If you’re getting Jewniverse emails (and why would you not? The coolest thing ever, every day, 
delivered straight to you? Go sign up right the heck now) then you know about JT Waldman’s amazing comic book megiallah — just like a real megillah, in English and Hebrew, with amazing calligraphy and pretty pictures.
But we didn’t tell you about this hot-off-the-presses adaptation of the Purim story,
Throne of Secrets
. It’s a comic-book adaptation of the Purim story, and while it follows the general story of the megillah, it doesn’t hold back from providing its own commentary on the Purim story. King Achashverosh is painted as even more lecherous than the usual, stabbing his soldiers when they displease him, and a straight-up sadistic humor. Esther is bashful and demure, her grandfather (grandfather!?) Yair is old, but sagely, and Mordechai is — well, not the civil, cultured Mordechai we’re used to reading about:
There are many changes to the story. Some are expected; others are radical. The art is dynamic and punch-packing, such as Mordechai’s action scenes (he’s later incarcerated in a prison) and Esther’s time training to be a devoted queen. (Some of the art for later volumes depicts Esther in a sheer bellydancing outfit wearing little more than a bikini, which sounds up my father alert — but you also see her looking pretty bad@$$ with a sword, so I’m willing to reserve judgment for now.)
Throne of Secrets is planned as a three-volume series — the first volume is freshly out on Amazon — and THEN there’s going to be a movie version. The film is already in production, by the sound of it:
What do you think — should we stick to the classics? Or is this take on Esther and Mordechai’s story just what the holiday needs?
Purim
Pronounced: PUR-im, the Feast of Lots, Origin: Hebrew, a joyous holiday that recounts the saving of the Jews from a threatened massacre during the Persian period.
