[Likely some in the AMV community know far more about this than I do, and I welcome their corrections and comments.] For the handful who may not know, works of fan fiction are derivative works created by fans of an original work, be it a book, film, TV show, cartoon, game, play, music, etc. Modern fan fiction is said to have begun with the 1967 Star Trek fan magazine Spockanalia, but it is also acknowledged that derivative works based on the characters of an original work or using the same setting as the original work have existed for ages. The bible has been a source of many “fan” works — much of the non-canonized apochrypha might be very similar to fan fiction, I suppose. And more recent works, such as Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880), fit the definition of biblical fan fiction quite well.

My first thought was to wonder about the Mormon connections with fan fiction. Are there many Mormons writing fan fiction? Are they writing about Mormon themes? Are Mormon characters appearing? Does fan fiction arise from Mormon works?

Historically, Mormon fiction has created derivative works that might be considered fan fiction in various ways. Some of the early stories published in LDS magazines, such as B. H. Roberts Corianton, are clearly derivative works from the Book of Mormon and no different from fan fiction. The tradition of writing derivative works on the Book of Mormon hasn’t really abated, as can be seen from more recent works, such as the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites series.

Still, none of this is quite like the Modern fan fiction phenomenon. So I did some simple (and admittedly not thorough) searches on a few of the major, non-work specific fan fiction archives, fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, trying to find Mormon works. And I did find some works, although not nearly as many as I had hoped.

The works largely mirrored what you might find in more formally published books. Many of the works simply mentioned Mormons as part of the text, such as an off-hand mention in dialogue. Infrequently others actually included a Mormon character. A few original works, such as South Park and the Book of Mormon Musical (yes, there is already fan fiction based on the Book of Mormon Musical), actually included Mormonism in the original work, and those characters and elements also appear in their fan fiction.

More interesting are the handful of fan fiction works that incorporate mormons or mormonism even though the original work doesn’t (for example, the short short story based on the TV show NCIS that explores what happens when character Anthony DiNozzo answers the door to find LDS missionaries, or the story by an LDS author that explores what happens when the Harry Potter villain Voldemort converts to the LDS Church through a kind of mashup with the film The Singles Ward).

Fanfiction.net even has a couple of stories that are based on the Book of Mormon itself. Blik writes a story about Abish, set about 110 B.C., which tries to parallel the story of Joseph Smith. And Beatlefan110’s story The Daughter of Ishmael looks at what happens when a non-member girl wakes up in Nephi’s time as one of Ishmael’s daughters.

Reading fan fiction does need to be approached with some caution. It has the reputation of being largely pornographic, although fanfiction.net claims to have eliminated any “NC17″ material and most of the large archives have rating systems for identifying the maturity level required. Since I didn’t look much at the archives and sites oriented toward a particular work (such as the many Star Trek and Harry Potter sites), I don’t know how common these ratings are or how well the ratings represent what is in the fiction. I can say that alternative lifestyles are common in this fiction, even if the work doesn’t rise to the level of pornography or of explicit nature.

I’m not sure what the relative lack of works about Mormonism means — although it is hard to say that it is different from the more traditional publishing venues. In books I don’t get the sense that Mormon-related (or even mormon-mentioning) works make up a very large percentage of the fiction published. In such a cursory look as this I have to wonder if the relatively few works that mention Mormons and Mormonism have to do with the popularity of the subject, or (at least in the world of fan fiction) with the popularity of the original works on which fan fiction is based. Could it also be that Mormons simply don’t think it is “appropriate” to write fan fiction based on Mormonism, or at least on the most “popular” of Mormon works, the Book of Mormon?

Where stories may not be about Mormons or Mormonism in general, there is plenty of fan fiction based on the works of Mormon authors. Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight garners more than 20,000 works on fanfiction.net and an additional 643 on archiveofourown.org and Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven has 30 works. And Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series yields some 310 works on fanfiction.net and 24 on archiveofourown.org.

Scott Card’s presence in these archives is very interesting, given the controversy that the Time magazine article discussed. While authors like Stephenie Meyer are encouraging of the efforts of fans to write fiction based on her characters and settings, Card sees such efforts as a violation of his copyright and a threat to his livelihood. Those who know Card’s works might see this as more than a little ironic, given that Card himself has written the Homecoming saga, which clearly derives its plot and characters from the Book of Mormon. I’m sure that Card will argue that he changed his characters sufficiently and placed them in such a different setting that what he wrote doesn’t qualify as fan fiction. If so, then I await further clarification from him, and, more importantly, from courts, as to exactly where the line is between fan fiction that violate the copyright law and permitted derivative works.

I’ve known Mister Tim for more than 5 years and witnessed many artistic incarnations. The earliest (for me) was as our ward choir director. Intense, focused, squinting with the effort of tweaking our voices into a semblance of harmony and with one ear always turned toward the choir Mister Tim–er, I mean, Brother Tim–did his own arrangements of hymns and sang all the music as if it were being performed for the first time every time. Ward members still talk about his performance of “O, Holy Night.”

The next incarnation, which he had been inhabiting since college, was Moosebutter. Like most college a cappella bands Moosebutter focused on and perfected the silliness inherent in singing “classic” music, like “Popcorn Popping”, with that characteristic BYU-comedy flair. They were big with the ten year olds and all their parents for being able to comically riff on everything from Harry Potter to Spam to Jon Williams (who is most definitely the man), for which they were nominated for a People’s Choice Award.

From there Mister Tim went on to work on the Vegas Strip and put together, manage, and perform in many other a cappella groups. When his stint in Vegas ended and he and his family rolled back into Colorado he came with yet another incarnation: Vocal Magic.

Vocal Magic is a multifaceted one man show that hinges on Mister Tim’s prodigious vocal textures, far-reaching vocal range, and his ability to work three sound effect pedals that enable to sing with himself and mix his voice in real time–a process called live looping. Part stand-up comedy, part poetry slam, and part performance art, Vocal Magic was like nothing I had ever seen before. My first thought: If T.S. Eliot could have sang and Allan Ginsberg had known how to beatbox and been stuck in one body, they could have been reincarnated as Mister Tim. Vocal Magic was like nothing I’d ever seen but it was definitely something I wished to see again.

Mr. Tim graciously agreed to be interviewed. His answers were thorough enough and thought-provoking enough that I split the interview into two parts. Here’s part one.

LHC: How are you feeling today? (Fuzzy, spacey, ???)

Mr. T: Perpendicular.

LHC: Tell me about the modern a cappella scene. Until I saw your show whenever I thought of a cappella I always thought of those guys from “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” How has a cappella grown and changed?

Mr. T:There is a great deal of detail and nuance to this answer. “A Cappella” to most people, I think, means Rockapella (Carmen San Diego), or a barbershop quartet, or a college group like BYU’s Vocal Point, or, more and more frequently, “GLEE” (even though there has only been one actual a cappella song on that show). But, even Rockapella, still touring the world 15 years after Carmen San Diego went off the air, is nothing like they were on that show: [now] they are a technology-dependent pop act. There are groups that use stacks and stacks of expensive sound gear, like Naturally 7 who are touring with Michael Buble.

Really there are three ways to define “a cappella”: 1) the most basic– meaning any music performed without
instruments, regardless of style (including when rock bands sing a section of their song without instruments, like the beginning of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”); 2) what seems to be the popular interpretation of a cappella, which is the Rockapella version, or the college a cappella version, or even the barbershop version, which carries a fragrance of dorkiness; 3) and “contemporary” a cappella, which is a movement of modern musicians doing modern music at a very high level, usually incorporating vocal percussion, and usually depending on technology to create the same auditory punch as a ‘real’ band.

