Open Your Mouth

Open Your Mouth - Psalm 8:2

You may feel as small and weak as a baby in the face of your troubles, but when you open your mouth in praise to God, you are strong and the enemy is silenced.

I published this cartoon a while back, then took it down, did some major revisions to it, and then revised it some more. So, this is the first time it is published in this form.

The website update is nearly completed. I recently revised the website, switching to WordPress. All of the original English language cartoons have been restored to the new site, as well as all of the Spanish language cartoons. I still have the Portuguese language cartoons to do, and then the new site will have everything the old site did, plus a few new features as well, such as keyword search.

Website revised

You may have noticed that the Joyful ‘toons website looks quite a bit different. Here’s an explanation of why it changed, and what’s new about the website.  I should mention that I’m no web designer, I don’t know much about html or css, but I’ve managed to get along by reading books and websites on the subject.

I first built the website back in 2007 using Adobe GoLive 5, which I later upgraded to GoLive CS2. Adobe no longer supports GoLive, replacing it with DreamWeaver. When my old Apple Macintosh G4 died a while back, I replaced it with a newer Apple iMac. Because the new computer uses an Intel processor chip, I was no longer able to run GoLive. So, I either needed to spend the money to get DreamWeaver, or find another solution.

In 2009 I added a blog page to my website using WordPress. Eventually I realized that I could use WordPress to design my entire website. It is fairly user friendly, up-to-date, and best of all, it’s free. So, I have designed a new website using WordPress. There are a lot of ways to customize a website using WordPress, and as I learn more about it, I’m sure I will be taking advantage of those options.

There are several things about the new website that I think are improvements over the old website. The Home and Blog pages are still pretty much the same as they were before, but now there is a sidebar at the right side of the page. Collected in this sidebar are several elements that were previously scattered throughout the site. Here you’ll find links to my Facebook and Twitter pages, a link to my Zazzle store, a link to my PayPal donations page, a form to send me an email, a form to subscribe to the email list, and links to other websites that I like.

There’s a new feature at the top of the sidebar that I’m really excited about: a search bar. I’m sure you’re familiar with this: you enter a keyword  and click search and the results will appear on the page. The best thing about this is that you can search keywords that are assigned to the cartoon image files. So, if you want to see if there’s a cartoon for a certain Bible verse, enter the scripture reference in the search field. Maybe you’re looking for a cartoon that had a boat in it, enter boat in the search field. Or perhaps you need a cartoon for Christmas, just search Christmas. This should make it a lot easier to find a particular cartoon.

The old Info page has been replaced by two new pages: FAQ and About. The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions, in case you didn’t know) page has a lot of the same information that was on the old Info page, but now arranged as questions and answers. See a question that you would’ve asked? – click on it to reveal the answer. Most of the questions and answers are about how to use the cartoons. The About page has some background about me and how I started drawing the cartoons.

The ‘toons page has changed quite a bit, and I think it’s an improvement over the previous page. You can select either NIV or KJV from the ‘toons drop down menu. I’ll be adding Spanish and Portuguese ‘toons pages in the future. The ‘toons pages now have a gallery of thumbnail images of all the cartoons. Hover your mouse over the thumbnail image to see the title and Bible verse for each cartoon. You can view the full size cartoons in one of two ways. First, you can click the Show as Slideshow link to view the cartoons in a slideshow. The slideshow scrolls through all of the cartoons automatically, or you can click on the image to advance to the next cartoon. Currently, I don’t have a way to show the comment with each cartoon on the slideshow. The second way to view the cartoons is to click on a thumnail from the image gallery. This will open up an image browser. Click on the arrows to advance to the next cartoon, or to go back to the previous cartoon. The image browser does show the comment with each cartoon. Currently, the ‘toons pages only have a small percentage of the cartoons. It’s going to take a while to add all of the 170+ cartoons, as I am adding the search keywords to each file as I go.

So that’s it. I hope you like the new website.

