Reformation Cartoons And Martin Luther Insults: The Paul Cox Interview
Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk to the man behind RefToons: Paul Cox! RefToons is a free-to-read webcomic, inspired by theology and church history. Paul is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist and has four chickens. Paul has previously co-authored and illustrated Pilgrims Progress: A Poetic Journey. You can pre-order RefToons Collection I now which collects the first two years of RefToons! RefToons is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Pre-order the new Babylon Bee Best-Of Coffee Table Book coming in 2020! Get a Sneak Peak! Topics Discussed Paul's story- who is he? How did he become a Christian? Ethan discovers Martin Luther's insults and he's like a kid on an airplane for the first time Wisconsin stuff and raising chickens The master Bill Watterson Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Garfield Discovering Michael Horton's book Christless Christianity Problems in the church, unanswered questions, finding answers in expositional preaching and reformed church history Reformation theology Love for the imminently quotable G.K. Chesterton Cancelled Christian Artists The second commandment forbidding images of the persons of the Trinity Paul has a Carman story! Paul's new book collection RefToons Collection I which collects all of 2017-2019 and his Pilgrims Progress: A Poetic Journey Mentioned on the podcast: Greg Koukl's Stand To Reason Podcast. Subscriber Portion (Begins at 00:43:04) Hot takes on some of the Reformed/Puritans: Calvin Luther Beth Moore John MacArthur Huldrych Zwingli Jonathan Edwards John Piper More Martin Luther potty talk Tapping maple trees and other Wisconsin things Butterburgers and other fine cuisine Loony Toons Also Mentioned: R.C. Sproul's What Is Reformed Theology? The entire interview is available for Babylon Bee subscribers only… Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
I just have to say that I object strenuously to your use of the word hilarious.
Hard-hitting questions.
What do you think about feminism?
Do you like it?
Taking you to the cutting edge of truth.
Yeah, well, Last Jedi is one of the worst movies ever made, and it was very clear that Ryan Johnson doesn't like Star Wars.
Kyle pulls no punches.
I want to ask how you're able to sleep at night.
Ethan brings bone-shattering common sense from the top rope.
If I may, how double dare you?
This is the Babylon Bee interview show.
All right.
Well, Babylon Bee listeners, a couple of years ago, I had started to see some new gorgeous comics popping up on my Facebook feed.
Oh, thank you.
And it's not Axe Cop or Bear Mageddon.
No.
Although those are also gorgeous.
These comics had a lot less blood and fewer bears and fewer axes and fewer cops.
Oh.
So, no, this was a...
It's going downhill fast.
This is not.
Yeah.
I know you're losing interest, but this was a comic called Ref Tunes.
And we got in touch with the guy who does these, and his name is Paul Cox, and we are bringing him on today.
How you doing, Paul?
I'm doing well.
So I got to ask, sir, did you follow Adam Ford and his comics in years past?
No.
I did, yeah.
Yeah.
He had some really good comics.
I asked because it was kind of like there was this void in the Christian comic space.
I don't even know if that's a real space, you know, Christian web comics.
Oh, so it's not sports comics?
I thought it was ref.
Ref tunes, like a ref.
Ref.
I was ready to really not understand.
No.
Not, no.
Ethan.
I'm sorry.
We have this whole document typed up with all the information.
I keep seeing the word ref.
I'm like, okay.
That's the guy in the striped shirt.
So you were really checked out.
You realized there was no bears and you thought it was about sports.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, okay, Kyle can take this one.
Sorry to disappoint.
I did notice that you're an excellent artist, though.
I want to tell you that.
Yeah.
Which is Christianity needs good artists.
So thank you.
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you.
For selling out to Jesus.
Sorry, I'm derailing Kyle's interview.
No, it's good that you're going to be able to do that.
The good interview is Kyle.
We're buddies sitting around.
Yeah, we're just sitting around.
It's all good.
No, I was just saying that there was like a void because Adam stopped doing his comics.
And you didn't have that.
You know, he did comics that he would do things that were similar to what you do, Paul, where he takes an old Reformation quote or something or Bible verse and he turned it into kind of a visual medium.
And you do that.
Yours is a little more like he would kind of do them like the oatmeal style where it was like a long essay done visually.
And you do it more like kind of a contained one frame or several frame comic.
Yeah, usually one frame and it's usually centered around a quote from a person from church history.