My history in a cappella really follows the progression of contemporary a cappella. I listened to The King’s Singers (classical) in high school, saw BYU’s Vocal Point at one of BYU’s very first a cappella jams; I had friends bootlegging a cappella radio programs onto cassette tapes and passing them around; I was introduced, through rumor at first, to The House Jacks, and then by the late 90’s to m*pact. I started attending a cappella conferences, and growing less satisfied with the traditional a cappella standard and wanting… more. And there were groups doing more, and I gravitated to them. Then I started making my own groups, and have been skewing further and further from “traditional” a cappella since then, although I still keep the traditional stuff around because it makes $.

When most people call me wanting to hire “an a cappella group,” they want something like early 90’s Rockapella, or like a college group. Recognizable covers, bare-bones vocal sound, oftenthey want something a little corny (which is part of that old-school a cappella… thing).

LHC: What attracted you to live looping? How is it different from traditional a cappella?

Mr. T: My wife and I used to joke that I was constantly disappointed with the other singers in my groups because what I really wanted was for all the singers in my group to be me. Well, looping lets me do that! I get to sing everything just the way I want it sung, and I don’t have to wait for other people to learn their parts.

Other reasons I started live-looping: a) I want to go out and perform as often as possible, but couldn’t get the other people in my groups to go all the time; b) There are lots of paid shows that come up that don’t pay enough for a whole group, but are good money for just one person; c) I saw other people do it, and it looked like fun.

But, one of the biggest factors: I love teaching. I love teaching. The problem with the kind of teaching I do, where I drop in and talk to kids in their regular music classes, or in assemblies, or at music festivals, is that if they don’t know who I am, they don’t care about what I have to say. If I’m there with a group, they hear the group sing, they think it’s cool, then they’ll listen. But I want to be teaching as often as possible, visiting classes, flying out to music festivals, showing up at concerts. I can’t afford to fly a whole group out to these kinds of things for free, which most of them demand (even the big a cappella festivals where I teach I have to pay my own way there unless I’m one of the headline performers). But now that I’ve got a solo act, I can drop in on a class with my small sound system that takes less than 5 minutes to set up, sing a couple of songs,
the kids think it’s cool, and then when I speak, my words matter. It’s a pedagogical thing.

Artistically, what attracts me now to continue live-looping is that it really is rare to have one person doing looping with just the voice. Novelty factor, and if done well and if we find the market I’ve got a corner on the market. I do enjoy the constraints: a lot of my material has developed to address specific issues of how to keep the show from being boring, dealing with the repetitive nature of the loop, not being able to change the music once it’s laid down without completely starting over. Limiting, yes, but has forced me to adapt in ways and to develop new approaches to my performing that I think have greatly improved the overall impact of my
performance.

LHC: I know you’re a fan of all types of music, but what musicians and songs/works have stuck with you over the years?

Mr. T: The 3 B’s: Bach, Beethoven, Barenaked Ladies (I don’t like Brahms); Midnight Oil; Kingston Trio; Manheim Steamroller; Spike Jones; Weird Al Yankovic; Alan Sherman; Smothers Brothers; Brandon Flowers; John Adams

To be continued, but while you are waiting feel free to enjoy this:

Neon Trees had a big 2010. After getting plucked from the Provo music scene to tour with The Killers in 2008, they finally dropped their first studio album Habits (Amazon) with plenty of buzz and exposure. First single “Animal” went platinum, and after hearing it a zillion times I grew to quite like it and bought the album which spent weeks in our car on repeat. Second single “1983″ has not done as well (speaking sales; it’s on San Francisco radio nonstop), but every song on Habits sounds like a hit and I imagine we’ll be hearing more from Neon Trees at busstops and clubs around the world for years to come.

In case you’re not hip to their jive, man, here’s what they sound like, both album and live:

Animal video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7Hlg75Mlo

Animal live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=05sL30VqSIs

1983 video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j51LRUjIdnE

1983 live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-B1HbUBZ6Q

I haven’t heard any rumors yet so maybe they don’t exist yet, but I can predict them for you right now. You can’t be a successful rocker with hair like that and not have Certain People saying nasty things about you and your relationship to the faith. But let’s help prevent such rumors now. Here’s a good place to start: quote this.

But mohawks aside, their songs’ subject matter is what might make those Certain People most skittish. Their songs are, dare I say, pretty typical pop fair about love and clubs and good times. They’re good enough lyrics I suppose, but making an argument that they’re “holy” will be rather tough. Yet we seem to have this idea—and by “we” I don’t mean Mormons but Americans in general and perhaps moderns in general—that song lyrics are inherently autobiographical. We’re enlightened enough to never accuse a novelist of living as he writes, but we’re perfectly happy to do it to songwriters. Silly, I know, but we all do it. Admit it. When a songster writes about Activity X, we all assume they engage in Activity X.

So let’s start a new trend and give Neon Trees the same leeway we give, say, Orson Scott Card, and not accuse them of really hitting on girls who talk cheap in a bathroom stall.

That said, Habits is still hardly great art. What’s it saying, anyway? I mean, yeah, you can host a party with this album and a bag of pretzels, but is there much going on under the surface? I’m gonna say no.

But, as I said, 2010 was great for Neon Trees and I have a lot of faith in their ability to stay on the charts with their next album and the one after that. Sure, times may change and they may prove inflexible, and yes I may be getting waaay ahead of things here, but I really think Neon Trees have a shot to be one of those bands that lasts. I hope this proves to be the case, because I have a dream for the future of Mormon arts and that dream is Neon Tree’s 2025 album. This album will get stellar reviews from Rolling Stone and junior high girls. It will be called “thoughtful” and “smart” and “deep and moving”, and it will rock just as hard as what they did way back in 2010, and it will say profound things from a distinctly Mormon vantage point without alienating their broad fanbase. They might still have hair that makes them want to wear a hat to sacrament meeting, but we’ll all feel proud that they’ve come out of our shared cultural and spiritual tradition—we’ll be happy to own them and they’ll be happy to own us.

And who knows. It may not even take that long. Brandon Flowers has already gone from “she’s touching his chest now / He takes off her dress now” to an entirely and intentionally spiritual album (Amazon).

2025.

By then we should be well represented by artists at the top of all fields, don’t you think? Even rock and roll.

Man. I can’t wait to hear that album.

.

I imagine the first thing that comes to the average mind when one mentions Mike or Laura Allred, together or separately, is Madman, Mike’s mid-Nineties comics creation that has lived long and is one of the most brilliant comics on shelves even today.

In Mormon circles, they are probably better known for The Golden Plates, their Book of Mormon adaptation.

For both these works, the writing and drawing is done by Mike, with colors by Laura. But their careers stretch far beyond these two titles, deep into the world of popular comics. Mike’s retro-pop stylings are in high demand (look for a collaboration with Neil Gaiman, coming soon) and Laura’s zowie colors for numerous popular titles have won her fan awards time and again. Check out these resumes: (Mike), (Laura).

Speaking as a devout student of Mormon comics, few artists’ work provides as much opportunity for in-depth consideration as that of the Allreds. As time goes on, their Mormonness becomes more and more obvious. In their most recent Madman collection, for instance, they take a look at everything from premortality to polygamy to Johnny Lingo.

They’re a busy couple of people between their art and their music and the maybe-Robert-Rodriguez-will-finally-make-it-this-year Madman movie, but they graciously agreed to be part of the Couple-Creators series.

