Time Traveling Pinewood Derby Car

Join me in the Wayback Machine as we visit the early days of this blog. (Back when blogs were still a thing.) During the early days of this website, I used to joke all the time about my cartooning white whale of getting the New Era to publish a Pinewood Derby gag. I submitted a half-dozen jokes before the editors finally relented and published one. (Probably because they were tired of seeing so many submitted.)

A lot has changed in the 12 years since I last published a pinewood derby gag. Hard to believe I have anything left to say about this particular Mormon* cultural relic, yet here we are.

*I figure I can say Mormon here since 12 years ago that's how we referred to ourselves.

The Very Last Pinewood Derby Post Ever (Most Likely)

Longtime readers of this blog know that last March I accomplished something that had eluded me for pretty much my entire professional cartooning career.* I published a pinewood derby gag in the New Era!

I had previously submitted enough pinewood gags to the New Era and failed to see any of them published (for examples of these failed attempts, see here, here, and here as well as the gag directly below), that having a pinewood derby gag published in the New Era became a major cartooning goal of mine.
In this month's Friend, you'll find a pinewood derby activity page of mine. This happened to be the very first pinewood derby themed submission I made to that magazine!
Think of that, after nearly a decade of rejected efforts to publish a pinewood derby piece in the New Era, I get something in the Friend in my first try. You know what that means? Next year, I'm going to try to get a pinewood derby oil paint published on the inside cover of the Ensign while I enjoy my current hot streak!

*I'm using the phrase "professional cartooning career" in the looses sense ever.

The Pinewood Derby Gag

Not to hype this up too much but in my cartooning career, I've been published in three of the four Church magazines (I'm still trying to figure out how to get the Ensign to publish a Where's Waldo type scene in the front or back cover of one of it's issues); I've had four books of mine published that have sold dozens of copies(!); and I've got this blog where handful of my closest internet friends (that's you!) check out my work twice a week and somehow manage not to post mean things. And then there is today's comic--the fruition of almost a decade's worth of effort. Yep, I'm pretty excited! Here it is...

Why the New Era published this gag while rejecting my other pinewood derby gags, I suspect, is because this comic found humor in the event from a different angle than the trite "dad made son's car." That or this comic had more mustaches than any other I've ever drawn.

At any rate, please leave your letters of congratulations in the comment section below.

Let's Talk Pinewood Derby

As I've mentioned several times on this blog, publishing a Pinewood Derby gag in the New Era would mean a great deal to me. (Why pinewood and not some other piece of Mormon culture I couldn't possibly say. This just sort of became a passion for me.)

Well, I'm proud to report that this month's New Era features a pinewood derby gag submitted by me! Rather than post that gag today, I'm going to hold off for a week and instead post one of the half dozen or so gags I've submitted in the past that the magazine passed on.

This is another variation on the idea that a cub scout's parent, and not the cub himself, built the pinewood racer. It's a well I went to often in my earlier failures and, in hindsight, it's probably too rote an idea for the New Era to even consider. (I can safely say this because I am the foremost authority on getting a pinewood derby gag published in the New Era.)

Ah, but next week, you'll see a pinewood derby gag that doesn't derive its humor from the same vein. I'm so excited to share it with you, but if I could wait eight years for this, then you can wait another week.*

*Of course, if you can't wait a week, you could always go and purchase a copy of this month's New Era--I assure you that it is going to be a collectors item!

My Neverending Quest to Get the New Era to Publish a Pinewood Derby Gag

As I mentioned during the first couple of weeks of this blog, one of my unfulfilled items on my cartooning bucket list is to see the New Era publish a pinewood derby gag submitted by me.

Here's one of the half dozen or so gags that I submitted to the New Era that they didn't purchase. It made it into my book Mormon Life, but that didn't deaden my dream. Right now I am preparing a series of gags to submit to the New Era and I'm sending in another pinewood derby one. I'll keep you posted...

Pinewood Blues (and Gold)

Several years ago I came up with an idea for a potential gag for The New Era. What if, I wondered, the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby was combined with the Blue and Gold Banquet? Hilarity would ensue--that's what would happen. So I drew a gag and submitted it.

I was disappointed when the editors passed on the gag, but I wasn't too upset because when the time came to submit more ideas several months later, I had another Pinewood Derby gag. Well, when the magazine passed on my second gag, I had found a cause. I was determined to see a Pinewood Derby gag in The New Era. For the next couple of years, every time I submitted a series of gags to The New Era, I made sure to include one Pinewood Derby gag. And every time the magazine passed on anything having to do with wooden cars carved by the fathers of primary-aged children.

Eventually, I abandoned my dream and moved on to other stuff, but I still carry a soft spot for the following gag.