TOKYO — The Archbishop of Canterbury is not generally known for making comic book recommendations, but Rowan Williams, the current holder of that office, has been quoted as calling The Manga Bible "an exciting new venture, in completely up-to-the-minute style and speech. It will convey the shock and freshness of the Bible in a new way."

"The Manga Bible" (Doubleday, $12.95), by a British artist named Siku, is one of several Christian scriptural-themed works to appear in manga format recently. It condenses everything from Genesis to Revelation into one action-packed volume.

"Manga Messiah" (Tyndale, $12.99), written by Hidenori Kumai with art by Kozumi Shinozawa, is also a single volume, but it sticks to the life of Jesus. The right-wing Christian activist organization Focus on the Family endorses this book on its Web site, calling it "an edgy rendition of the Gospel accounts (that is) both compelling and highly engaging."

A third work, "Manga Bible" (Zondervan, five volumes and counting, $6.99 each), has its origins in South Korea. Written by Young Shin Lee with art by Jung Sun Hwang, it aims to be much more comprehensive, covering almost all the major biblical events and plenty of minor ones, too. In contrast to the religious raves from Canterbury, England, and Colorado Springs, Colo. (where Focus on the Family is headquartered), the books' reception on the artistic front has been lukewarm.

"I think the whole concept is really strange, since Japan is such a secular country," Notre Dame University Prof. Deborah Shamoon, a specialist in Japanese popular culture, told The Yomiuri Shimbun in an e-mail, noting that at least two of the books originated outside Japan.

"But I don't think these are aimed at a Japanese audience — they are aimed at U.S. teens who are manga fans. ... Christian publishing has become a huge industry in the U.S., so I'm not surprised the current popularity of manga in the U.S. has been reflected there as well."

Roald Lidal, general director of New Life League, Japan, where the Manga Messiah project began, said: "We have seen how Japanese manga has conquered the world market, and we wanted to produce a series of books that tell the story of the Bible. While Japanese artists produced the artwork and the text was first written in Japanese, we decided to publish the English version first. While we want to see as wide a distribution in Japan as possible, our goal was and is the whole world."

According to Lidal, there are 760,000 copies of Manga Messiah in print in six languages. .

Critic Jason Thompson, author of "Manga: The Complete Guide" (Del Rey, $19.95), said in an e-mail that Manga Messiah "has better narrative flow (than Siku's 'Manga Bible'), and I think it's the more engaging of the two adaptations. (However,) 'Manga Messiah' is fairly bland, despite, or because of, including practically every one of Jesus' recorded acts. "