Talking of parish magazines I found this rather interesting article about how a Vicar and a Diocesan magazine editor founded the Eagle comic. It is by Marcus Morris, founding editor of the Eagle.

I had long felt that parish magazines (the parson’ s main written method of presenting himself to his followers) were dreary and ineffective. My appointment as vicar of St James’s, Birkdale, Lancashire gave me my first chance to do something about it. I gradually converted a four-page leaflet into a magazine called The Anvil, in which ‘issues’ could be ‘hammered out’. I had always been interested in journalism and had a great desire to ‘edit’ something. At Oxford I had read philosophy, ancient history and theology, not immediately identifiable with journalism, and Anvil liberated those pent-up editorial urges. I didn’t see why a magazine aimed at conveying an intelligent view of Christianity should not try to be as professional as any other magazine.

Posted by Dave at 5:24 pm on October 31, 2005 and filed under Church, Cartooning.

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As regular readers will know besides writing this blog I create various resources for churches to use in parish magazines, in particular cartoons and worksheets (church magazines are one possible use for them at least).

I thought I’d list a few other parish magazine resources I’ve come across out there as I know a few magazine editors are reading the site. And yes, I’m going to list ‘the competition’ - they are very nice people after all…

First of all Christian Aid have a magazine article out for Christmas. You can look through all their older church magazine articles too.

The Bible society also have articles you can use.

Christian Ecology has another Christmas themed piece here.

The rather marvellous Diocese of Oxford website has a parish magazine resource page as well as a page on how to attract advertisers. (Thanks to their Media department for including me in the former).

If you’re a little lonely as a parish magazine editor you can always join the Association for Church Editors. They do a newsletter, trips to the seaside etc.

And lastly, but of course by no means leastly, Parish Pump, who do Parish Magazine content.

Oh, and then there’s my own stuff. Have I mentioned that already?

Posted by Dave at 5:17 pm on October 31, 2005 and filed under Church, Cartooning.

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I’m back from my holidays and once again ready to resume high quality Cartoon Blog programming.

[Click on the image for the full sized version]

Today’s picture is a heavily fortified concrete portaloo, originally developed for use at music festivals back in the 1960s. It wasn’t long before the inventors realised that aerial bombardment was unlikely, so the plastic portaloos we know and love became predominant, although a few isolated concrete examples remained in use until the end of the cold war.

Another design flaw was the lack of a door.

Posted by Dave at 10:02 pm on October 30, 2005 and filed under In-depth analysis.

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*Note about the current error message*

Yes, the site is currently displaying an error message. Sorry about this. I’m looking into it and will be contacting some Authorities.

It seems that in the meantime one can navigate the posts one by one but not as a whole, ie by using the ‘previous entry’ and ‘next entry’ links at the top of each post.

Update: I fixed it by doing nothing. I am a genius.

Update 2: No I didn’t. I am an idiot.

Update 3: Yes I did. Bravo.

Update 4: Oh. No I didn’t. Bother.

Update 5: The Webhosts fixed it. Well done to the Webhosts.

Update 6: Tuesday evening, 1st November. The errors are continuing meaning that navigation of the site is having to be done via individual pages rather than the site front page. Apologies for this - I’m hoping it can be sorted out as soon as possible.

Update 7: Thought it was all sorted out, but no. Apologies again. I have found though that you can view the site by clicking the current month in the archive section, currently November.

Posted by Dave at 1:32 pm on October 29, 2005 and filed under Technical.

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The Box Doodle project

“the rules are quite simple:
rearrange a box to make any
kind of figure or object.”

Thanks to Sarah for this one.

Posted by Dave at 8:00 am on October 28, 2005 and filed under Cartooning, Art.

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“See Queen Victoria speaking and moving in her throne room”. Hurrah! Yes, it’s got to the stage where old holiday snaps are being wheeled out as heavily disguised Cartoon Blog content. The shot is from earlier in the year at the entrance to Yesterday’s World in Battle, East Sussex. We didn’t actually go in, but I can tell you that besides Queen Victoria they offer a comprehensive range of jams and chutneys.

Posted by Dave at 8:00 am on October 27, 2005 and filed under In-depth analysis.