*

Q: Were you both creators before meeting each other? Did creation play a role in bringing you together? How does creating together impact your marriage?

We met at BYU-Idaho and were both in the art department. So, we’ve always had that connection.

We were originally worried about getting sick of each other working together full-time, but it’s only brought us closer together.

*

Q: Since Michael seems to get hit up for more interviews than Laura, the general impression online is that projects you work on together are purely his ideas. How accurate is this?

Very.

I’ll give him input, but he really does do pretty much everything except selecting the colors.

*

Q: The Golden Plates. Doing that project seems like a financial risk and, sadly, it wasn’t a big hit. How did you discuss this project ahead of time, and was that discussion different than previous deciding-to-do-a-project discussions? What sort of strain did its lackluster sales cause? How likely are you to return to either that project or the Joseph Smith bio?

First off, it actually was a huge hit. But not big enough to sustain us financially given the time needed to do it right. So, we simply have to find time to do it when we can. We’re confident once we manage an efficient schedule that it will pick up steam.

*

Q: Speaking of, what is the relationship between faith, art and spouse?

It just is. We don’t have the words to express that answer correctly.

*

Q: Of course, you both work on projects apart from each other as well as working together — why is it important to take those jobs?

It’s always good to stretch on outside projects. That’s where we’ll find new inspiration to progress with different techniques and approaches.

*

Q: Speaking of, artistically, what are the advantages of working on properties owned by other people?

New perspectives.

*

Q: How is it different, working together as opposed to working with other people?

Together we have a rhythm and a comfort zone that can’t be matched.

*

Q: I know you’ve worked with Mike’s brother Lee. Have you involved other family members in projects as well? How does that turn out?

Our children have created characters or done small coloring jobs and stuff. It’s just extra fun.

*

Q: How do you balance family and art? Do you think it is easier or harder to be parents, you both being professional creatives? How do your careers affect your children?

We would just say it allows us to involve our children more in what we do, and they’re all creative too in music and art. And working at home just brings us closer together.

*

Q: At the beginning of your careers, before you were The Famous Allreds, how did you balance art with more mundane needs like rent?

We just plugged away. It’s not much different now except…

*

Q: How has success changed your approaches to art?

…we have more confidence and it’s a little easier to get things done.

*

Q: How has success changed your relationship with each other?

Simply more comfort, less stress.

*

Q: I hear Laura is, first and foremost, a painter. Which begs the question: in addition to comics, what else are you two up to in terms of Fab Art?

Not much lately. I have my hands full with our regular work and spend as much time with the kids as we can.

*

Q: Any advice for Mormon artist couples like yourselves?

Just don’t be afraid to spend more time together. We love it!

Or maybe you’re just indifferent.

Whatever the case, I don’t think Stephenie Meyer’s going away any time soon; and with the highly anticipated release of Summit Entertainment’s Film—coming tomorrow to a theater near you!—it’s increasingly difficult to escape the hype.

In mid-September, Ellen Degeneres had Meyer on her show to talk Twilight (though they didn’t discuss anything that hadn’t already been said and that’s not readily available on Meyer’s website). Last week, Entertainment Weekly dubbed Meyer “Entertainer of the Year” and roughly two weeks before that, they headlined an in-depth interview with the writer “about the Rob Pattinson casting controversy, Breaking Dawn’s mixed reception, the deal with Edward and Bella’s big [onscreen] kiss, and what she’s working on next.” And this past weekend, USA Weekend’s featured story was “Twilight: The Story Behind this Season’s Biggest Page-to-Screen Sensation” in which Brian Truitt calls Meyer “publishing’s newest literary superstar.”

As a student of (Mormon) literature and culture, as a cultural/literary critic, and in my capacity as creator and editor (with Laura) of Reading Until Dawn, an online literary journal devoted to discussing Meyer and her work (still soliciting submissions, by the way!), this cultural excitement/investment/passion (however you choose to see it) intrigues—and baffles—me. Hence, when Truitt asks, “What […] is the appeal of [Meyer’s] […] dark vampire tales?”, I can’t be completely content with the answer he gives us (right from Meyer’s mouth): “We love to be scared,” she says. “But most of the monsters that you see are disgusting. They are usually oozing something. Vampires are the only ones who are dangerous and scary, and, at the same time, they’re hot.”

Aside from vampires being, in Meyer’s eyes, non-disgusting, non-oozing monsters that are, at the same time, dangerous, scary, and hot, what rests beneath our cultural fascination with Twilight? In my introduction to the first edition of Reading Until Dawn, I point to the realism of the novels’ world and to their “narcotic effect” on readers—on the “physiological response” they seem to evoke. And in a short article that’s docketed for the Summer ’09 issue of Dialogue, I intimate the story’s ties to the always popular Gothic tradition, briefly reading Meyer’s vampires against Freud’s notion of the uncanny, a psychological concept that ties deeply to our experiences with the literarily sublime and the emotion of terror. In addition, William points to the erotic attraction of the books.

In honor (as it were) of Twilight’s birth into cinematic reality, what do you AMV readers think? What rests beneath the incessant appeal of Meyer’s world?

According to Radosh, “the breakdown [into these three groups] is not along aesthetic style lines, and any of the CCM camps can accommodate pretty much any musical style.” Rather, the three groups are each defined by their views of popular culture and the relationship between their work and the larger culture. I’ll outline the three genres and then provide a bit of analysis in relation to the Mormon market.

Separational

Quoting Howard: “Separational contemporary Christian music takes the viewpoint that the surrounding culture is evil. So therefore, what Christians ar ecalled on to do is to come out and be separate, and then to convert other people so they can come out and be separate.”

This is the form of music that has long dominated the Christian market. Because it is aesthetically neutral, the “most effective strategy for accomplishing [its] goals is to create music that mimics whatever styles are most popular in the mainstream.” The idea is to lure non-Christians into the fold and to provide alternatives for Christians. The emphasis is on the message.

Integrational

According to Howard, integrational artists see themselves as entertainers rather than ministers. “So rather than writing this come out, you must be converted music, you simply present a wholesome alternative to the Madonnas and Marilyn Mansons of the world. You don’t have to be in-your-face religious, and you might even record a whole CD without a reference to Jesus or God. It’s more what’s missing that defines it.”

As Radosh notes, this group “traffics … heavily in God-is-my-girlfriend” songs. That is, songs about love, but that with some slight pronoun/word changes could be about Jesus. These are the artists with the most potential for crossover success. Think Amy Grant or Switchfoot or Reliant K. And although they are looked down on by hard core separationists, they would argue that because of their intergrational appeal they can actually be more effective when it comes to saving people and providing wholesome entertainment that is enjoyed by many.

Transformational

Howard again: Transformational music is “music stripped of its utilitarian purposes and rendered valuable only through its ability to manifest both truth and quality. Art no longer serves religion but is drawn inextricably into it.” Of course, this is the music that Howard prefers so one should take that in to account when evaluating his critical schema. And I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised (along with Radosh) to discover that this music actually has enough of a fan base that it is featured at the Christian music festival Cornerstone (although even there it is somewhat controversial for some — and Cornerstone is nowhere near the biggest of the CCM festivals).

Howard says, “Transformational is much more about getting people to ask the right questions, rather than trying to provide all the right answers.”

A Brief Analysis

I’m not very well-versed in the LDS music scene, but I don’t think that Mormon market parallels these three genres as cleanly as I had first thought. I think a big part of that is that the Mormon market just isn’t big enough to accommodate the three approaches. I also think that there is much less pressure on artists to directly proselyte (or witness, to use the Christian) term. Mormon inspirational music isn’t super seperational, and much of the popular music leans more towards the integrational, I think.