 

Some new web pages

I have recently added a couple of new pages to the Joyful ‘toons website. The first one is a page of Holiday themed cartoons. I’ve done quite a few cartoons over the years that refer to Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. Trying to locate them on the ‘toons page might be difficult, so I collected them all together on one page. I’ll leave it up until sometime after New Year’s Day.

A while back I put up a page titled More, on which I intended to add links to pages that would showcase some of my cartoons that are not Joyful ‘toons. Well, today I added my fist link, which goes to a page of cartoons about the Lord’s Prayer. The cartoons were originally drawn for a booklet a church was producing for their Sunday School. Written on each page of the book were some insights on different sections of the prayer, with a cartoon of mine at the top of each page. There were also some pages that dealt with other topics, such as family, reading the Bible, etc. I’m happy to offer these cartoons to any other churches or Christian organizations that can make use of them. Just send me a request via email. I plan to add more links to the More page sometime in the future.

UPDATE

With the website revision that I made on March 3, 2013, I eliminated the Holiday and More pages. Holiday cartoons can now be located using the search bar. For example, if you are looking for Christmas cartoons, you can now enter “Christmas” in the search bar, click the “Search” button, and the results should be all of my Christmas cartoons. The Lord’s Prayer cartoons and the other cartoons that were on the More page I will eventually re-do as Joyful ‘toons cartoons, and they will added to the Gallery pages.

Two cartoons revised

I made revisions to two of my cartoons recently. The first revision was to a cartoon titled Shine the Light. It depicts a pest control man shining a light labeled Truth into a woman’s attic and revealing some nasty rats that are living there. The rats are labeled Sin and Evil Habits. The man warns the woman that if she doesn’t get rid of the rats, they will eventually destroy her home. The Bible verse I put with this was Ephesians 5:11-13: And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. -KJV. In the original version of the cartoon, the pest control man was not labeled, and I think I had in mind that Christians should be reproving the world of sin. But in John 16:8, Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit when He says: And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:. I think I see now that Paul is talking about Christians getting themselves cleaned up, and getting rid of any unfruitful works of darkness, with the help of the Holy Spirit. My revision was simply to add the label Holy Spirit to the pest control man’s hat. This cartoon reminds me of the old song Searchlight by Nancy Honeytree. Some of the lyrics are: Searchlight, shine your beam on me, when I’m not what I seem to be, When darkness creeps in, shine your light on my sin.

shinelight_niv

The second revision involved my redrawing part of the cartoon. It was the cartoon titled Scarecrow, which depicts a scarecrow in a cornfield trying to scare away two crows. The scarecrow represents Satan, and he is stuffed with straw, which represents Satan’s lies. The cornfield represents the blessing of the Lord, and the two crows represented the church, the children of God. The idea is that Satan is trying to scare the believers out of receiving God’s blessings, but he can only use lies, which are as insubstantial as straw. The crows responded to the scarecrow by telling him that the cornfield belongs to their father, and that they had a right to be there.

The original "Scarecrow" cartoon

The original “Scarecrow” cartoon

I think it was a good idea, but it was only half-baked. I looked at it again recently and suddenly realized that something was amiss, and it was this: crows do not have the right to be in a cornfield, unless we are to think that a crow, their father, planted the field. Being a cartoon with talking crows, I guess that could be possible. But I thought the cartoon would make much more sense if the scarecrow was trying to scare actual human children out of the cornfield, since the farmer who planted the field is much more likely to be human. I really don’t know what I was thinking with the crows, or why it took me so long to recognize my mistake. By replacing the crows with children, I think the cartoon more fully illustrates the idea that the children of God do have a place in their Father’s field of blessing, it is there for them, and they should not allow the devil to talk them out of it. I’m thankful that I publish my cartoons on a website, which allows me to revise any goofs that I’ve made.