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I know Richard did a ‘Blog Wiki’ a few years ago because we did a feature on Wibsite.com about it. Now there’s a new one, the Wikablog, which aims to list lots of blogs. I haven’t really tried it yet as I’ve been too busy, but probably worth going and having a look at if you like going and having a look at things like that.

Posted by Dave at 8:00 am on October 26, 2005 and filed under Blogging.

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I came across this page on the Lycos top 50 site dealing with ‘God-related’ searches people do. Well, searches they did on Lycos during one particular week at the end of 2004 at least.

I was interested to see that ‘God cartoons’ was at number 3. It’s not a phrase I use much here on the site I have to say, but thought I would do so this once so that all those people searching for the term might find what they are looking for. Perhaps.

Sorry regular readers, this hasn’t been very interesting for you has it?

Posted by Dave at 8:00 am on October 25, 2005 and filed under Mundane, Cartooning.

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[Click on the image for the full sized version]

This cartoon relates to the fact that ex-Vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton Sandy Millar is to become a Ugandan Bishop.

I’d like to make it clear that I’m sure Sandy Millar is a very good candidate to be a bishop, and that for churches to send bishops to other parts of the world is marvellous if everybody is happy with the arrangement. But surely if we have things to learn from the Church in Uganda (which I’m sure we do) we’d be best off learning them from someone from Uganda.

Technical note
Just to say that I’m away for a few days and so comments posted to the blog will take a few days to appear as the dial has been tweaked to the ‘moderate’ setting. Please don’t let that stop you commenting though.

Posted by Dave at 7:53 pm on October 24, 2005 and filed under Cartoons, Church, Current events, Anglican goings-on.

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Hugh ‘Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards’ Macleod’s Gaping Void (Usual disclaimer about language etc etc) is another of my regular internet reads. I found this post, ‘How to be so-so creative‘ to be one I particularly related to:

“I drew cartoons there quite obsessively for about a decade; but I’ve slowed down a lot in the last year or two. In retrospect, it’s not difficult to see why I worked so hard at it. A wee voice told me this was my ticket out of the dreary and nebulous world of Madison Avenue. An obsession born out of desperation etc.

Sometimes I miss it.”

Absolutely. Creativity is very difficult to sustain. I too find that as time goes on it becomes more difficult to draw cartoons, though I think the reasons are rather different in my case - I only had about 43 or 44 ideas to begin with and I’ve now drawn 42 of them.

But, somehow, when push comes to shove ‘the deadline was an hour ago’, the ideas do come. But it does seem to be getting harder, which is why when someone sends me a list of ideas or cartoon subjects I really am rather pleased. Not that I promise I’ll draw all of them of course.

But then sometimes the ideas just come. Today I’ve drawn three good cartoons and I have one more top notch idea waiting to be done. I’m pleased.

Posted by Dave at 9:44 pm on October 23, 2005 and filed under Starting a Business, In-depth analysis, Cartooning.

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Salvation Challenge is a religious board game recently launched at the Scottish Christian Resources Exhibition. The official website is here and Ship of Fools also have a review.

From the latter:

“All players start at the Cross and move clockwise round the board in search of salvation. Once you land on Calvary, you throw your hands in the air, slap a red sticker on your forehead, shout “Jesus saved me!” and proceed immediately to the River Jordan for baptism. And so it goes on. Yes, what better way to spend an evening with unregenerate family and friends than getting them to renounce Monopoly, sacrifice that chance of winning second prize in a beauty contest, and play Salvation Challenge instead?”

If you have been converted by this game then please do let us know in the comments.

Posted by Dave at 8:28 am on October 22, 2005 and filed under Church.

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One of the trends going on in our modern world (reports the Economist) is that pubs are meeting in churches and churches are meeting in cinemas. Who knows where cinemas are meeting.

“The cinema layout also gives the congregation a good view of the stage and therefore of the pastor, who tends to be the star of the show.”

Perhaps they should think of inventing big sort of screen things to keep the congregation and the people up front separated. They could make them wooden and ornate.

(Sorry, that was a very poor attempt at an ecclesiastical sort of a joke which will only be understood by 40% of Anglicans and about 7% of everybody else.)

Posted by Dave at 1:28 pm on October 21, 2005 and filed under Church.

3 Comments