Religion In The Comics - 003 [View all]

[Cartoonist]

This installment is about our old friend Oral Roberts. For those not familiar with this Holy Con Man, here is a snippet from Wikipedia:

Roberts' fundraising was controversial. In January 1987, during a fundraising drive, Roberts announced to a television audience that unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would "call him home." However, the year before on Easter he had told a gathering at the Dallas Convention Center that God had instructed him to raise the money "by the end of the year" or he would die. Regardless of this new March deadline and the fact that he was still $4.5 million short of his goal, some were fearful that he was referring to suicide, given the impassioned pleas and tears that accompanied his statement. He raised $9.1 million.

Here is the story even Wikipedia doesn't know. Even the official Oral Roberts website makes no mention of this. In 1956 he began publishing his own comic book called Oral Roberts True Stories. It ran for 19 quarterly issues. After the first issue, the numbering skipped to 102. While I have found images for all issues, I have only found one issue displayed in its entirety. I assume the format was consistent. It began with an image of Oral who presented himself as the narrator of these TRUE stories. Some are Bible stories, some are tales of people who found Jesus, and other stories are about the miracles God grants to his believers.

Here for your viewing pleasure is issue #106. It can be viewed in its entirity at http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=7864
It is the story of a man who began by believing in purple elephants to believing in Jesus. A step up or down depending on your point of view. I personally see it as more of a lateral shift. After all, no one can prove that purple elephants don't exist.