These are individuals who are unfamiliar to most Mormons. I had heard their names and understood their basic connections to Smith, but Elwood brought them to life.  The way he depicted them, both in art and in his writing, helped me understand how they were vital to Smith’s life and story.  

I really loved Elwood’s characterization of Joseph Smith.  His blending of tales and recollections, his use of dialogue, and of course, his artistic interpretations; created for me a Joseph Smith that I could understand and empathize with. The Joseph Smith of Mormon history, at least as I was taught about him in the later twentieth century, is a correlated and mythical Joseph Smith. To me, he was something of a Mary Poppinsesque figure who was “practically perfect in every way.”  While I was supposed to look up to and even model my life after his, he was so clean and perfect that I could not relate. The young Joseph Smith of The Glass Looker is a Joseph who I can connect with, whose motivations I can understand. I want to highlight one line in particular that exemplified this for me.  

The second story in chapter one revolves around members of the Smith family joining Luman Walters to go money digging.  As they walk to their farm, Joseph and his mother Lucy discuss Joseph’s interest in treasure. Joseph states, “There has to be more to this life than working our hands raw day after day.” To which his mother replies, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” This line is important in establishing Joseph’s motives.  Both in the stories of his early life in the Glass Looker as well as in his future.  This interaction between Joseph Smith and his mother (and all of the stories) demonstrates how hard Elwood studied and worked to create this book. 

As I read this interaction, I recognized the same Joseph Smith that I have learned about in scholarly works such as Natural born Seer: Joseph Smith, American Prophet by Richard Van Wagoner (Signature Books, 2016) Van Wagoner delineates in detail the impact of poverty on Joseph Smith’s life and character.  He narrates how Smith’s attempts to liberate his family from poverty were a major motivation in his life.  He points out that almost as soon as Smith established a church, “he would establish, at least temporarily, a fragile utopian dream of communitarianism, where men ‘had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men’…” (Van Wagoner, 455).  The Joseph Smith seeking to escape and end poverty as detailed by Van Wagoner, was brought to life and made a sympathetic character by Elwood.  

The artwork in The Glass Looker is stunning. Every frame on the over 150 pages in this graphic novel is incredible, and some of the art is quite extraordinary. Some artwork in The Glass Looker is even worthy of framing and hanging. There are featured frames of art of Joseph Smith, Luman Walters, and Sally Chase in particular that are spectacular.  The presentation of the graphic novel is also excellent. The printing quality is outstanding. The colors are rich and saturated, the lines are clear and distinct, and the shadow and shading are marvelous. The paper stock used for The Glass Looker is thick and of high quality.  Its binding is strong, this is a graphic novel that was made to be read over and over and to last for a long time. 

For those that are still thinking, yeah, “The Glass Looker sounds cool, BUT it’s still just a glorified comic book!” allow me to note a few more important items for you to ponder. Each story ends with artistically depicted excerpts from the stories that Elwood used to compose it.  There are also maps of Palmyra and other important areas and charts depicting the various families and individuals involved in the stories.  At the end of the book are “Notes” with accompanying page numbers. In these Elwood provides explanations and context for the art, events, and stories in the book. The Glass Looker may be a “comic,” but it is also a scholarly depiction of the early life of Joseph Smith and an artistic masterwork that captured my full attention and kept me devouring it until I reached the last page.

In The Glass Looker: The Collected Tales of Joseph Smith Vol 1, Elwood has created a publication that is worth your investment and time. It is both educational and entertaining.  If you are interested in Joseph Smith for religious, academic, or cultural reasons, I believe that you will benefit from and enjoy reading this book. If you are into history, if you love facts and details, if you love a good comic book, then this book is for you. I cannot wait for Volume 2! 

What is the story behind these works of art? READ the Glass Looker and find out!

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The Glass Looker is an independent project by author Mark Elwood.  If you want to learn more you can view his promotional video, or visit his website where he sells copies. It may be available at Benchmark Books.