And yeah, I wondered if you would bring up that void because I felt it too.
When he left, I was like, where are all these good comics?
And I guess like when I started Reft Toons, all I really wanted to do was make some funny cartoons about reformers.
But then it kind of turned into taking their quotes and illustrating them, which has been fun.
Yeah, and there are some really interesting quotes from the Reformers because they had very colorful metaphors at times.
I want to see more Martin Luther insults illustrated by you.
Yeah, I would love to do that.
Put them in our list.
I may have kind of drawn myself into a corner by choosing a lot of the more inspirational type quotes from the beginning.
Because now when I try to do something that's just funny for the sake of funny, I get comments like, what is the meaning behind this?
Or what does this have to do with Christianity or something?
Or I'll make a joke about coffee and it'll get some very serious, serious comments.
Yeah, we get the opposite problem because we do so many jokes and we'll do something that's more serious.
Yeah, I'm so confused.
Wait, this is not funny.
Why are you joking about this?
I don't get the joke.
Okay, so I don't know why I was never like, I never got into the ref part of Christianity, Reformation stuff.
Like, you guys are hardcore on this stuff.
And so I had never really, I just opened up some Lutheran, some Lutheran insults.
What pig sties could compare in goings on with you?
That's one I've never read that.
Yeah, so we've got.
This guy was like the Sean Hannity of the Reformation.
So you could have the Pope rolling around in the mud and Martin Luther standing there screaming at him.
Yes.
We're giving you ideas for comics.
This whole podcast is going to be us just saying, hey, you should draw this.
You should draw this.
That whole Luther insult generator is just like.
These ones are apparently real.
Yeah.
I saw the generator, but I wanted to get real ones.
Well, the generator is real, but what they do is they take them and they chop them into like an insult that you could tell your friend instead of just like how we wrote it to the pope or whatever.
Sorry, they also have the references to where he got where votes are from on that.
Yeah.
Right.
So they paraphrase a bit, but they're real.
We might need Dave to say some of these.
He wouldn't say this.
You vulgar boar, blockhead, and lout, you donkey.
Sta cap off screaming your hee-has.
That's a gold comic idea right there.
That's gold.
That's a flowerbed.
We have to flowerbed that.
Donkey.
Yeah, that is a flowerbed moment.
You are a crude donkey.
Donkey.
You will remain.
Wow.
Sorry, guys.
Okay.
I'm just getting it.
I'm getting in the spirit here.
Yeah, I like it.
In the spirit of the reformers.
Oh, my gosh.
You are a brothel keeper and the devil's daughter in hell.
You guys are like, yeah, we've read these.
Jeez.
Can we move on?
I like that you have just discovered Luther's insults for the first kid on an airplane for the first time.
They get better, too.
The devil rides you.
Wow.
I get it.
I'm starting to get it.
I'm going to be the guy walking around in a Martin Luther t-shirt soon.
Yeah, you finally get it.
We have converted you to ref.
So I'm curious, because, you know, I've worked in comics.
It's a rough, it's a loose term saying worked in comics.
Not saying that comics are easy.
They are fun to make, but that you can actually make it a job.
Yeah.
Now, is it your job?
Curious.
I'm curious.
Comics?
Yeah, like, do you, is this how you make your living, if you're making rough tunes?
Kind of.
of i mean it's not like like rep students has become like a part of my job um I've been able to make a little bit of income from it, but my main job is freelance illustration.
So I mainly do freelance, but in that I do mainly comics, but they're not like syndicated comics.
It's like comics explaining someone's product or something like that.
Things like that.
And character designs for companies and things.
Do you draw pictures for papists?
Papists. Papists. Papists. Papists.
Dan is like, he's so embarrassed right now.
We're giving him a papist example.
I'm so out of loop on Reformation.
Yes, all the time.
Okay.
And atheists.
Wow.
I did some writing.
I did some writing for a while for copy editing where it was like, describe this half-inch Schedule 80 PVC elbow.
And I would have to type the description that was on the plumbing site.
And it's like, this is a very sturdy.
Would you be like poetic about it?
Well, you know, you try.
Elbow curves, like the boa constrictor in the jungle.
The albino, the albino snake around the neck of the antelope.
Well, you know how it is working for an editor.
They just send it back and say no.
Try something like that.