And also because of the smallness of the market, Mormon music is fairly narrow in terms of aesthetics. For example, other than Mark Hansen, then aren’t a whole lot of rockers going for the Mormon market.

And yet, even though the Mormon market doesn’t line up exactly, I do think that the three tensions about what art should do can absolutely be found in LDS culture. This is why you get the occasional flareups between the LDS fiction readers/writers and the Mormon fiction readers/writers **.

I don’t have any amazingly insightful conclusion to toss out here. But I do think that it might be useful to take these three CCM genres as a starting place for examining and discussing Mormon cultural production.  I don’t think that those who are solidly in one camp or another are going to not think that their approach is best. But if we were perhaps more clear on who we were trying to serve and how and why, it might lead to some understanding among those involved in the Mormon market.

—-

*Christian Contemporary Music; all quotes are from pages 164-170.

**I just made that distinction up. It’s not something I really want to push, though. In fact, I think I’ll explore why that is in a future post.

I’m also going to make you click through for the full post because the “more” tag seems to be causing some problems with the special formatting for the post.

.

This is going to be a post long enough that it risks breaking that tacit understanding between bloggers and readers: “This really won’t take you that long. I swear.”

In order to alleviate your sense of “This really might take that long,” I have chopped this post into sections and provided a table of contents wherewith you may click on ahead to the portions that interest you and comment thereupon. You should not feel you have to read the whole thing to start commenting. If you have lots to say about Mormon Superheros and couldn’t care less about who’s who in the funny papers, comment on Mormon Superheros and ignore the funnies entirely. Fair enough?

Let’s start with a couple definitions, then I’ll give you the ToC.

So. Comics. How do we define this term? The easy way: we do what everyone else does and agree with Scott McCloud’s definition of comics. Which is:

I know Motley Vision readers are a bright crowd so I’m not going to insult you by overexplaining this definition. But I do insist on pointing out what still isn’t obvious to everyone, viz. there is nothing in this definition about blue pajamas or fuzzy animals. And if you have never read Understanding Comics (from where these images were taken), I insist you click on the picture above and sail over to Amazon and buy a copy for your home library. There’s a very good reason this book has become a required college course in many disciplines other than “mere” comics.

But before we go, can we add a touch more clarification to that definition, Mr McCloud?

Thank you. That’s the definition I’ll be using and even though I know some of my examples will stretch what most people are willing to call comics, I think you’ll be surprised by the comics legacy we see in Mormon Arts.

(Note: the spelling of comix in the title is a holdover from this stuff. Art Spiegelman has taken to using it more generically and although I like the sentiment, it’s never going to catch on. Still. It’s a good-looking word. Perfect for titles.)

Table of Contents

Theric’s Credentials and Disclaimers

Mormon Panorama

Galleries and Temples

Newspaper Comics

Mormon Superheros

Mormons in the Superhero Business

The Book of Mormon Stuff

Wild and Crazy People at The Friend

Other Print Comics

Webcomics

Closing Remarks in Bold Type So You Know They’re Important

The End

Theric’s Credentials and Disclaimers

I love the comics form. I read a lot of comics. If it’s my taste you’re concerned about, this post gives you a sense of what I like.

But today’s post has little to do with taste or anything else. I’m just trying to get a sense of what has gone before. What qualifies me for this? I can use Google, I guess. I have an idea where to look and who to ask. I dunno. No one’s really qualified to write the definitive monograph on Mormon comics. Best we know, I’m the best we’ve got. Sorry.

Mormon Panorama

Carl Christian Anton Christensen, a Danish man who converted in 1850, was one of the first notable Mormon artists. His Handcart Pioneers is “the most widely published painting of the Mormon pioneer experience by an actual pioneer.”

The other thing he is well-known for is Mormon Panorama, a series of twenty-three paintings depicting early Church history. Panoramas were popular at the time. The idea is, you get one long painting (or, as in this case, a series of paintings) and make it into a circle and people can stand inside and ooh and aah. Christensen took Mormon Panarama on the road and people took in his juxtaposed pictorial images in deliberate sequence and had an experience with art. Voila. The first Mormon comics.

Here are the fourteenth and fifteenth paintings in the sequence, depicting Carthage Jail. (Please note that here, as in future images, I have set them up so that if you click on them, you will be taken to where I obtained the images.)

Galleries and Temples

I hope starting with sequential paintings isn’t stretching our definition of comics too far for anyone. I think looking past the newsprint stereotype and seeing how the artistic strengths that are comics are applied in nonprint media is a great way to get us thinking about how comics work and the potential they have in the specific arena of Mormon Arts. Again, I can’t recommend McCloud’s Understanding Comics enough to anyone interested in the artform.

We’ll be sticking with paintings for a little while longer, and next up is your favorite and mine, Minerva Teichert.

Teichert’s Book of Mormon series (only recently discussed here) was up on public display my entire time as a BYU student in the religion building. I had seen few of these paintings before, but I had many opportunities to study them 1999-2002. They are beautiful. Teichert is one of the great American artists of the last century and eventually everyone will realize that, I’m certain. Take a look at Nephi and his brothers bringing in their treasure and then, later that night, when his brothers bring Nephi a little something all their own:



Teichert wasn’t the first to tackle a whole series of Book of Mormon paintings (Christensen did it), nor would she be the last. I myself have seen the Arnold Friberg series at the Conference Center and Walter Rane’s more recent series at the L.A. Temple’s Visitors Center. The paintings are arranged chronologically. Or, in other words, they were juxtaposed in a deliberate sequence. The Church was making use of the strengths of sequential images to teach the Book of Mormon.

Of course, dealing with the entire Book of Mormon in only a few images is not the sort of storytelling comics is best known for. Nor, would I argue, is it its strength. But the Book of Mormon has consistently been a favorite place for Mormon comics artists to draw from. We’ll look into this more a little further down.

But before we leave the so-called fine arts behind, we need to talk about one more set of sequenced images: temple murals.

First a set of images representing Creation; often one part of the room representing an earlier portion of Creation than another. Then what? Another room. Then another. Each representing a part of the story. The images are static. They are there more for meditative purposes than as set dressing (I would argue) and they are comics. Comics on a grand and sacred scale.

Newspaper Comics

From the sacred to the funny pages.

Frankly, I’m surprised I couldn’t dig up any more Mormon cartoonists than I did. It’s a big field and I seem to remember there’s an editorial cartoonist in . . . Atlanta? who’s Mormon, but I didn’t find all that much. Sorry.

The big cheese in this category is Brian Crane whose Pickles is widely syndicated. LDS readers eventually catch on as Crane is fond of putting pictures of temples on his characters’ walls and they sometimes read the Ensign. Other than that, the Pickles could be any pleasant American family. I apologize for not having a better image for you, but this is the best currently online at comics.com (look in the first panel):



Actual Mormon-themed newspaper comics have existed in the past. I know Church schools have published some, but even with the assistance of the mighty 100 Hour Board I was only barely able to come up with one BYU comic and, as it was called PhD and later syndicated, I’m going to guess it wasn’t particularly Mormoncentric. The artist, Aaron Taylor, later went on to work as an editorial cartoonist for the Daily Herald (Provo/Orem) until recently.

The other person we must mention is Pat Bagley (not to be confused with cartoonist Val Chadwick Bagley, whose style has become the defacto look for Mormon funny pictures. That Bagley’s a brand unto himself. I, for instance, play Go Fish with my four-year-old on cards with VC Bagley’s drawing of Lehi, Lamoni, cureloms and cumoms.)

