To make matters worse, they would arm-wrestle you all the way to the welcome desk and back to get a 35-year-old society matron enrolled but wouldn’t go across the street to invite a 65-year-old Hispanic woman who had just moved to the neighborhood. (And that’s not a hypothetical illustration; both extremes happened.

So Doug posted the poster on a bulletin board in the hall beside the welcome desk. He didn’t have to wait long. The very next morning, a delegation was on the way to the Welcome desk to insist on another exception. As they rounded the corner, they found a gaggle of folks giggling at that cartoon. As they rounded the corner, one bystander laughed, “Yep! That’s the T.E.L. class all right!”

“Of course, they didn’t all break up the class and go in their proper age groups,” Doug says. “But the hassles stopped. And from that moment, I didn’t see problems, I saw cartoon ideas.” And, to his delight, he found he could say things in cartoons -- effectively -- that would have got him fired if he said them from the pulpit.

Many more posters followed. Fellow ministers asked for copies and urged him to publish them. And in December 1960, he submitted a year’s supply to The Baptist Program, a leadership magazine that reached every pastor and staff member in the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as denominational workers and missionaries around the world.

Off and Running

With a four-month lead time before the first issue hit the mails, Doug saw the opportunity for a quick fan base, and he self-syndicated additional Brother Blotz cartoons for churches to use in their bulletins and newsletters.

Within the first three years, he had developed 13 different features that appeared regularly in 26 national religious magazines. Three books followed over the next few years, as well as illustrations for seven more.

This is an adaptation of the first cartoon that appeared in one of Doug’s first syndicated issues. The first was a forerunner of Brother Blotz. Here he introduces Brother Ed, who is Blotz’ minister of education and music.

How the Cartoons Began

Doug began cartooning “as an accident” in 1957 when as a minister of education he found he could say things in print that would get him fired if he said them from a pulpit. “Brother Blotz” broke into print in 1961, then was syndicated to churches, followed by 13 features.

The first Brother Blotz cartoon was an illustration of a joke told by Dr. J.D. Gray, then pastor of First Baptist, New Orleans, Doug couldn’t sleep that night before drawing it on a poster with the punch line as a caption. The classification officer says to a large guest, “If Madam is sensitive about giving her age, perhaps she’d rather have us grade by weight.”

Doug was minister of education at the time, and he had that very same problem getting adults to accept the mantra of the moment -- small, age-graded, sex-separated adult classes. One women’s class had a sign above the door: “Women 64 to 67.” But they bragged about having three generations from one family in their class, ranging from 22 to 84.