The Origins
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers began to print comical stories told in a series of images and word balloons, which represented the character’s speech. As many scholars agreed, paneled images in a sequence and speech balloons were the most significant characteristics of comics. There were a number of various claims as to who was the first comic artist, but most cited either Rudolph Topffer’s (1799-1846) comic The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. or Richard F. Outcault’s (1863-1928) Hogan's Alley (commonly referred to as the Yellow Kid comics). Because of The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, first published in English in the 1840s, Topffer was often called the “father of modern comics” for establishing the panel as a device for illustrated storytelling. Featuring a young boy who wore a yellow nightshirt, each week the Yellow Kid comic typified comical situations and slapstick jokes purely as a form of entertainment-one of the first in newspapers. It was 'an instant cultural phenomenon.’ The Yellow Kid's bucktoothed mug appeared on books, shirts, tins of 'ginger wafers, bowling pins...there were even Yellow Kid cigarettes!
Once the Yellow Kid became a sensation. newspapers took noticeof illustrators’ abilities to increase circulation and thus comic strips began appearing in every newspaper across the country with a nearly innumerable amount of titles, including The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), Happy Hooligan (1900), Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905), Mutt & Jeff (1907), Gasoline Alley (1918), and many others. The comic strip launched comics into a cultural phenomenon and was the precursor to the book anthologies of comic strips, or the “comic books.”
With the exploding market of the “funnies”, there were surprisingly few intersections of the comic strip and religion. The absence of religion in early comics was noted in Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas: “In the period before 1960, comics’ indirect address of religious matters seems less prevalent than in more contemporary times. Perhaps mirroring the times themselves, non-overtly religious texts appear to address religious themes either as assumed aspects of the (Judeo-Christian) cultural landscape or only as they relate to broader political or social issues. It was not unusual for the early strips’ characters to address hypocrisies in religious and moral issues or to have their characters attend church or get married in the traditional Judeo-Christian American way, but this seemed to be the extent of religion’s appearance in early comic strips. It was also suggested in Comics Through Time that, 1. perhaps readers would be skeptical about receiving moral advice from comic characters who were generally community delinquents, or 2. religion was too adult a topic for comics’ “ostensibly child audiences.“ Whatever the motivation, publishers of comics initially seemed to shy away from covering the subject of religion in the new medium.
A Slow Introduction
Religion did not remain completely separate from comic strips. Slowly but surely some newspapers would let small references into their funny sections.
Popular cartoons like “Peanuts” or “The Family Circus” have long run occasional religious references, especially around Christmas and Easter. In the 1990’s, Johnny Hart, creator of the popular “B.C.” strip, began introducing overt Christian themes in occasional strips, with controversial results. Some newspapers opted not to run the religious strips, and Jewish and Muslim groups called for apologies from Mr. Hart for strips they considered insensitive, including one in which a menorah is transformed into a cross, which some took to signal that Christianity had extinguished Judaism.
Chick Publications
One instance of how religion engaged popular culture through the use of comic strips in the twentieth century would be Chick Publications. Jack Chick, a Californian evangelical, started publishing and distributing Christian comics in the Seventies. His short books, about the size of an index card, vividly illustrate his premillennial dispensationalist vision of an America in severe decline. The topics ranged from evolution to outright Gospel presentations. Many however, considered these small strips to be offensive; therefore their circulation has heavily declined. Still, they can still be seen from time to time, especially within churches themselves.
Broadening Horizons
Recently, religion has seen a great resurgence in the comic industry, including within comic strips that appear in newspapers. Guy Gilchrist, who writes a strip called “Your Angels Speak,” said that since Sept. 11, syndicators had become more open to religious comics. In the late 1990’s, none would handle his strip. Then in November 2001, United Features called to see if he was still writing it.
Mr. Gilchrist said he tried to avoid being preachy or alienating people who did not share his faith. “I am a Christian and occasionally I will quote from the New Testament,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “But I want the angels to be accessible. Hopefully people that are afraid of organized religion or questions of faith can find this and possibly consider that there is a God or a higher power.”
In 2006, A new comic strip was released across the nation that was completely focused on telling people the Gospel. The strip, called “Heaven’s Love Thrift Shop,” made its debut in 15 American newspapers this month, with quotations from Scripture and characters talking about their faith. Though other comics occasionally address religious themes, mainstream newspapers and syndicates have largely avoided strips that make religion so central.
Kevin Frank, the strip’s author, said his goal was “very simplistic, to remind people that there is a God and God loves them.” To this end, he said, he planned to avoid “hot-button political issues, because even among people of faith those are divisive.”The strip comes from King Features Syndicate, the largest distributor of daily comic strips in the United States. “It’s new ground in terms of syndication,” said Jay Kennedy, the company’s editor in chief, who said that King had carried only one religious strip, now defunct, in his memory.
Online
Today, comic strips can be found online in absolutely innumerable quantities, and there are complete sections devoted to religion. These sections are not just about Christianity, they are about nearly every major religion actively worshiped today. Some are even simply about general spirituality. With the internet relieving comic strip writers of the burden of being accepted within a newspaper, many are significantly more free to express their religious ideas, values, and thoughts.