Something I find fascinating about the Bagleys is that despite an apparently widespread confusion, both have been successful in Mormonland (Val particularly, but Pat’s I Spy a Nephite is no slouch) while, at the same time, Pat’s presenting a political viewpoint at Mormonland’s gentile paper that doesn’t match the stereotyped Utah Mormon’s presumed viewpoint. I think this can only be interpreted in good ways.

Mormon Superheros

• Madman is apparently Mormon as well. Even back in the ’90s, Madman was being stalked by “the Three Nephites,” which Mormons will recognize as a reference to Book of Mormon-related folk myth. More recently, his archenemy Monstadt tried to corrupt him by paraphrasing dialogue spoken by the Satan character in the LDS temple ceremony. Madman sang the oddball Mormon hymn “If You Could Hie to Kolob” to himself after being blasted into outer space. And in the March issue, Madman even (spoilers!) got married, kneeling at an altar across from his bride, while an alien performed the ceremony. This may be an unusual way for most Earthlings to marry, but it does closely resemble the “sealing” ceremony used to perform marriages in Mormon temples. Um, minus the aliens.

When Mr Morris first suggested this topic to me, I wrote my go-to guy on all things comics. He didn’t have any Mormonspecific information to add to my information, but he did send me to this post by Ken Jennings. I was already aware of adherents.com’s comic-book religion page, but I had forgotten all about it and was astonished, now that I was looking, how many Mormon (or possibly Mormon) characters there are.

I won’t discuss them all here, but I encourage you to follow the link and take a look at people like Captain Canuck (co-created by Mormon Richard Comely) that I will be ignoring.



The character I find most fascinating is Michael Allred’s Madman (we’ll talk more about Allred later). To quote Mr Jennings:

I wish I owned these books. Madman has leapt to the top of my must-find pile. As it is, I have no scans of Madman’s wedding; instead, I give you this:



One of the big event storylines in mainstream comics was Marvel’s Civil War. I didn’t read it; I don’t read a lot of superhero comics anyway and this would have been an investment of time and energy (and money) I did not have. But apparently, each state got it’s own superhero team–even Utah:



Marvel fans never got to meet this team, but if the information’s in a file somewhere, I would love to know their names.

However. While the existence of Mormon characters like Dr. Deseret in superherodom is fascinating, the fact is, to the best of my knowledge, the concept of a straight-up Mormon hero has not been pursued very far, if at all. Pity.

Mormons in the Superhero Business

• This guy pops up everywhere, doesn’t he? He’s showing up here because he wrote Marvel’s Ultimate recreation of Iron Man.
  Captain Canuck may sound like a joke to us elitist Americans, but he’s big news in his native north. He was on a postage stamp and the Canadian version of Time. According to his creator, he’s particularly Canadian because “He’s against using firearms, which is somewhat Canadian, he’s more mild-mannered even when in costume, more polite, taps his own maple syrup… he’s more tolerant and unassuming” (source). In this portion of our discussion, however, we’re much more interested in his creator’s Mormonness and his work in the comics industry. Best I can tell, he’s been successful in the Canadian industry, but his work hasn’t traveled south much. So there you go.
  I’m hesitant to mention this guy. He’s so far removed from his time as a Mormon that he thinks he was baptized at age seven. Following him around the web, I get the sense that he’s hostile to his Mormon connection, so I’ll just leave him alone.
  This writer’s done some work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I haven’t seen it, but if, when you think TMNT, you think silly movies and Saturday-morning cartoons, you don’t know the artistry of the original creators–even when they were being silly), Marvel and with a friend to create something called Runestone. But, if I’m not mistaken, he doesn’t have more than a couple publication credits to his name.
  Now we’re getting into some famous people. This is the gentleman whose fault it is that so many fans think Power Pack is Mormon.

  Vellutto is an Italian immigrant to America and the first thing that strikes me about him as I read his interviews is how, once you know he’s Mormon, it seems so obvious. He says things like “‘you know what’ is paved with good intentions” (source) ask him if he prefers his coffee decaffeinated or straight up and he’ll say, “Actually my quandary is meat or spinach Lasagna” (source). He’s very deft.

  Vellutto has worked all over the industry (his resume), including the same TMNT series as Quinn Johnson (but not the same issue) and such bigshots as Captain America, X-Men, Silver Surfer, Batman, the Green Hornet, Flash, Justice League, Green Lantern, Aquaman–you get the idea. Vellutto is a known quantity in the world of the superheros.

  

  His distinctly Mormon work will come up later; for now, suffice it to say he’s a man with a reputation, lots of titles to his credit, and thoroughly LDS.

  Yes, there are more than one.

  Mike seems to be the head of this clan. His brother Lee is better known for his prose work in science fiction, but has contributed a thing or two to the Madman universe. Laura Allred is an award-winning colorist best known for her work on her husband’s books (although it would be a mistake to say that is all she has done; her work ranges from Spider-Man to Fables and is quite the corpus). (If you’re not familiar with the highly specialized world of modern superhero comics such as what a ‘colorist’ does), a nice, brief primer can be found here.)

  And so it seems that all the Allreds’ work finds genesis in Mike’s brain. If this is incorrect or highly insulting, I hope someone in the know will correct me.

  Mike’s done work on comics from Catwoman to the Powerpuff Girls, but he’s most interesting for being part of the creative-ownership revolution in the 1990s. Comics artists were tired of creating something awesome like Batman and then seeing suits roll in batmoney while they continued working for a measly batsalary. Mike Allred’s Madman was one of the vanguard of creator-owned characters who shook things up and permanently changed the industry.

  

  Hooray for Madman. (Movie rumored to be coming soon for over ten years now.)

  (Speaking of movies, Mike Allred wrote G-Men from Hell, which movie I have an unwatched copy of somewhere in the garage. I need to find that thing.)

We’ll come to that Allred of the Kolob-singing Madman in a moment; first I want to discuss the other Mormons in the business that I’ve uncovered.

Orson Scott Card

Richard Comely

Rick Remender

Quinn Johnson

Sal Vellutto

Them Allreds

The Book of Mormon Stuff

Speaking of the Allreds, easily the biggest announcement in Mormon comics ever was when he told the world he was giving up his high-paying gigs to adapt the Book of Mormon to the comics form. This led to all sorts of debate and expected laments like “I didn’t know he was a cultist.”



One of my great regrets as a consumer is that I didn’t buy a copy of The Golden Plates when it was at my local comics store. When I went back for it, it was gone. At any rate, Mike has had to discontinue the series at three due to poor sales (he’s publishing them himself) and if you’re a Mormon comics fan sitting on a wad of cash, I imagine he’ld love to talk to you. (Note: he also has plans for books of Jesus and Joseph Smith, so feel free to throw money at those projects as well.)

There are no shortage of Book of Mormon-based comics (the earliest I found was Eileen Chabott Wendel’s 1960 Nephi the Valiant published by Deseret Book), which makes sense as the book is the foundational document on which our entire culture is built. Even the Church has gotten involved: no less than Mike Allred counts Book of Mormon Stories as on influence on his own adaptation.



In response to (or annoyance with) the Allred version, Corey and Douglas Peery started their own comics adaptation. To the best of my knowledge, Book of Mormon Heroes moved even fewer books than The Golden Plates. I have theories as to why neither has done that well, but they’ll have to wait for a later post.