Oh, I know all about editors that send things back and say no.
Actually, just kidding.
You're not like that, Kyle.
I just told you you could.
You're just quiet.
I just told you to illustrate Joe Biden walking around waving a rubber chicken.
And I said, do whatever you want with it.
Except I don't want to do rubber chicken.
I think I'm going to have him have a dead fish.
There you go.
See?
And I give you the creative freedom.
There's boundaries.
I was going to give a dead ferret, and I was like, no, Kyle won't go for the dead ferret.
Yeah.
So, Paul, you were into, you were already doing freelance illustration, decided to launch reft tunes.
So when did you get saved?
Was that when you were a kid?
How long have you been doing reptunes when you got saved?
Yeah, that's what I'm curious about.
Wait.
How long have I been doing reptunes and then?
Exactly.
So you just saw a market for a market and then I got saved.
And then you started saying I jumped on it.
This Christian stuff is actually pretty good.
Yeah, Reformation.
What we need is a super niche comic here.
Let's see.
I'm not sure when specifically I was saved.
I grew up in a Christian family and going to church every Sunday.
And from a young age, I guess I really had a, I don't know, I was interested.
I mainly like, I would read my Bible during church when I was in elementary school and I would read all of Paul's letters and I would specifically focus on the part where it said Paul because that's my name and I was just like, oh, there's a Paul in the Bible.
And that's kind of what got me interested in reading the Bible.
That's kind of vain, but.
Did you go to a Reform?
Did you guys go to a Reformed church at the time?
No, I grew up in the Free Methodist Church.
So when did you get saved?
So when did I guess?
So I don't know.
I feel like I kind of grew into a desire to love God and be more into his word and understanding who he is.
And I think through high school, I had a lot of questions that were not answered that were just kind of blown off by, oh, just pray some more or read your Bible.
But it was really into my college years and after college where I really, I don't know if I came to a fuller understanding, but I didn't come into reform theology until like five or six years ago or so.
When did you throw away the crackpipe?
The crackpipe.
Never.
Oh, Sad.
Yeah, I don't have like, it's not like an interesting like come to Jesus story.
It's just kind of, I just kind of.
But you're creative.
You could come up with something.
Yeah.
I could draw it.
Yeah.
I have a better time drawing than explaining.
So if I could just walk around with a sketch pad and just show people instead of talk to them, that would be easier for me.
I do see some, let me know if I'm correct here.
I see some Bill Watterson influence on your artwork.
Am I correct?
Oh.
I'm sorry.
Who's that?
Bill Watterson?
Yes.
Yes.
Was that a joke?
I think it was a joke, though.
You're dry.
Very dry.
Yes.
Yes, I know.
Yeah.
Bill Waterson was a huge influence.
Him and Looney Tunes.
I loved watching Looney Tunes growing up.
I used to say, I want to be a cartoonist and work for Warner Brothers when I was a kid, but that never happened.
We had similar childhoods.
My two biggest influences is probably Bill Watterson and The Far Side.
So that's where I got my love of good brushwork.
I think a lot of people that don't draw don't realize that Bill Watterson is really a master.
He's an amazing artist.
Yes, yeah.
And then the far side, he's a horrible artist, but like he is hilarious.
Yeah.
And that's where I got my weirdness from, I think.
Oh, yeah.
I remember going to the library growing up and just checking out all of the far side comics.
Yes.
Just throwing them home and binging them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kids these days are what they missed out on.
Kyle, did you grow up on the far side and Calvin Hobbes?
Kid, youngin'?
I did.
Like in high school, I picked up all the Calvin and Hobbes collections and all the Farside collections and I just devoured them.
I loved both of those.
Sadly, I was also, I got to admit, I was also into Garfield.
I had a Garfield phase and I was like around 10.
I think that Garfield is this weird thing where you're like fifth grade, sixth grade, funniest thing ever.
And then like you get to like eighth grade, ninth grade, and you go, I laughed at this at some point in my life.
I think that for me, there is a like beauty to the simplicity of the character designs in Garfield that I really wanted to learn how to.
And he was so repetitive in his style That I don't know It was a good There's a rut you can fall into as an artist I'm sure you've seen guys like this, Paul.
They find their one artist they really like and they just draw like that guy and then they just look like a little copy of him.
So it's like, oh, if you like this guy, but worse, get my comics.
