Welcome back to this week’s edition of “The Captain’s Log!” This week I wanted to focus on why beautiful entertainment matters, as well as some of the obstacles we face at Voyage Comics.
For some Christians, entertainment is something “unholy,” a topic to be avoided. The only “proper” way to entertain a soul is to read the Bible or saint stories.
Fantasy, science-fiction and other genres of entertainment are viewed as “unnecessary.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Bible and saint stories, but they can’t be the only way to evangelize.
These are some of the real obstacles I face in trying to convince Christians to buy a book about Jonah going to the city of Atlantis or of Finnian fighting demonic creatures.
At Voyage Comics, we are trying to create beautiful entertainment that will not only appeal to Christians, but also the secular world. However, often we find the most resistance from fellow Christians!
Basically, instead of trying to resist the secular culture with something beautiful, many Christians try to “cancel” the secular culture entirely. This often entails an “evangelization of truth,” but one that is not accompanied by beauty or goodness.
So when we come onto the scene with our comic books, Christians want to see Bible-themed stories or saint stories. While we do have a few saints featured in our comics (such as St. Joan of Arc and Ven. Patrick Peyton), this won’t ever be our primary focus. We will continue to explore the Bible and saints in our stories, but it won’t be our only source of stories.
This is also why it can be a struggle for us to have our products featured in Christian or Catholic bookstores. When a store owner sees our products, they don’t know what to do with it! It’s not about a saint, or the Bible, and so it doesn’t really “belong” on their shelves.
On the flip-side, it is also a struggle to get into secular comic book shops. We aren’t Marvel, or any of the major independent comic companies, so our comics are lost in a sea of titles.
What we are trying to do is rather “new,” but at the same time, it isn’t!
Take, for example, St. John Paul II.
Many know him for his role as pope of the Roman Catholic Church for roughly 25 years. However, before that, and even before he became a priest, he was an amateur playwright and actor!!
And you know what is astonishing about this fact? He wrote and acted in plays during the Nazi occupation of Poland!
When the world around him was shrouded in darkness, he turned to “entertainment” as a means of preserving Polish and Christian culture.
His mode of resistance was to create something beautiful.
John Paul II explained this in his Letter to Artists.
People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us. Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that “beauty will save the world”.
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!”.
“From chaos there rises the world of the spirit”. These words of Adam Mickiewicz, written at a time of great hardship for his Polish homeland, prompt my hope for you: may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal.
Beauty, in all its forms, can open our hearts to God, even when it doesn’t speak directly about God!
St. John XXIII spoke about this as well, as I have previously quoted in an article.
We must fight immoral and false literature with literature that is wholesome and sincere. Radio broadcasts, motion pictures, and television shows which make error and vice attractive must be opposed by shows which defend truth and strive to preserve the integrity and safety of morals. Thus these new arts, which can work much evil, will be turned to the well-being and benefit of men, and at the same time will supply worthwhile recreation. Health will come from a source which has often produced only devastating sickness.
This is also why the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have endured for such a long time. His fantasy world of Middle-Earth spoke NOTHING about God, and yet, they have led countless souls into a closer relationship with him!
How is that possible?!
Tolkien also commented in his essay On Fairy-Stories, on the role of beauty, especially beautiful stories and how authors are “sub-creators” with God.
The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation.
Well, I ramble on, but you get the point.
It may not seem like making comic books really matters in the grand scheme of things, but think about it for a second. What do your children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews do all day? Besides school, they consume entertainment! Countless hours spent playing video games or watching YouTube. The entertainment they consume inevitably forms who they are and who they will become.
If you believe in our mission and want to pitch-in to help us reach our goals, you can always donate using the link here. We aren’t a non-profit, but we are small and don’t have a big company behind us.
Let’s create some beauty in this world!
Until next week!
Godspeed,
Philip Kosloski
Philip Kosloski
Philip Kosloski is the founder of Voyage Comics & Publishing and the writer and creator of the comic book series, Finnian and the Seven Mountains.