In the meantime, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Wild and Crazy People at The Friend

• Cypher begins in a dark and obscure future America with an unfortunate nameless hero. He lives in a world of ever-present anxiety and dread where those around him are more sophisticated and stranger than him. They seem to know secrets that he just doesn’t understand.

  The unnamed protagonist soon realizes that the symbols surrounding him explain the meaning of life. He is plucked from his mundane existence and shown first-hand how bizarre this world can be if you peer beneath the surface.

I know, I know: how often do the words “wild” and “crazy” apply to The Friend? But that magazine is one of the few outlets (maybe the only outlet) of regularly occurring Mormon-themed comics. But let’s start by dispensing with the nonwild&crazies.

Sal Velluto you know. Here’s he’s working with somebody named Eugenio Mattozzi (about whom I have uncovered nothing) to comicsize the lives of the prophets. If you get the friend, you’ve noticed their work over the past view years. Pretty good stuff. A little Friend-bland, but overall, not bad.



The writer of this next piece (from last January’s Friend is regular Friend contributor and successful romance novelist Jane McBride Choate (assuming there is only one Jane McBride Choate). Drawn by regular Friend illustrator Elise Black (this Elise Black, not this one). To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing wild nor crazy about either of them.



Now. Wild and crazy.

Shauna Mooney Kawasaki’s drawing style has become one of the most recognizable in all Mormondom. Until recently, she ran The Friend’s art department and her mark still is omnipresent, notably in the regular “Matt and Mandy” comics.



Sadly, Kawasaki has not published any Mormon comics outside The Friend. Her style, which I imagine many in the Mormon Arts community dismiss, is capable of much more than you might think.

A few years ago she had a solo show at the gallery in the Provo Library. Her trademark ink-and-colored-pencils style was applied to delightfully grotesque monsters and other assorted horrors. It was one of the most enjoyable shows I have ever seen. Seeing this classic Friend style applied to the headless and fanged was quite the disconnect. Sadly, this aspect of Kawasaki is little known. There are a couple of nationally published books (1 and 2) that hint at it, but nothing quite like what I saw in Provo.

I would love nothing more than to write a charming horror script for Kawasaki to illustrate. Someday, in fact, I hope I have a book of grotesqueries that will be perfect to send her way for illustrations. Please, Mrs Kawasaki! Make us a book! Let your wild and crazy side roam free!

Brad Teare is our next wild and crazy. He is currently working as The Friend’s senior designer and his woodcut illustrations make regular appearances (example). But in outside the insular world of church magazines, Teare works making everything from corporate comics to adaptations of classic books.



But Teare is probably best known for his apparently very strange book Cypher.

The book is famously weird and parts of it first appeared in Heavy Metal (no further qualifications for wild and crazy required, thank you).

My only problem with Cypher (besides the fact that I haven’t read it yet) is that Teare hasn’t published another book since its release over ten years ago. What gives, Mr Teare? Have you found us wanting? (Note: his wife is also a painter, but I don’t think she’s done any comics.)



I think (and again, this is part of a future post) that one of the smaller LDS publishers needs to solicit these artists for stories and print a collection. I for one want to see what they are capable of.

Other Print Comics

In brief:

“The Mormon Battalion” was a six-page sequence in Our Fighting Forces #135, 1972, by Ric Estrada (not LDS, presumably).

A comics adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Red Prophet, originally based itself on Joseph Smith. Currently at your local Barnes and Noble.



We can fairly safely assume Joan Hilty’s not LDS, but Zion, her “Mormon-Jewish teenage love story set in southwest Utah,” is one of the few stories with Mormon characters I know of by a major author in the alternative press.



I can’t swear to you that Jake Parker is Mormon, but he attended BYU, making it 98% likely. (And, given he’s from Arizona, probably even higher). He’s been published in the popular Flight anthologies. Plus, his “language problem” seems very Mormon, don’t you think?



Just last week, Newbury-winning LDS writer Shannon Hale’s new book, a graphic novel, was released. Cowritten with her husband Dean and illustrated by Nathan Hale (no relation, although his wife also helped making the book–I think that Hale pair are also LDS). I’m looking forward to reading it–looks like a fun take on the Rapunzel story.



Last but not least, Annie Poon. I just recently discovered this woman (and I’m a little irritated she doesn’t sell DVDs of her animation) but she makes and sells comics, much of which are available (in whole or in part) online. I’m most fascinated by her Eve story (but then, I always love a good Adam-and-Eve story).

Webcomics

Most of the comics work by Mormons online is typical of its type. A few Mormon-penned examples that are typical of their online genre include Schlock Mercenary (science fiction) and Lin Christian-Foxxer’s work (cute animals). Nick Perkins’s “Cooties” (first strip here) is about kids in crazy situations (day one: alien invasion). Digital Strips is allegedly written by its characters, one of whom is Mormon (?). Jake Parker (mentioned above) has work online in the form of a prelude to LDS filmmaker Kohl Glass’s film The Promethean. Glass himself has work online (although they may be storyboards) (but what are storyboards if not comics?). Then there’s “the Little Mormon/Amish Girl” (presumably not created by a Mormon/Amish artist) and things like this:



So what do we have in webcomics that represents the Mormon experience? Well, there’s this (although it’s not really comics, just some cartoons), but what really asks for our attention are Gleaners and Pew People.

Gleaners, strip by strip, tells a missionary experience, starting at the MTC:



I’m intrigued by Gleaners, but every time I visit, the site seems to be on the blink. I don’t know how far the story has traveled from that first day in the MTC–I hope some distance, but I can’t see. I hope you will all click on the strip above and see if you can make it work. The strip has potential, but I can see so little of it, I don’t know how much.

Pew People, on the other hand, is less story, more jokes. But I like it. (Well, some of it. But it’s definitely worth a look. Click and explore.)

Closing Remarks in Bold Type So You Know They’re Important

Please, if you have contact information about any writers or artists in the Mormon Comics Scene (mentioned here or not), please invite them to our discussion in the comments section. I will be trying to invite as many of them as I can to our discussion myself, and, with your help, maybe we can get some input from people with on-the-ground experience.

Also, anything that’s happening (or has happened in the past) in Mormon comics, please share. By virtue of writing this post I’m probably the world’s leading expert (main competitor), but I still don’t feel like this WLE really knows very much. I’m sure there’s more to see and read and know. For instance, as Mr Larsen recently posted, I know nothing about, say Mormon manga. Or the 24-hour-comic some French kid did for his Paris singles ward’s New Year’s dance. But I would like to. This post is only the beginning; I don’t believe for a second that it’s comprehensive.

Mr Morris wants me to write about the direction of Mormon comics. My opinion’s great, but what about the opinion of people who actually make comics? And what about your opinion. I’m listening.

As with movies, books, and music, I enjoy a good video game. Note that I said, “good.” I’ve known a few developers in my time and, having worked in the Disney animation studios, I have a deep respect for the commitment those long projects require. To them, it is an art form. Much of the attention paid to video games concerns the violence involved (and there’s no doubt that there’s plenty of it), but like the aforementioned arts, I believe there is good mixed in with the bad. In fact, my wife (not a big fan of gaming) noted that I only really play games that have a good story. She’s right. To me, video games can represent a sort of interactive story experience.

Whether one likes games or gaming isn’t really the point. The point is two-fold. First, that with billions of dollars in revenue yearly, video games are here to stay. Secondly, as technology increases and games develop, they become much more complex. Just as movies have evolved from the kinetoscope fare of the early twentieth century, so too have games moved on from progenitors such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man. I had the opportunity a few years ago to meet the lead developer of Assassin’s Creed for a demonstration of the game two years before its release. At the time, he took us through a virtual tour of the Dark Age, Middle Eastern city of Acre. His programmers, artists, and developers had done-painstaking research to recreate “brick for brick” the city as it had existed at that time (they did the same for Damascus and Jerusalem). The recent release Mass Effect has an AI system that is so complex that every single interaction with every single character impacts the outcome.

