Scott Hales, Mormon Shorts, vol. 1. 2016. ISBN 9781523292301. $14.99.

The first Mormon cartoonists I knew were Calvin Grondahl (Freeway to Perfection, Marketing Precedes the Miracle) in the ’70s, and Pat Bagley (Oh My Heck) in the ’80s (and more recently with Robert Kirby: Sunday of the Living Dead, Pat & Kirby Go to Hell). They’re still going strong as political cartoonists for Utah newspapers, wielding their swords against political nonsense, including the occasional Mormon subject.

But as far as Mormon culture and the Mormon heart goes, they have been eclipsed in the past two years by Scott Hales, the cartoonist for this generation, who gets us like no one else does.

Scott is perhaps best known for his web comic The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl (if you’re new to Enid, scroll to the bottom and read up from there). Enid is a teenaged Mormon girl whom we saw, over the course of a year or so, deal with high school and seminary and EFY and youth dances, with first crushes and vulnerability and strength, with the chronic and last illness of her never-wed mother, and the clandestine search for her own missing father.

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(My very own Enid!)
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Enid is the kind of kid that Elder Ballard had in mind in his recent address to Seminary teachers: She wants to believe the gospel – and she does, more deeply than she realizes – but she is coming of age in a skeptical time, challenging her Seminary teacher and her Young Women leaders in ways they are not always prepared to deal with. She is awkward, she is vulnerable, yet when she follows her heart she invariably does the right thing: Unsure of what to say to her friend Kyle after the November policy on gay families was announced, Enid simply sat beside him, wordlessly; in the last panel, Kyle’s head bent toward hers, silently accepting her willingness to mourn with him.

Enid communes with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and Eliza R. Snow and the Book of Abraham mummy, and those internal dialogs are portrayed as being as real as Enid’s interactions with the recurring characters of her friends and ward members. She wears t-shirts emblazoned with names or logos of current Mormon culture – I was over the moon with joy the day Enid wore her Keepapitchinin t-shirt. In her latest appearance, Enid converses with Joseph Smith about plans for this weekend’s General Conference – Joseph reads the newspaper, while Enid reads Patrick Mason’s recent book, Planted. These nods to ultra-contemporary Mormon culture seldom, if ever, figure in the story told by the comic; they are like Easter eggs in a new video game, there for the pleasure of readers who have eyes to see.

In addition to Enid, Scott’s productions include “Mormon Shorts” – single comics outside the world of Enid, sometimes with recurring characters of their own. There are the two fathers caring for their infants in the Father’s Lounge at Church, so like each other in their fatherhood and Mormon-ness, but so unlike each other in ways that Mormon readers recognize in fellow Church members. There are jokes about scriptures, about beard cards, about man buns, about the Bloggernacle, about the Arnold Fribourg style, about Primary songs taken too literally.

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Scott has collected a hundred or so of these non-Enid comics and published them as Mormon Shorts, vol. 1 – the permanent and hardcopy form of images that first appeared online.

On alternate pages, Scott offers his other type of “shorts” – one- or two-line stories that could have been comics but which allow you as the reader to draw your own mental images.

Deena opened her eyes to see the entire restaurant staring at her. Had she accidentally blessed her food out loud?

Some are poignant, and insist that you fill in the backstory.

He ironed her church clothes every Sunday morning for forty-six years.

Some cause you to go “Wait – wha–??

Fast and testimony meeting improved after the police arrested Brother Davis.

You’ll recognize the Mormon twist at the heart of every one of them.

Bishop Parson tries to keep a smile on his face as the elders describe their latest “golden” investigator.

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The tears from the girl’s camp testimony meeting more than answered Sister Jensen’s prayer for moisture.

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“I teach them correct principles,” quoted Brother Chapman in Sunday school, “and let them compensate for failure in the home.”

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As we plowed the field, Father turned to me and said, “Someday, when you’re a General Authority, you’re gonna mention this day in a talk.”

Some of my favorite Mormon Shorts, not surprisingly, have to do with Mormon history. Often, the very best call for the reader not only to supply the Mormon background, but to bring a certain sophisticated knowledge of Mormon history for their enjoyment.

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(If you don’t immediately recognize that one, click here and search for “stu-boy” (with the hyphen); you can pretend you recognized Parley P. Pratt’s escape all along.)

Mormon Shorts is different from every other collection of Mormon comics I have ever read. These comics do more than illustrate contemporary Mormon culture, or our quirks or foibles. They call for more than an awareness of Mormon history. Earlier cartoonists – Cal Grondahl, Pat Bagley, all the others – were and are insiders who have all the punchlines and know where all the bodies are buried — but Scott Hales does more than display insider knowledge.

What makes Mormon Shorts different – what is different about them, and about Enid (who, I hope, will soon make an appearance in a collection of her own) — is that beyond the cultural surface is the Mormon heart. The artist and storyteller here cannot help but invest these impossibly brief stories and impossibly pointed comics with a spark that leaps from the page to the hearts of believing readers. This artist and storyteller knows.

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Yes, we do know what you’re talking about.

(Images used with the permission of Scott Hales; all rights reserved.)