Last week I was cleaning out a closet and came across my old Ivory Towers cartoons.

While a student at Bethany Bible College, I was cartoonist for the school paper during the 1985-86 school year. Being a religious college, Bethany required its students to take systematic theology courses. And since it was a Protestant school, we spent time focusing on the early reformers … Martin Luther, John Calvin and so on.

Looking at pictures of the reformers, I was curious about the odd hats they wore. I still don’t know their origins. If anyone does, please comment. Perhaps they’re a forerunner of the mortar boards people wear at graduation. Anyway, that’s where the idea for the cartoon came from.

Ivory Towers takes place in a fictional seminary, presumably located in Protestant Northern Europe of long ago. (Where the ray gun and the change machine came from, I have no idea.)

You can see how the comics progressed during the school year (more detail and shading as I went along). I also eventually gave the characters names. Hippotus and Creetus were my two main theologians; Nuisance – the student who was always asking questions; Father Loopin – the priest from the village.

Poking fun at the stuffy theologians provided fun relief from my studies. Hope you enjoy the toons!

(Click on a panel to activate slideshow.)