Trouble in Paradise

I realize that this joke is probably two or three years late. What can I say, I didn't have a blog two or three years ago.

Errata

In the publishing world, I believe they're called errata. They're the mistakes that inevitably show up in the printed word. And, sure enough, I've found a couple in The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids. For those of you who have already purchased your copy(ies), please print out the this blog entry and carefully glue it into the front of your book. For those of you who haven't purchased the book, you might want to hurry and do so. (After we get these all fixed for the inevitable second printing, this edition will be as valuable as a rare first edition Mormon Doctrine.)

Errata
The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids

Pages 38, 77, and 83 - Signature partially cut off.

Pages 18 and 32 - Sentences end in a preposition.

Page 74 and cover - Peter, James, and John likely were fishing with nets not poles.

Page 83 - There is no documented record of Brigham Young presenting a key to the city to a flock of seagulls for saving Mormon crops from crickets; however, Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson partially rectified this egregious oversight when he presented a key to the city to the syntha-pop band Flock of Seagulls in 1982.

Page 30 - The frogs drawn in a picture representing Moses and the plague of frogs upon Egypt are clearly Adenomera araucaria, which--as everyone knows--are indigenous to South America.

Page 9 - The Elders are teaching a single, elderly sister despite the fact that there are Sister missionaries in their zone that could be teaching her.

Pages 3 through 91 - Human beings typically have five fingers on their hands not four.

The Still, Small Voice?

I suppose I've always been a Mormon Cartoonist, but I didn't become a Mormon Cartoonist until my mission. While I was in the MTC, I started sending letters home to my family with a little gag off to the side of their address every week. After I left the MTC and started my service in Slovenija, the gags went inside of the envelope and the practice continued for two years.

All the gags I sent home were, not surprisingly, missionary gags. Some were based on real life experiences and others, like the one below, were completely fanciful.

I submitted this particular gag to The New Era with my very first submission to the magazine way back in 2001. The magazine opted not to purchase it for obvious reasons.

Just in Time for Valentine's Day

Check out the comic featured in this month's New Era. Sadly, this is about as romantic as my work gets.

Just What's Inside The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids?

So The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids has been in bookstores for two weeks now and it's still not showing up on the New York Times bestseller list. Clearly, something is wrong here.

Look, I know that times are tough and maybe you've been burned on so-called "activity books" in the past (you know the type with nothing more than a couple of word searches, a few dot to dots, and that awful page where you're asked to make as many words from another word as you can (as an aweful spailler I reelly haite those things (thank heavens for word processors (this may be the most parentheses inside parentheses ever)))), but my book is different!

The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids is 96 pages of original art and not a single lazy activity book cliche in the bunch (well except for that one on page 82, but, come on, I was on deadline). It's good stuff guaranteed to keep your child quiet for up to a month of Sacrament Meetings--and can you really put a price on that? (And if you could, wouldn't it be more than the $10 asking price?)

To give you a little flavor of the book, I'm posting an example of the type of puzzle you'll find in the book. And the best part is: the following puzzle isn't even in the book, so you're still getting 96 pages of new stuff. (As always, click on the image for a larger view.)

Lime Osmond

This week's comic comes out of a comment I made in my last post regarding the stale nature of Mormon jokes regarding both Jell-o and the Osmond family. By combining the two, you couldn't come up with a more cliche Mormon gag if you tried.

Or could you?

I'm issuing a challenge to my readers to please help me make the above gag the most cliche ridden Mormon cartoon ever produced. For example, you might add the text: "Now you can give it to your Home Teaching family on the last day of the month." or: "I'm going to place it on a doily as part of the centerpiece for my Relief Society lesson."

I eagerly await your responses.

On the LDS Cartooning Sub-Genre

I have come to the realization that I am working in a sub-genre that is somewhat limited. How many gags can various LDS cartoonists create about green Jell-o and the Osmond family before my ideas overlaps onto another person’s and vice versa?

About a month ago, mere weeks before The Puzzle Book for LDS Kids was due to appear on bookstore shelves, my heart sank a little as I flipped through one of Pat Bagley’s I Spy a Nephite books. On one of his pages, Bagley included a small sight gag of two children making snow angels on the ground. One snow angel was a traditional snow angel while the other was the angel Moroni as seen on top of the temple. I was discouraged because I had come up with the same sight gag independently and included it on a page of my soon to be published Puzzle Book. Apparently great minds think alike.

Someday I hope to be the person who flips through a new-release from another LDS cartoonist only to see a small detail of mine overlapped into their book.

Thankfully in this pool of LDS culture there is a bit of room for continued creativity and independent thoughts. There are also many different styles of art, so there may be a future for me yet. It will just require me to be even more creative.

Yeah, it’s a dangerous line of work I find myself in, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.