This blog is presented in conjunction with our special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, on display now. American Prophets is a powerful exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. Travel through vibrant spaces that trace the many paths of American faith, from sacred rituals to songs of devotion. Discover rare artifacts and creative works from literature, film, music, and comedy along the way. This isn’t just an exhibit—it’s a shared journey of reflection, inspiration, and connection through the stories that move us all.
I grew up reading the Sunday comic strips in the Chicago Tribune, and I genuinely think that strips like Mutts, Peanuts, and For Better or For Worse convinced me to learn how to read at an early age. When I was ten or so, my mom lent me her Calvin and Hobbes books to read through (although she warned me to be very careful with them!) and that was when everything kind of clicked in my head. I started drawing my own comics, which were mostly satirical or funny like Calvin and Hobbes. To this day, I make comics as a hobby and I still read the Sunday cartoons when I can. The comics medium has a special place in my heart, and I wanted to learn more about the history and spiritualities of the authors behind such legendary comics like The Family Circus and The Far Side.
written by Isabel Mantilla
Charles Schulz, Peanuts
Charles Schulz once asserted that newspaper comics could not be considered art because they are disposable, thus deeming comic strips as “transient” and unappealing to future generations of readers. Despite this personal sentiment, his comic strip Peanuts has been enjoyed for almost a century, resonating with readers young and old. Peanuts has been lauded as one of the longest stories told by a single artist in history, being reprinted many times in newspapers. The comic was created exclusively by Schulz, and it reflected many aspects of his life, including his Christian faith.
In his early 20s, Schulz served in the military, where his faith in God was a great comfort for him. He also enjoyed studying both the Old and New Testament. Sometimes, he flexed his Biblical knowledge by including direct quotations in Peanuts comic strips. In fact, Linus Van Pelt became a character who demonstrated Schulz’s remarkable biblical knowledge. Linus is fully capable of dispensing an impressive array of biblical passages, even while clinging onto his beloved blue blanket.
Back when Schulz was scripting and inking Peanuts, comics containing religious references or themes were a dangerously touchy subject. Newspaper comics, often called “The Funnies,” contained humor that appeared incompatible with anything related to religion. Yet, Schulz continued to sprinkle in references to Christianity, making sure to demonstrate his respect for his faith in interviews. He always intended his religious references to be “done in dignity” alongside the humorous jokes. In 1975, Schulz admitted that he faced criticism for including scriptural references in his comic strip, but the backlash did not deter him from writing about his religion. Instead, Schulz expressed that humor and faith could coexist and interact with each other:
“Faith is positive. Humor is proof of faith, proof that everything is going to be all right with God, nevertheless. There is humor in the Bible. I myself have wished many times that I could read Hebrew so I could catch the humor written between the lines in the Old Testament. The ancient Jewish storytellers must have had humor. The Jewish people must have sat there around the campfire, listening to their teachers tell the stories of how their nation tricked other nations, and laughed mightily. This is all part of the humor of the Bible.”
To his core, Schulz cared about properly representing his own faith in Peanuts. What’s completely unsurprising is that Schulz owned a Bible that was filled with his own annotations. In fact, here is what he wrote next to the Gospel of Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth: “Christmas is primarily a children’s day, for it takes the innocent faith of a child to appreciate it.”
Bil Keane, The Family Circus
Like Peanuts, Bil Keane’s single-panel series, The Family Circus, continues to entertain readers to this day. The comic strip debuted in 1960 and boasted a daily readership of more than fifty million people, earning the name “the world’s most popular single-panel cartoon.” The series illustrates a nuclear and suburban family, focusing particularly on the children as they partake in a variety of different antics. Sometimes the kids squabble with one another or they end up posing innocent questions about life to their parents. A recurring topic of the single-panel cartoon series is the inclusion of religious topics, imagery, and scenarios. Some Sunday editions of the comic strip feature the family’s grandfather watching them from an idyllic heaven that is populated with white robed angels.
