Comics Drawn at Church

Princess Sparkley's Comics

by B

Here are three more Princess Sparkley's creations.

First is "Let It Snow, Or Maybe Not." In the first panel, the girl is observing that there is "no snow." In the second panel, she issues the command, "Snow go!" In the third panel, no snow falls. In the fourth panel, in disappointment she says, "Aw." In the fifth panel, she commands more emphatically, "Snow GO!!!" In the sixth panel, she is dismayed that there "still" is no snow. In the seventh panel she again commands, "Let it snow," but in the eighth panel she tries politely asking, "please." In the ninth panel, snow gently begins to fall. In the tenth panel, the girl tries to up the snowfall by again commanding, "Let it snow." In the eleventh panel, a giant snowball falls on the girl. In the twelfth panel, just her hat is sticking out, next to a mountain of snow. In the thirteenth panel, she says, "Or maybe not," and then in the fourteenth panel, she calls, "Help!"

Up next is "Pizza." First, a "guy with stand-up hair" (which I assume is something very different from "a stand-up guy") is laughing and putting something on the pizza. In the second panel, the guy zips from the room as the mom calls, "Pizza for dinner." The guy warns ominously, "Don't bake pizza." The mom asks, "Why?" In the fifth panel, the mom calls, "Here is pizza." In the sixth panel, despite his knowledge of the doctored pizza, the guy with stand-up hair nibbles a piece. Finally, he gets X-eyes. (In explaining this comic to me tonight, Princess Sparkley backed away from her obvious original intention of having the guy with stand-up hair die, as indicated by the word "Die" next to his corpse. Perhaps she felt the moral of the cautionary tale was too heavy-handed, or perhaps she has doctored my food and is trying to ease her conscience by lessening the imagined repercussions. We'll never know.)

Lastly we have a more-recent effort, "Super Twins." This comic can get by with less explanation. In the fourth panel the girl in bed is one of the Super Twins (Ruby, specifically), hearing someone else cry for help. In the eighth panel, the bad guy is saying, "Ha ha!" while a girl cries out, "I am shrinking!" In the tenth panel, Ruby is walking the shrunken girl to the grower, which does its work over the next two panels. Finally, the girl asks the unanswered question, "How can I ever thank you?" How indeed, rebigulated girl. How indeed.

Comis

by B

Sometimes my church comics are single-panel affairs, like Family Circus, only funny.

My son Buddy decided to make Mittens holed up in a cave, and Sparks sitting on top, roasting a marshmallow over an open fire, using his tail to hold his skewer.

A Clarice Bean inspired effort. (Proof of its humor is found in Princess Sparkley's annotation, "He he!"

Okay, so maybe I was wrong to call out Family Circus. But I think we can all agree that my comics are funnier than those in the New Yorker.

The Family That Doesn't Pay Attention in Church Stays Together

by B

About a year ago, I drew a comic for our kids during sacrament meeting. It told the story of a dinosaur attacking a church, and two children who were eaten because they couldn't sit still. I've looked all over the house this week, but I can't find it. It's like Fermat's Last Theorem: you'll just have to believe me that it was awesome.

This started a comic-drawing trend in our family. At first, they were church-themed, as shown in this comic drawn by my daughter Princess Sparkley.

In the first panel, a girl is excited to be baptized. In the second panel, the baptism is occurring. (No one filled PS in on the whole "don't depict a baptism" controversy.) In the third panel, the girl is drying off. In the fourth panel, she's bearing testimony of how she felt after her baptism. In the fifth panel, she's enjoying the refreshments. In the sixth panel, she's receiving a new journal, and in the seventh panel, she's recording her feelings. In the eighth panel she's in bed asleep (under a bed canopy), smiling as she remembers her baptism in her dream.

A few weeks later, Princess Sparkley drew the squares, labeled the paper "A Good Comic By Dad" (which is why all my subsequent efforts bear that subtitle), and passed it to me. And this is what we got.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't poking fun at PS for not singing the hymns. I wasn't. See, a total lie.

Next, she came out with this effort, which was so hard to understand, that I created a panel-by-panel translation for her.

As you can see, our subject matter quickly went downhill. From baptisms to dogs eating stinky diapers. I'm not going to say I wasn't proud.