The revised "Scarecrow" cartoon

The revised “Scarecrow” cartoon

KJV cartoons restored to website

I’m happy to report that all of the cartoons with the King James Version Bible verse are back on the website. As before, there is a link that reads “KJV” below the cartoon on the ‘toons page of the site. Click the link, and it brings up the KJV version of the cartoon that you are viewing in a separate window. I’m glad to be able to offer that option again for all of those readers who prefer the King James. Of course, you may still email me to request a zipped file of all of the cartoons with the KJV (or the NIV for that matter), so you don’t have to download the cartoons one at a time.

I’ve also upgraded the quality of the jpgs on the website. Hopefully, they will look sharper on your computer screen, and look better when printed in bulletins, newsletters, etc.

Some other recent changes to the website: I’ve added a link on the ‘toons page to the Joyful toons Facebook page, and I’ve updated the Portuguese page, adding several new Portuguese cartoons.

Finally, I’ve just now had the privilege of translating several more of the cartoons into Dutch (Nederlands). I currently have 18 of the cartoons in Dutch. If you or someone you know is interested in receiving them, let me know via email.

“Made to Fly” cartoon revised

I was recently making an Indonesian language translation of the “Made to Fly” cartoon, and decided that while I was at it, I would re-do the drawing. I was never quite satisfied with the original drawing. I just thought it looked a little rough. So, I re-drew it using the computer to create clean, smooth lines. I didn’t make any changes to the cartoon other than cleaning it up a bit.

This is a cartoon that was inspired by a request from a reader. They were having a women’s conference at her church, and she wanted to know if I could come up with a cartoon for their theme, which was Ephesians 2:10. Thank the Lord, I was able to help her out with this cartoon. Only, as I was in the process of making the cartoon, I forgot that it was for a women’s conference and I made the character a man. Oh well, maybe the airplane is female.

The original "Made to Fly" cartoon

The original “Made to Fly” cartoon

 

The revised "Made to Fly" cartoon

The revised “Made to Fly” cartoon

KJV cartoons removed from website

I received a notice recently from my web host that my website, joyfultoons.com, was exceeding the monthly bandwidth transfer limit of 10,000 MB. Basically what this means is that there is more data being transfered from my website than I am allowed. I suppose this is a good problem to have, as it means my collection of cartoons is growing, and the number of visitors to the website is increasing. But it also meant that I needed to find a way to reduce the amount of data being transmitted. Since most of the data on my website is in the form of jpgs, I decided to start there. And as I had two versions of each cartoon, one using the New International Version of the Bible verse, and one using the King James Version, it seemed the obvious solution to eliminate one of the versions.

A little background on why I had two versions of each cartoon: when I first launched the website back in January 2007, I used many different English Bible translations for the Bible verses. I used the Amplified, the New Living Translation, the English Standard, the New Century, etc.; but mostly I used the New International and the King James versions. Then I started to receive requests from some readers wanting to know if they could substitute the KJV for the other versions. Sometimes it was just a personal preference on their part, but often someone would tell me that their particular church did not allow the use of other versions of the Bible. This was a revelation to me. I had not been aware that there were churches that discouraged, or even forbade the use of modern English Bible translations.

Anyway, I was undecided as to how to respond to these requests to substitute the KJV for whatever version I had used. I was reticent to allow anyone permission to alter my cartoons, but I wanted these people to be able to use my cartoons in their church. About that time, I was approached by a book producer who was interested in trying to publish a book of the cartoons. For the purposes of the proposed book, she and I decided that all of the cartoons should use only one version of the Bible, and that it should be the NIV. So, I went through all of my cartoons and changed all of the Bible verses to the NIV, and I thought as long as I was doing that, I would also make separate KJV versions of each cartoon. I changed all of the cartoons on the website to the NIV, and then I made a link that brought up a separate browser window containing a KJV version of each cartoon. Even though we never found a publisher for the book (I’m still hopeful we may find one someday), I was glad that it led to a solution for the KJV only readers.

