One of the most interesting questions you can ask about a culture is what it considers to be within the realm of humor. What subjects and people can humor be about? Where is sacred ground—where humor is not allowed—and where is mundane ground—where it is?

As Sunstone started its humor career, it stuck mainly with poking fun at human foibles. But whose human foibles were fair game? Could we have humor about ward members?

How about missionaries?

How about Sunstone?

How about (gasp) sex?

How about general authorities?

Here’s where Sunstone started splitting hairs.

We see in this Pat Bagley cartoon some unnamed general authority taking a sabbatical as a window washer. And Bagley produced a number of cartoons for Sunstone about the ruminations of this same general authority. And then there was this one.

However, Sunstone never seems to have commissioned cartoons that had humor about specific general authorities. But sometimes it skirted this rule by reporting on when other publications did so.

For example, this one where Boyd Packard is afraid, published in the Ogden Standard Examiner.

This one from the Salt Lake Tribune which portrays an ailing Gordon B. Hinckley reading the newspaper.

Or this one from the Ogden Standard Examiner about Hinckley and Monson running the Church in Benson’s absence. In each of these cases, another publication had printed the cartoons, and Sunstone was reporting on the story around it. Sunstone seemed to accept the rule that you should not publish your own humor about the Lord‘s anointed. But we were willing to report on it when other people did.

In the next post, we’ll explore what Sunstone did with cartoons about founding leaders and heavenly beings.