Dave Sim's blogandmail #279 (June 17th, 2007) - with guest host Craig Miller!

[Following Cerebus editor/publisher Craig Miller is filling in this week for Dave Sim.]

In keeping with Dave's emphasis on religious-oriented topics for the Sunday postings, I offer this for your consideration (as Rod Serling used to say):

How easily can you step back from your religious beliefs and laugh at them? (This applies to political beliefs too, but the topic today is religion.) Not someone else's religious beliefs, but your own? Or are your own beliefs so intensely, brow-furrowing, weight-of-the-world serious that you can't crack a smile about them?

I've heard sermons about the humor in the Bible, and that lost in modern sensibilities is the humor--and at times biting sarcasm--that Jesus occasionally used to get his points across. Jesus Christ, late-night comic? Does that sound sacriligous just to suggest the possibility?

Back in 1991, a friend (Mark Winter, the "Win" half of Win-Mill Productions) and I published two issues of Wake Up!, a humor mag that Joe Bob Briggs praised ("Wake Up! publishes the best satire around") but few people bought. It introduced a single-panel cartoon, "The Adventures of Luke Warm," that presented some observations we'd made about some of the churches we'd attended.

For a period of some years, I attended a series of moderately bad to really bad churches. Why? That's a long story. Suffice it to say, the experiences were invaluable in creating ideas for Wake Up! Spiritually deadening, but artistically invigorating.

So here, for your consideration (as the Academy Award ads like to say), are four sample Luke Warm cartoons. Some have been used in two print campaigns to increase church attendance (believe it or not). The art on the early ones is a bit rough, so I'm including a newer, never-before-published, not-even-inked-yet cartoon, just to show that, I may not draw well, but at least I've improved somewhat in the past sixteen years.

I really like these--they make points without, I think, being vicious or mean-spirited. Maybe you'll enjoy them too. If not, well, look at it this way--Dave returns tomorrow, 'cause this is my last blog entry until I'm called on to guest-host again!









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REPLIES POSTED ON THE CEREBUS YAHOO! GROUP
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If you wish to contact Craig Miller, you can mail a letter to:

Win-Mill Productions
Dept. B
P.O. Box 1283
Arlington, TX 76004

Or send an email to:

editors@spectrum-mag.com

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Looking for a place to purchase Cerebus phonebooks? You can do so online through Win-Mill Productions -- producers of Following Cerebus. Convenient payment with PayPal:

http://spectrummagazines.bizland.com/cerebusgn.chtml

Or, you can check out Mars Import:

http://www.marsimport.com/display_series.php?ID=142

Or ask your local retailer to order them for you through Diamond Comics distributors. Here are the Diamond Star System codes:

Cerebus #1-25 $30.00 STAR00070

High Society #26-50 $30.00 STAR00071

Church and State I #52-80 $35.00 STAR00271

Church and State II #81-111 $35.00 STAR00321

Jaka's Story #114-136 $30.00 STAR00359

Melmoth #139-150 $20.00 STAR00431

Flight #151-162 $20.00 STAR00543

Women #163-174 $20.00 STAR00849

Reads #175-186 $20.00 STAR01063

Minds #187-200 $20.00 STAR01916

Guys #201-219 $25.00 STAR06972

Rick's Story #220-231 $20.00 STAR08468

Going Home I #232-250 $30.00 STAR10981

Form and Void #251-265 $30.00 STAR13500

Latter Days #266 - 288 $35.00 AUG031920

The Last Day #289 - 300 $25.00 APR042189

Collected Letters - $30 FEB052434

Collected Letters 2 - $22 MAR073054