Council in Heaven Chair Setup

By my count, this is the fifth gag I've published dealing with the putting up or taking down of metal chairs.  My friend and fellow ward cartoonist, Kevin Beckstrom might be the go-to cartoonist when it comes to harried mission presidents or Latter-day Saint themed zombies, but apparently I can claim comics on cultural hall chairs.*

*And pinewood derbies (for all the good that is anymore). 

Raiders of the Lost Conversation

This might be my favorite Mission Daze comic strip I've ever drawn. I love the fact that the three characters are having three separate conversations. In my mind, this was the closest I've ever come to approaching the genius of Richard Thompson and his brilliant comic strip Cul de Sac--the best comic strip since Calvin and Hobbes.* Sadly, Thompson died in 2016 due to complications with Parkinson's disease. 

Cul de Sac only ran from 2007 to 2012--when Thompson had to retire the strip due to his Parkinson's diagnosis. But like Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side, it packed a lot of great humor in a short amount of time. In a fairer world, Cul de Sac would be generally recognized as one of the all-time greats.

*Thompson's strip focused primarily on children and he really was able to capture their weird internal logic better than almost anyone. Because children see themselves as the center of the universe, Thompson would constantly draw children talking over each other carrying on conversations only with themselves. He did a series of strips with a group of preschoolers at a long table carrying on their own conversations that were so funny. Sadly, I can't find any of them on the web right now. Instead enjoy this strip which gives you a sense of his genius.

Ward Newsletter

Just think of what a good old fashion muckraker could do with a ward newsletter editor calling. He could blow the lid on the great nursery snack scandal! He could get to the bottom of that stuff on the bottom shelf of the kitchen fridge. He could write a three-part expose on whether or not the air conditioning controls in the classrooms actually do anything.

Come to think of it, I think I know what I want my next call to be...

Missionary Shots

When I drew this one years ago, I had no idea it might be construed as a political statement at some point. What a world we live in...

I'll Eat What You Want Me to Eat

There's a reason that hymn doesn't come with a fourth verse.

Dealing with a Dear John

Sure getting dumped by a girlfriend can be tough for a missionary, but won't anyone think of the companions?

2022 Summer Movie Preview

You want to talk strange and peculiar, how about the proliferation of superhero movies. In 2009, the year I started this site, there were a total of two mainstream superhero movies released in theaters.* In 2022, there will be nine!** 

Clearly, superheroes rule pop culture. Of the top ten grossing movies of all time, four are superhero movies (five if you count Fast and Furious 7).***

So superheroes are currently riding high, but I wonder how much longer will that continue to be the case? At some point we are going to tire of them, right? Then again, the genre somehow survived The New Mutants and Wonder Woman 1984--a movie so bad it retroactively affected my opinion of Wonder Woman (a movie I genuinely loved).****

Perhaps superhero films will prove to be as impervious to injury as superheroes themselves.

*2009 was a bleak year for superhero fans with a choice between X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Watchmen.

**Here are your superhero movies for the current year: The Batman, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Morbius, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Adam, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

***Six if you count Titanic's iceberg as superhero for sparing us any more Jack and Rose drama.

****My theory on Wonder Woman 1984: the filmmakers got confused and instead of making a movie that purportedly took place in 1984, they tried to make the movie as if it had been written and filmed in 1984!