Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Campus Crusade for Christ in the Funny Pages

This last weekend was Free Comic Book Day... my kids got an Archie comic and liked it so much that I decided to go back and look around and see if I could find another one for them. What I found was an old Spire Comics "Christian" Archie comic called Archie's Sonshine.

Of course the kids love it.

I liked this bit where Ethel becomes a Christian and then heads off to the beach with her Four Spiritual Laws:

Archie isn't thrilled about that way of doing things, but Betty says there's nothing wrong with it. Notice also the cameo of the swinging, bearded hep cat who shows up on the beach in his van to tell all the kids about God (you can see what he looks like in the top panel of the page below).


In the end, I thought this was a funny little reminder of how present Campus Crusade for Christ was in the mainstream Christian culture in the 1970s. I'm guessing it has been a long time since a CCC tool was referenced in a comic book... this one is from 1974, the year I was born!

Anyway, enjoy (if you click on the pages you can see them larger). If you want to see full Spire Comics that have been scanned in, check out this page.

6 comments:

  1. Holy crazy comic book Batman!

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  2. i wonder what it would look like if campus crusade was talked about in today's mainstream comics. what if dilbert or pearls before swine had a run in with the kgp? to be honest... i don't know if i'd want to see that... it's a different world (said in old man voice)

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  3. Hahaha! I totally read those when I was a kid!

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  4. This might reveal my age, but I actually had that comic book. My favorite one was the one called, "Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys" where it went through Landry's testimony. Too cool. Never realized that Betty and Veronica were talking about CCC! Thanks for the post!

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  5. I actually read this one too, but I'm pretty darn sure it belonged to my older brother/sister, 'cause I seem to remember it was in pretty crappy condition. I love Archie comics. Never understood what he saw in Veronica tho...

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