Keane was openly religious, and his Catholic values were included and illustrated in his series. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he went to a Catholic high school and regularly attended church services. During an interview for The Comics Journal, Keane shared that good-natured humor was quite common in his childhood memories, particularly when he was participating in church services. In the same interview, he lightheartedly mentioned that he believed Jesus must have had a sense of humor:
“I like to think of [Jesus] as a guy who got people to listen to him by leaving them laughing and chuckling with one another.”
Keane drew upon his own upbringing to write The Family Circus, but he refrained from pinpointing the exact religion of the fictional family. Keane hoped that his depictions of God and heaven could be applicable to a broad range of religions, aiming for mass relatability and appeal for general audiences. To his credit, The Family Circus has been carried in more than fifteen hundred newspapers, along with appearing in plenty of church bulletins and religious publications. After becoming a successful comics creator, Keane supported Catholic schools by drawing special promotional Family Circus illustrations for the National Catholic Educational Administration (NCEA) from the late 1990s to 2012. The NCEA honored him with a Seton Award in 1992, and his name is still preserved on the organization’s official website.
Keane experienced a mix of reactions from readers due to religious topics appearing in the punchlines of The Family Circus. In the beginning of his cartoonist career, he received letters that accused him of using God’s name in vain. By the time he was 77 years old, he began receiving fan mail that was infinitely more positive, with some thanking Keane for putting spirituality in the funny pages. In an interview with The Washington Post, Keane explained his role as a comics creator and his understanding of the comics industry, by saying:
“We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment… On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can’t tell what you’re going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.”
It’s evident that the legendary comics writer and cartoonist was interested in presenting his own life through the interpretive lens of his craft. Keane even went on to say, “I never set out to be an evangelist… All I’m doing is showing the way religion touches a child’s life or family life.” Since Keane’s passing in 2011, his son Jeff has become the artist and writer for The Family Circus. The comic is still receiving new panels on the website Comics Kingdom, and some of these panels feature the Family Circus kids asking their parents if God will really be able to hear their praying even if he is far away in heaven.
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
Like Peanuts and The Family Circus, Calvin and Hobbes is fondly remembered, with its comic strips frequently appearing in online spaces and garnering thousands of likes and comments. Calvin and Hobbes was published during 1985-1995, and it gained significant popularity along with critical acclaim. Bill Watterson, the sole creator of the strip, won several Harvey Awards and Eisner Awards for his work. During the peak of its popularity in the final year of its publication, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in 2,400 newspapers, and compilations of the beloved comic strip were published as books. Since 2010, the comic series has amassed over 45 million book sales. Watterson has refrained from making new content featuring Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, and he also famously refused to merchandize his characters as well.
In general, the comics author has preferred to keep personal matters private, including his religious and spiritual beliefs. Unlike Schulz and Keane, Watterson attested that he was never affiliated with any kind of church. Because of this, it’s fair to assume Calvin and Hobbes did not include religious themes. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth—just look at the inspirations for the titular characters. Calvin’s name comes from John Calvin, a French theologian and pastor while Hobbes is named after Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher. In Watterson’s own words:
“Calvin is named for a sixteenth-century theologian who believed in predestination…I use Calvin as an outlet for my immaturity, as a way to keep myself curious about the natural world, as a way to ridicule my own obsessions, and as a way to comment on human nature…
Hobbes: Named after a seventeenth-century philosopher with a dim view of human nature…His reserve and tact seem very catlike to me, along with his barely contained pride in not being human. Like Calvin, I often prefer the company of animals to people, and Hobbes is my idea of an ideal friend.”
With such a philosophical background, it makes sense that Calvin and Hobbes branches out into a multitude of subjects, often covering religious and spiritual themes. Most of this commentary comes from Calvin, a bratty little boy with boundless questions that he typically reserves for his stuffed tiger, Hobbes. Calvin grapples with spiritual ideas while maintaining his own selfish and troublemaking opinions, yet his perspective is as childish as it is thought-provoking. The satirical nature and humor of Calvin’s character allows readers to more readily interpret the theological questions Calvin and Hobbes poses.
