Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Christian Comics? It’s No Laughing Matter!

By Nate Butler
July 2006

Since 1996 COMIX35 has held over twenty-five Christian comics training workshops for more than seven hundred attendees representing forty-two countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.

Comics are read not only for entertainment, but are also used in sharing the gospel.

The COMIX35 training is not an introductory “how to draw” class or a seminar designed for artists only. Sessions cover: identifying your audience; plotting and scripting; storyboarding and visual storytelling; editing and art directing; and cultural, communication and evangelism strategy considerations. The seminar is “hands on” for the participants and there are opportunities to create short comic strips and tracts that can go into print when the training has ended. Afterward the staff of COMIX35 continues to consult with and provide follow-up for individuals and ministries working on Christian comics projects which resulted from each workshop.

COMIX35 has helped launch successful comics such as Dorie the Girl Nobody Loved in Eastern Europe; PowerMark in the US and Southeast Asia; and numerous smaller comic and cartoon tracts worldwide.

Millions of copies of Christian comics are already in circulation reaching children, youth and adults in orphanages, prisons, schools and on the streets in ways that other print literature cannot. 

And that is nothing to laugh at!

Nate Butler is president/cofounder of COMIX35. He worked for over twenty years as a cartoonist and writer/illustrator for clients such as Jim Henson, King Features and comic publishers DC, Archie and Marvel.