The point of all this is to set up my reaction to a game I recently had the opportunity to play. I had read numerous things — all good — about a game called “Bioshock.” All I knew was that it was a first-person shooter (which I tend to shun), but because of some trusted recommendations, I turned it on. I was blown away. Set in 1960, the game begins when a man named Jack (played by you) survives a passenger plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean and discovers a nearby bathysphere that takes him to an underwater city called Rapture. Until recently, Rapture had been an Objectivist utopia controlled by Andrew Ryan, a man with uncanny resemblance both physically and vocally to Orson Welles’s immortal Charles Foster Kane (from Citizen Kane). A Russian immigrant to the United States, Ryan had become disillusioned with the governments of both countries and created “a city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small.” Of course, within moments of arriving in Rapture, one discovers that Ryan’s dream has become a nightmare.

I was amazed at first by the homage to famous Objectivists like George Orwell and particularly Ayn Rand (the name Andrew Ryan is a take on her name and Jack’s guide through the game is a mysterious man named “Atlas”). When my AP English teacher introduced me to Rand in high school, it was love at first read. I enjoyed Rand’s writing and, being a fiery teenager, was drawn to the principles of Objectivism. Of course, while I by no means reject them today, I do see where Rand manipulates her stories in such a way to prove her point rather than explore it.

That’s where Bioshock comes in.

I was skeptical of the game as I began to play it. First-person shooters are just that, right? Well, make no mistake, Bioshock is about trying to survive in a city where the citizens’ moral disregard for genetic tampering has driven them all to utter insanity. Living in – and being jaded by – Hollywood, I expected something between an anti-Objectivist and pro-Socialist message. But as one moves through the game and discovers the tape-recorded messages of its various denizens (doctors, scientists, artists, Ryan himself, etc.), it becomes clear that the story is exploring both the virtues and the flaws of Objectivist utopian ideals. I was flabbergasted by the complexity not so much of the plot, but of the philosophy. It took everything that I had wondered about Ayn Rand’s work (such as the role of children in a purely Objectivist environment) and examined it.

Take it for what it’s worth. Bioshock is a violent game, but also an extremely intelligent one. However, it derived its philosophy from literature. Somehow, this got me thinking back to a recent post about Mormon culture and what should and perhaps should not be passed on from generation to generation, culturally speaking. I began to think less in the context of books and more in the context of games. Cinematically speaking, the current generation of youth will probably come to know Scarface, The Godfather, and James Bond through the mediation of video games. John Madden is relevant not because he’s a Super Bowl winning coach and Hall of Fame broadcaster, but because his monicker controls the NFL license for video games.

So, after all that, this is what I’m interested in hearing. If video games are here to stay as a form of entertainment media (and they are), and they can achieve an artistic goal (and they can), what kinds of games could be valuable to the Latter-day Saint? We already do this with board games so why not video games? Development and marketing cost aside, if you could create an LDS-themed game, what would it be? Remember the ol’ classic, “The Oregon Trail?” Would you recreate the Book of Mormon war chapters as a tactical turn-based or real-time combat engine (a la Civilization, Warcraft, or Medieval: Total War). Would you prefer a puzzle-based game such as Myst, Riven, and Uru where a character travels throughout the scriptures? Would you prefer a story-based action-RPG set in newly-settled Utah, where one performs various missions for Brigham Young (as Porter Rockwell used to) as a way to learn church history? Would you incorporate the elements of online Co-op and multiplayer into some kind of missionary-training game. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that church-themed means just that. I don’t think Rainbow Six:Church Headquarters is what we’re after here. Simply consider, if you could capture some element of Mormon culture in a game, what would it be?

That bell curve to the left represents acceptance by the focused/excited/tastemaking community. Those are the people who love microbeers and haute couture and Civil War memorabilia. Like all market curves, there’s a sweet spot. Go too nutsy on us ($90,000 turntables, for example) and even the committed will flee. Go too pop, though, and we’ll avoid you as well.

And…

The bell curve on the right, you’ll notice, is bigger. This is a second market, a bigger market, the market of pop. These are the folks who go to the Olive Garden for a nice Italian meal instead of the authentic place down the street. They too want something that’s not too edgy and not too (in their opinion) trite.

And here’s the kicker

The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither.

One of the issues for the Mormon market is that we layer on a limiter to the graph — that is, not only do you have to deal with the passion/pop curve, but that the number of users is limited to those who buy into the Mormonism of a product (or of the product’s creator) as a viable category. Or in other words, the numbers on the y-axis go down. You have the same edgy/vapid issues that come with the x-axis, but it’s harder to hit the target because the y-axis has shrunk. This is less of an issue for those hitting for the pop curve because it’s always bigger, and this is definitely true of the Mormon market, e.g. Deseret Book. But even there, you still have to make the case to the consumer: you need this particular product because it appeals to your tastes AND it’s Mormon.  You have to sell them (and reassure them) on both aspects of the product.

And this, of course, is why artists dream about crossover success. But crossovers are rare and lead to difficult decisions when it comes to the next work that the artist creates.

Certainly one solution is to minimize the Mormonism of your work and simply aim straight at the larger market. This is what many Mormon speculative fiction and YA authors have done; some with great success. Filmmakers, actors, visual artists and musicians have also had some success. I suppose you could argue that some of these artists have not minimized their Mormonism, and certainly the work they create is still worth seeking out, but even if you are Orson Scott Card, there are certain things you can’t do and remain a viable part of the mainstream market.

Let me give two examples of my perceptions of the passion/pop curves and the Mormon market to illustrate the difficulties of the market:

First example: There is a market for Christian punk. That means that there are enough Christians who are in to punk bands that define themselves as Christian to support CDs and live shows by Christian punk bands. There are many reasons for that. One is that there are a lot of Evangelical Christians in the U.S. Another is that as punk moved beyond it’s initial phase it developed styles and communities that could accommodate the idea of Christian punk — straight edge, in particular, with it’s emphasis on not drinking alcohol and doing drugs, opened room for young Christians to see punk as a viable means of expression. In addition, Christians began to understand the appeal of counterculture moves and to define themselves as counterculture. This doesn’t mean that it’s been embraced by the pop side of the Christian market. I don’t believe that the major Christian labels and the radio stations they feed (control and sometimes own) play punk, but as a niche genre, it’s big enough that a career is possible. In addition, neo-punk/third-wave punk (whatever you want to call it) is a vibrant and open enough genre that Christian punk bands that are good and that don’t push the preaching too hard can gain fans who aren’t Christian per se.

I don’t know that there is the same market for Mormon punk. Certainly, there was the mini-ska explosion in the early ’90s in Utah, but to my knowledge that market didn’t take hold to the extent that Christian punk has. Mormon culture also doesn’t have quite the diversity that Evangelical Christianity does. Certainly there are Christians who don’t like tattoos, but it’s definitely much easier to find a place as a tatted and pierced Christian skate punk than as a tatted and pierced Mormon skate punk — and esp. to find compatriots, to create/join a scene. In addition, because there is a real emphasis on youth outreach programs as well as so many different types of congregations, marketing the scene is much easier. You can find a place to play if you are a Christian punk and get youth leaders to bring their kids to a show. Christian punk is marginalized but the margins are much blurrier and bigger. With Christian punk, Christian is a limiter along the y-axis, but it’s nowhere near as limiting as Mormon is. The overall curve has more people in it.