For Robert L. Short, an author and minister, he interpreted the titular characters of the comic as embodying parts of Christian ideology. Short is best known for his first book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, and in a Washington Post article he revealed that he had drafted a similar book that investigated Calvin and Hobbes. However, due to Watterson’s private nature, Short’s book was rejected. Yet, he delivered a lecture at the Falls Church Presbyterian Church in Virginia about this subject. Short interpreted the misbehaving Calvin as a “representation of imperfect man, laden with original sin” and regarded “the beatific Hobbes” as “the Christ figure” of the comic. Using comics in religious lectures was Short’s way of introducing new audiences and younger audiences to Christian theology, which proved to be quite successful. The church where he regaled audiences about the religious interpretations of Calvin and Hobbes was reported to be a full house.
Gary Larson, The Far Side
Gary Larson stands out from the previously mentioned creators due to his background in natural history. Larson created The Far Side, a single-panel comic that anthropomorphized animals and dumbed-down humans. Larson’s comic series was so successful that it was published in almost 2,000 newspapers. According to The Far Side’s official website, more than 41 million books and 79 million Far Side calendars have been sold. Larson’s comic series even inspired a museum exhibit! In 1985, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco featured four hundred of The Far Side comics in an exhibition. The exhibit was eventually showcased at the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History. Larson’s passion for the study of nature has been acknowledged many times by those in the scientific community. In the foreword to The Far Side Gallery 3, Larson was even called “the national humorist of natural history” by the late Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould.
Larson’s passion for natural sciences was evident through his work, but Far Side readers are no stranger to religious stories and spiritual concepts in the single-panel series. In fact, from a study of 4,337 Far Side comics published from 1980 to 1995, 233 of Larson’s comics focused on religious topics or themes in some way. The Far Side series portrays generic Christian elements like angels, heaven, the devil, and hell with a humorous and ironic twist. Biblical stories also appear in the menagerie of Far Side comics. Unsurprisingly, the biblical characters that Larson frequently included were Noah and God, as well as Adam and Eve.
The humor derived from these comics come from Larson subverting expectations of religious imagery and symbols. The Far Side’s God uses a computer, a hilariously average and every-day device, to perform his divine tasks. He also uses a stereotypical kitchen to “bake” the earth. Larson frequently made humorous panels set in hell, but he depicted the miserable place as more than just fire and brimstone. Instead, Larson sometimes drew strange and ultra-specific punishments for the souls who wound up in hell, with a strip from 1982 depicting a classical musician’s hell as a cramped room full of banjo players. In The Far Side, hell also receives prank pizza orders!
Larson’s comic series was controversial when it was being published in newspapers, particularly because the humor that carried The Far Side was blunt and ironic. His inclusion of religion and religious imagery caused angry reactions to the strip, with readers even threatening to boycott certain newspapers that carried The Far Side. Larson was quite self-aware about the difficulty of illustrating comic panels that included religious topics. In fact, in The PreHistory of The Far Side, Larson elaborated on his approach for first depicting God in a strip from 1984, in which God is winning in a fictional reality show called Trivia Tonight:
“Drawing God in any context, let alone a cartoon, poses some obvious risks… I was careful to do two things: First, I made God look the way I think most of us are pretty sure he looks. Secondly, I made sure he was really winning hands down. Even if Norman had only ten points it would have meant that he beat God to the buzzer at least once, and someone would have gotten mad.”
The biblical references and religious ideas presented in The Far Side are playful and humorous, clearly not intent on being informative and thought-provoking like the well-spoken Linus from Peanuts. Larson’s work demonstrates how humor is a positive force, capable of making hundreds of thousands of readers laugh. On internet forums that compile Far Side comics, fans often joke about the idea of God having a Larson comic hanging up in his office.
Let us know what some of your favorite comics with spiritual themes and religious humor are in the comments!