The Reverend Mister Cartoonist
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So there are more clergy cartoonists than Mike Morgan and Fred McCarthy, who immediately pop into my mind when the subject comes up. The Presbyterian News Service throws a spotlight on a couple of preachers whose side hustles were cartooning for both religious and secular venues.
This cartoon [above] is yet another created by an artist who doubled as a religious leader. The Rev. Roger W. Palmquist imagines Martin Luther and John Calvin as military buddies. “Religious differences may be noted, but overcome by the eccentricities of military life, comments ‘Private Luther’ to his buddy ‘Calvin’.” This artwork was published in the bimonthly newsletter of the Lutheran Council in the USA’s Division of Service to Military Personnel, “In Step.” Palmquist said of his caricature, “Private Luther is more polished and less of a nuisance than other khaki-clad cartoon creations like Beetle Bailey or Sad Sack.”
News accounts of itinerant chalk talk artist/gospel singer/preacher Roger W. Palmquist alternately describe him as “first assistant” or “special assistant” to Charles M. Schulz during the mid-1960s.
Dr. W. Goddard Sherman is the Methodist pastor whose pen makes you laugh — his artwork and name “appears in The New Yorker Magazine almost as often as he appears in his pulpit.”
That New Yorker comment may be a violation of the 9th Commandment. Anyway…
Sherman’s cartoons are not all religious in theme, though many poke easy fun at modern Christian life. In one, a man sits in his barber’s chair and smilingly says, “Anoint me with oil.” In another, a wife tells her husband to set the alarm clock an hour earlier than usual, explaining that it’s because she wants “to continue this argument before breakfast!”
Goddard Sherman was, for a time, a regular contributor to King Features’ daily Laff-A-Day newspaper panel.
Then the article takes an abbreviated look at the history of caricaturing Satan.
Caricatures that portray Satan can be found as far back as the Middle Ages, and the imagery of the devil that most of us are familiar with can be considered a comic in itself. The pointed ears and spiked tail, the dragon-like qualities of this demonic presence, and the persistence of Satan being portrayed as a red devil with a malicious grin — this is an iconography that stretches far into the past.
Further reading from David Paulsen and Episcopal News Service 2020 is a profile of Rev. Jay Sidebotham:
In addition to his main duties as director of RenewalWorks, Forward Movement’s church vitality and spiritual growth ministry, this is Sidebotham’s 20th year as featured cartoonist in the Church Pension Group’s annual calendar. Every year since 2001, 12 of his illustrations have provided monthly occasions for faith-based humor in each of the 10,000 calendars that are distributed, mostly by mail, to every congregation in The Episcopal Church.
feature image: “No entry for devils,” by Polish artist Fugiewicz (Religious News Service photo)
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