But if you can take from, you know, take from all these different artists and kind of combine and find your own style, then that's the ideal.
And I think Garfield was a good comic for me for a short period to learn to draw from because he has great line weight and all this stuff.
Well, I think it was kind of like watching one of those old sitcoms where you realize that they just have one stereotype for every character.
Yeah.
You know, he just had Garfield likes lasagna and hates Mondays.
He likes lasagna.
Yeah.
Right.
Or whatever.
No, Odie's thing is kicking him off the table or whatever.
And they just use that in every, you know, once you realize that, you're like, oh, they're all the same.
I have to say, though, I wish Bill Watterson, it's cool how much of a purist he is, but I wish he would just be a little bit more of a sellout.
Like, just do like another 10 years or like.
Yeah, give me a t-shirt.
What I really want, I wish he'd just do graphic novel.
Like, just do like, you wouldn't be stuck in the Sunday paper, you know.
Right.
You know, just go crazy, do a book.
Man, that'd be amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe he's listening.
Everybody wishes he would sell it.
Everybody wishes.
Well, that's the crazy thing is he'd stop doing it because of the pressures of syndication.
And now, I mean, you could do whatever you want.
He could, if he just did a Kickstarter or something, he'd be a billionaire.
Right.
I'm sure he already is, yeah.
A gazillionaire.
Yeah.
Sorry.
And then make those Hobbes dolls.
Yeah, make the Hobbs dolls fun.
I named my son Calvin.
Probably more about over the comic than, because I'm not a Calvinist.
I was like 50-50, John Calvin and Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
50-50?
Yeah, but he turned out to be more like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes than John Calvin so far.
Yeah, I think ours was 50%.
Well, we had the excuse that I didn't want to just purely be that I named my kid after a comic character.
That's just lame.
But my, even though it's the best, it's the best one.
But we have a relative.
We looked in the family tree and found like an old old grandfather way in the back.
So that was your name is Calvin.
Oh, yeah.
He's named after that guy we never met.
It's after a great uncle.
Great uncle.
Also, dreamed in case you become a Calvinist.
Yeah, maybe God sovereignly ordered.
Never know.
I'm open.
All right.
I'm open to freely decide to become a Calvinist.
If God will, you live in Wisconsin.
Canton.
Wisconsin.
Should we dox you?
Do you want people to know that you live in Wisconsin?
There's so few people that live there, like, people can find them now that you said that.
Yeah, they've narrowed it down to about five people at this point.
He's the one drawing Reformation cartoons.
Yeah.
All right.
The only one in Wisconsin.
One of the five who draw Reformation.
Yeah, so what's Wisconsin like?
It's got any cool Wisconsin stories?
I don't know.
We eat a lot of cheese, and we're kind of cheese snobs here.
Come on now.
Is that true?
You know, that's a stereotype.
Is it true?
It is.
It is very true.
Really?
Yeah, we get cheese curds from the grocery store all the time, and we love them.
Cheese curds are good.
Squeaky cheese.
Yes.
Yep.
Yep.
Squeaky.
When we were growing up, there was an ad campaign on TV in California here saying how much better California cheese was than Wisconsin cheese.
You guys realize?
Yeah, I remember.
I didn't grow up here.
No.
I was very offended.
Oh, okay.
You saw the ads, huh?
They played them in Wisconsin?
That's just...
No, I just...
That's a meme.
I don't know.
Yeah, I saw them on TV.
Yeah.
Talking about California cheese or California milk.
You got to eat the California cheese, man.
It's a no-good Wisconsin story.
You got any good chicken stories?
Chicken stories?
Oh, let's see.
I have four chickens.
And great story.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Chickens are chickens.
They're insane.
Dumb.
I went out there to collect eggs the other day.
And right when I opened the door, one of them lifted its head up from a half-eaten egg and egg yolk dripped from its mouth as it's looking at me.
Kind of like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park or the Wampa on Star Wars when he looks up.
Stuff just falls out of his mouth.
Did you yell anything?
Did you yell at a Martin Luther quote at him such as this?
You have set out to rub your scabby, scurvy head against honor.
Chicken?
I was tempted.
Oh.
But that's going to be the first chicken that we eat.
Oh.
Have you ever chopped a chicken's head off?
I have, yeah.
I've never done that.