Second example: I think Zarahemla Books has a gap problem. I love roaming around on the right side of the passion curve and especially just outside it in the left side of the gap. I’m not quite edgy/obsessed. I’ve always been a fairly lukewarm consumer of art with some pop sensibilities. But at the same time, I’m very much not pop. And so I love the work that Chris Bigelow is publishing. I’m a believer in the broadly appropriate/middle way type of Mormon literature. But it’s a difficult niche to be in if you’re trying to sell books like Chris is. It’s too edgy to be in the pop curve and sell many copies. But it’s not edgy enough to bring in the ex-Mormons, etc. And on top of that, it’s too middlebrow and not edgy enough to bring in the literary snobs. And then you add in the genre stuff — autobiographical fiction (On the Road to Heaven), short story (Long After Dark), cyberpunk (Hunting Gideon), Mormon folk realism/horror (Brother Brigham) — and you add another layer that moves you away from the standard middlebrow Mormon reader. Thus, we have Julie Smith complaining about the autobiographical fiction aspect to On the Road to Heaven while someone else writes to Bigelow to express discomfort with the talk of boobs. We have ex-Mormons writing negative reviews of Brother Brigham saying it’s for Mormon sheep who literally believe in evil spirits while culturally orthodox Mormons are complaining that it has nudity and adult situations. In addition, because there’s such a range of genres in their offerings, you don’t end up with the kind of easy variations within boundaries that can create a tight scene. What ties all the titles together is not as easy to define as, say, chick-lit or emo or cosplay or collecting Hummel figurines.

Now, even thought these two example suggest that passionate Mormon artists face difficulties in the current market, it’s not all bad news. As Godin reminds us, both the pop and passion curves are constantly changing (this year’s edgy is next year’s trite). And all it takes is one hit to change people’s perceptions of a market category. But right now, I’m afraid that the kind of stuff that I like is either very niche, and it appears to be a niche that’s either squarely in or very close to the passion/pop gulf, or it’s so niche niche that it doesn’t even exist*.

* Or maybe it does. Is there some Mormon punk/post-punk scene out there that I don’t know about?

For example, Rosin writes:

A Christian can now buy books, movies, music—and anything else lowbrow to middlebrow—tailor-made for his or her sensibilities. Worried that American popular culture leads people—and especially teenagers—astray, the Christian version is designed to satisfy all the same needs in a cleaner form.

The review is a must-read for Mormons. And it sounds like the book is too. I have already ordered it from my local library (I’m not alone in my interest in it though — I probably won’t get my hands on a copy until June). I’m going to get to some of the more choice bits of the review in a moment, but first a reminder: Although it’s tempting to write off the Mormon cultural project as a weak imitation of the Christian one (and in some areas it is just that), there are important differences. I’m not going to go into a lengthy treatment of them — but AMV has been exploring them throughout its’ whole history. Not so much in contrast to the Christian market (although we have done that from time-to-time), but more in the more positive vein of pointing out examples and exploring possibilities of a unique, yet not disconnected form of Mormon culture that both celebrates and critiques our own history and practice and beliefs as well as those of the broader American (and other) culture(s).

That said, some of these quotes from the review should be painfully familiar:

1. Trinkets and chick lit and rap:

At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt (”Friends don’t let friends go to hell”). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words.

The trinkets and actions figures abound in the Mormon market. There’s less of a market for raves, rappers and techno, though (unless there’s some huge Mormon underground that I’m aware of). Generally, if a Mormon is interested in that style of music, he or she is just going to listen to the artists in that genre (although there may be some artists that he or she chooses not to listen to because they push things a bit too far. Sort of that PG-12 is okay, R if it’s just violence and a little bit of language is okay for some, too much sex and gratuitous swearing is not okay).

2. Commercialization and branding:

At some point, Radosh asks the obvious question: Didn’t Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn’t there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith? For this, the Christian pop-culture industry has a ready answer. Evangelizing and commercializing have much in common. In the “spiritual marketplace” (as it’s called), Christianity is a brand that seeks to dominate. Like Coke, it wants to hold onto its followers and also win over new converts.

Because of the LDS Church’s missionary efforts and the fact that there is no real competition for the Mormon brand (none of the various splinter groups are serious competitors in the “spiritual marketplace”), this is a little less of a concern. Or rather, the institutional church already does so many branding activities that the evangelizing aspects of Mormon pop culture are not as dominant. The Mormon market tends to be more a way of providing a “safe” haven for those already in the faith.

3. Commercialization and belief:

What does commercializing do to the substance of belief, and what does an infusion of belief do to the product? When you make loving Christ sound just like loving your boyfriend, you can do damage to both your faith and your ballad.

I think that this might be a bit overstated by Rosin. At the same time, I do itch to blame Mormon pop for the weakening of our Christology among many of our youth (the whole sappy Jesus as friend thing).

4. The creative bind:

Creative Christian types find themselves in a similar bind: They want to make good, authentic music. But they are also enlisted in a specific mission which confines their art.

This creative bind, whether the limits spark or smother creativity and expression, is the subject of numberless discussions among Mormon artists. I won’t rehash all the arguments here. And one difference is that this sense of being enlisted in a mission is less straightforward of a transaction for Mormon artists — except perhaps for those who are mimicking the Christian approach and going straight for the Deseret Book market. In other words, those of us who know we aren’t going to sell big, don’t worry so much about being “evangelists” and worry more about staying within the parameters of the LDS Church (and what those parameters actually are or should be is a subject of much discussion). We don’t want to betray our faith and our people, but we also don’t have any compunction about exploring the fact that this is a human, imperfect culture/people/institution.

5. The danger of pale imitations:

For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can’t compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who’d grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: “Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear,” he wrote. “Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality.”

I love that description — a “tinny, desperate thing.” Mormon culture and history is rich and generative, imo. I think we could do a better job of transmitting that to our youth. I think we do so fairly well in terms of belief and praxis. And I don’t think that cutting out all outside culture is wise (and it’s certainly not fun) even though I think it’s perfectly valid to pick and choose what you consume. For all the I sometimes grouse about Orson Scott Card (okay, just his later work), is there any doubt that his work (and the work of others) has helped create a generation (or two) of Mormons who have a fairly sophisticated relationship with speculative fiction, one that allows them to consume the best of the field without damaging their faith?

6. The new generation:

The new generation of Christians is likely to be a different kind of audience. Raised on iPods and downloadable music, they find it difficult truly to commit to the idea of a separate Christian pop culture. They might watch Jon Stewart or Pulp Fiction and also listen to the Christian band Jars of Clay, assuming the next album is any good. They are much more critical consumers and excellent spotters of schlock. The creators of Christian pop culture may just adapt and ease up on the Jesus-per-minute count, and artistic quality might show some improvement. But in my experience, where young souls are at stake, Christian creators tend to balk.

And I think that this is where Mormons might just be ahead of the Christians. Yes, there are some Mormons who grew up fairly sheltered culturally, but, in general, many young Mormons watch Jon Stewart, and listen to indie rock and play Halo (and even GTA), and consume Web comics, and read Grisham and Grafton or Eggers and Sedaris or Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, etc.

And yet, I think that all of us who are interested in Mormon culture (in creating, critiquing, consuming and marketing it) should think about how we could better reach this new generation of young Mormon consumers and explore how they define and arrive at their conception of Mormon-ness and how that relates to their place in and interaction with American culture.