Western Oregon Journal

Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: Post

The Journal has changed a lot from this year to last year. Some of these changes have been good, such as the addition of actual news stories, and the fact that the sports page is no longer printed upside-down for no apparent reason. However, there has been one change in particular that is very bad, and that is the Journal voluntarily running offensive material with no apology to the readers. Believe it or not, I'm not talking about Justin Briley bragging about his sexual exploits. I'm not offended by the editorial that suggested God was gay. I'm not even offended that the Journal felt it was appropriate to print Sam Summers' article on Zuluing as a news piece when it clearly belonged on the editorial page. Instead, I'm talking about the comic "Jesus and Joe." "Jesus and Joe" has used harsh language before, but that's not what's offensive. Jesus is a religious figure, but the use of Jesus does not offend me. "Jesus and Joe" offends me as a fan of comedy, and anybody else who enjoys humorous comic strips must surely feel the same way. The "artist" of the comic strip, identified by the Journal website as Joe Smith, relies on shock value to make his comic relevant. What he fails to realize is that there is no point to being "edgy" if you don't have a joke. Joe murdered a family of mice? Okay. Now what? Jesus can't eat? Did Jesus use Joe's oven to cook the food? If so, why did Jesus not notice the taste before Joe mentioned the backstory? Or perhaps Jesus was just disgusted by the thought. This also makes no sense; the guy was nailed alive to a cross, I think he can stomach a family of dead mice. The art is lazy as well. In each comic, Jesus and Joe are in the same poses in each frame. Sometimes backdrops are drawn around them, sometimes they are not. Nevertheless, each comic is a poor copy of the preceding comics. I'm sure you will claim that this is part of the "joke." I'm here to tell you that you are not Ryan North, and "Jesus and Joe" is no Dinosaur Comics. Get your own ideas and stop being lazy. A newspaper comic should either entertain or make a political statement, and "Jesus and Joe" does neither of these. The only thing this comic does is take up about 24 square inches of space that could be spent on other, more entertaining things, such as more awkward stories from Justin Briley. Okay, maybe not that. Whatever happened to "Dorm Norm?" Now that was a decent comic, although it technically should have been titled "Residence Hall Norm." I'm sure there are other talented cartoonists on our campus. In fact, why not ask people to submit cartoons and have the readers vote on their favorite? We can't possibly get anything worse than what we have now.

Kelly Gordon

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