Lose the Accent

Sometimes to entertain ourselves, my companions and I used to speak Slovene with an exaggerated Utahn accent (what can I say, we were missionaries, entertainment was hard to come by). Sadly, our exaggerated accents probably didn't sound much different than the accents native Slovenians heard from us.

I can say this confidently because today's strip is nearly word for word based on an experience I had during the first couple of weeks in Slovenia.

Free Agency

Not much to add here except that I had a lot of fun drawing the big athletes sitting in the little chairs.

On Sister Missionaries, Their Hair, and Bike Helmets

I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be a Sister Missionary in a bike area.

Ward Ball Prayer

Last year to honor the NCAA men's basketball tournament, I published a comic a week for three weeks that dealt with basketball, either directly or indirectly. This year I'm continuing the tradition and promise to continue it every year until my alma mater wins another game in the tournament (I'm glad, I didn't start this blog 17 years ago and I really hope BYU wins later this morning).

Today's strip is one that I submitted to the New Era several years ago and was not at all surprised when they passed on it. It ultimately appeared in Mormon Life, but I like it so much I thought I'd reprint it here.

Amish?

We got this a lot on my mission. The story goes that the Yugoslavian television station when dubbing Witness replaced Amish with Mormons in their subtitles years prior to my mission.

Early Morning Seminary

Here's a comic that appeared in this month's New Era. Prior to submitting it, I did a YouTube search for "early morning seminary", I wanted to make sure that the gag was at least truthful. Especially, after I submitted another gag earlier only to find out that that what I thought was an exaggeration was, in fact, exactly what was happening.

More Sci Fi Geekiness

Last week's strip touched on Star Wars, this week's covers both Star Wars and Star Trek. When I created my alter-ego Elder Van Dyke, I removed from him any of my embarrassing geekiness. He doesn't collect comic books, he doesn't know a Klingon from a Cardassian, he doesn't even follow Star Wars. Still, my geeky side can't help but sneak into some of my work from time to time.

Boy Scout Colors

Yep, it's another Boy Scout joke.

The Gospel According to Lucas

When I was in the MTC, about the only piece of instruction I remember from my Branch Presidency was that they would not tolerate any Sacrament Meeting talks referring to Star Wars.

Of course, this was before the prequels or even the special editions of the original trilogy; so no one at the time had heard about Jar Jar Binks, Han Solo still shot first, and constructing a lesson centered around the teachings of Yoda was a lot more appealing.