Even though the KJV cartoons are no longer displayed on the website, they are all still available to anyone who needs or wants them. Just send me an email and let me know which cartoon you would like to have, and I will email it to you. I can even send you the entire lot of KJV cartoons in a compressed file if you wish. I will be including both the NIV and KJV versions of each new cartoon that I send out in my weekly emails. I’m hopeful that I will be able to restore the KJV cartoons back to the website someday.

Santa in cartoon upsets some readers

My cartoon “God’s Gift”, which was posted to my website back in December of 2009, was upsetting to some. I received several emails from people who did not like that I had used Santa Claus in the cartoon. One person even wrote that the cartoon was sinful.

godsgift_niv

I have to admit, I was not surprised. I expected that I might get that reaction. Santa Claus is a very distressing character to many Christians. I remember an incident years ago, in my hometown of Jacksonville, where a pastor hung Santa Claus in effigy outside his church. It caused a bit of a stir back then.

I can certainly understand why Santa is so upsetting to some Christians. The true meaning of Christmas is, of course, the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. What gets Christians angry about Santa Claus is that he has pretty much replaced Jesus as the meaning of the season in a lot of people’s minds. It’s ironic, since the Santa Claus myth is based on a real person, St. Nicholas, who was a Christian priest back in the fourth century.

In spite of all that, I have to say that I don’t really consider Santa Claus to be very threatening. In my mind, he’s just a fictional character, one that has been overused in television commercials, television shows, and movies. I know some people are horrified when parents pretend to their children that Santa is coming to their house on Christmas Eve. I see it as an elaborate prank that parents get to play on their children. My parents played the Santa gag on me. I remember my Dad taking me outside on a chilly morning to show me the reindeer hoofprints in the yard. Even though I was very young and gullible, I somehow wasn’t buying it. But, I was certainly willing to accept Santa’s gifts on Christmas morning.

The idea for the cartoon came to me while I was reading Romans chapter 5. There the Apostle Paul uses the word “gift” several times in referring to God’s grace to us in sacrificing His son Jesus on the cross, to redeem us from our sins. That word “gift” made me think of that famous gift-giving character, Santa Claus. I thought I could use him to picture the gift of grace that God gave us through His son Jesus. Rather than using Santa to obscure the meaning of Christmas, as so much of our modern American society does, I thought I could use Santa to point to the true “reason for the season”.

I apologize to all who were offended at my cartoon. It was certainly not my intention to upset anyone. Incidentally, not all of the email reaction to this cartoon was negative. I actually received more positive than negative comments. One person even told me that it was my best cartoon.

History of Christian cartoons and comics

Every once in a while someone will write to me who has found my Joyful ‘toons website, and they’ll say something like “I’ve never seen Christian cartoons before”. Actually, there is a rich history of Christian cartooning, dating back to the late 19th century.

I first became aware of Christian cartoons when I was a kid, in the 1970s. I was a collector of the Spire Christian comic book series, most of them drawn by Al Hartley. There were several issues that featured the characters from the Archie comics: Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, etc.  I still have most of them, along with a few comics from other publishers. Then, there were the Jack Chick comic book tracts, which seemed to be everywhere when I was younger. I read several of them on the daily bus ride home from school. But Christian comics and cartoons have been around since even before my time.

An excellent online resource for researching the history of Christian cartoons can be found at the website ChristianComicsInternational.org. They have a web page devoted to Christian Comics Pioneers where you can find a wealth of information on over fifty different cartoonists who have used their talents to serve the Lord over the years. Another website, BibleBelievers.com has a collection of several vintage Christian cartoons by U.S. Abell, E.J. Pace, and Charles Ramsey. You can find the link to the cartoons in the middle of their index page. You can find more cartoons by E.J. Pace at PaceArt/Tripod.com.

I don’t claim to be an authority on the history of Christian cartoons. I’m sure there must be other Christian cartoonists from the past that I am not aware of. If you know of any, please let me know. I would be interested.

My collection of Christian comic books from the 1970s, most of them written and drawn by Al Hartley.

My collection of Christian comic books from the 1970s, most of them written and drawn by Al Hartley.