The first 100 years of Mormonism produced almost zero published humor. The closest thing we have is Parley P. Pratt’s short story about Joseph Smith meeting the devil. And, of course, it was meant as proselytizing material.

You would be completely within your rights to point out that J. Golden Kimball contributed a lot of humor to early Mormonism. But I’m going to quibble with you on that. He didn’t publish humor. He published sermons (which weren’t funny). He did not present himself as a humorist, either. Rather, his antics gave rise to folktales about him. So even though he was funny, he wasn’t a humorist. We’ll get into that some more later.

Probably the first piece of published Mormon humor was Samuel Taylor’s novel Heaven Knows Why, which was serially published in Collier’s magazine in 1948. It’s about a patriarch in the post-mortal life who is trying to get a better mansion in heaven, so he steers one of his descendants into the paths of righteousness, while hilarity ensues.

But then we had to wait for another 30 years before we go our next sustained work of Mormon humor. Namely, the cartoon collection Freeway to Perfection, by Calvin Grondahl, which Sunstone published in 1978. And that was the year that Sunstone published the first cartoon in the magazine, as well.

It was a Grondahl cartoon of an old woman descending the pulpit as the bishop says, “Thank you for that beautiful testimony and update on your cats.” This cartoon started a regular column, called “Peculiar People,” that showcased a Grondahl cartoon, while Freeway was advertised at the back of the magazine.

And with that, Sunstone became the premier publisher of Mormon humor. We ended up publishing three books by Grondahl,  each one selling more than the previous book.

And, beginning with the editorship of Elbert Peck, Sunstone started publishing cartoons in every issue. And it was in these comics that Sunstone started thinking about what could and could not be the subject of humor in Mormonism.

We’ll tackle that question in the next post.