Do you do the I've heard there's different techniques you can use an axe or whatever, but I heard you can just grab them by the head and like twist and they just their head comes off.
Is that true?
I've not done that.
I used an axe.
Okay.
Yeah, I knew this guy that he like would he worked at a place where it was like a it was like you know putting can like putting lids on bottles or something.
It was just rapid fire.
So he's just like he said he showed me you use like you hook your two fingers under the beak around the head and just like you just whip your hand around like you're like you're like whipping around a thing and what would you whip around?
What's something you whip around?
A jump rope.
Maybe like a lasso.
I don't know.
Yeah, like a nun doing a lasso, and it just goes and twists off, and the chicken goes running off without its head.
It's a numb chuck.
Yeah.
Yeah, nunchuck.
A nun cluck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A few of the chickens got away and we had to chase them down.
I've never seen a running headless chicken.
Their head was off.
You guys?
Anybody else?
Oh, what?
Ever seen a running headless chicken?
I haven't even seen a headless chicken.
Yes, I have.
See, Paul's got the real experience.
We're stuck here in California where everything's, you know.
Yeah, Ethan just draws about it.
Yeah, I just draw.
I love the farm growing up.
All that blood.
So you're all into Reformation theology.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
Is he?
So what?
Well, or sports refs.
One of those.
Or just references.
Well, we could try to talk about sports refs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what attracted you to Reform Theology?
And, you know, I mean, it's kind of interesting that you got this comic that's just so focused in on this area of Reformation theology.
So what, I mean, I don't know.
Talk about it.
What were you thinking?
Well, what the heck were you thinking?
I don't know.
Yeah.
What drew me into it?
I'm not sure.
I think it was a slow turn.
It was a slow fade.
So there were a lot of problems at the church we were attending.
And one of those was leadership issues.
This was back in 2009.
And when I say we, it's me and my wife.
And just to clarify.
But there were some problems going on and some abusive leadership issues.
And they would let anything come through.
They wouldn't vet any materials coming in to the church for like small groups, Bible studies, and things like that.
One of the video series that we were doing as a small group in the church had various pastors on it speaking on different issues.
And there was this one pastor that I heard.
And I was like, oh, wow, I've never heard anyone preach from the Bible like that.
At all.
Verse by verse.
And I was like, oh, I want to look this guy up and see if he has some more.
Are you going to Joel Osteen's church?
Pretty much.
No, but, you know.
He's not in Wisconsin.
No, he's not.
But he has clones everywhere.
He does.
Yeah, there's plenty of clones out there.
So I think a lot of the churches we went to were maybe possibly headed that way.
But so I looked up this guy when I got home and started listening to him.
And he was talking about God's ultimate authority.
He had the series on ultimate authority and he was going verse by verse.
I don't remember what book he was going through of the Bible.
But it really struck me and he kind of gave out some resources, which some of those were like the White Horse Inn and Michael Horton's book, Christless Christianity.
So I went and grabbed that book, read through that, and it was basically talking about my church.
And if Christ is not like you can be going to church, but if Christ is not preached, it's not really.
It's Christless Christianity that you're learning moralistic self-help.
Yeah, self-help stuff.
And it was answering a lot of questions that I had that were never answered by my pastors growing up.
And like I said earlier, a lot of the answers I got were just go read your Bible more or go pray more or we can't study deeper into this because not everybody in the group wants to go deeper.
So you're on your own.
So I found in Reformed theology, which I didn't realize at the time, but all these people that I was getting into were Calvinistic and they were going through the Bible like I had never done before and teaching me how to study my Bible.
And I didn't know that the Old Testament pointed to Jesus until I started looking into this.
Because I was always taught topical sermons and they would just dance around different topics and not really address anything very deep.
So when I started getting into Reformed theology, my wife was not on the same page.
So you always thought Goliath was a metaphor.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like, we're David.
We have to conquer our giants.
Right.
When actually David is Christ and we're the cowering Israelites.
I'm offended.
What?
You should be.
I'm not Reformed, so I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know if I'm Reformed.
I assume I am Reformed, but I don't know.
It's always so confusing when you guys talk about.
I'm assuming you're Reformed.
It's not a thing that you just.
I'm not a Papist.
Well, so yeah, so all Protestants would be have some heritage from the Reformation.
But you have to talk about Reform.
There's a specific grab on it.
have to have like a badge yeah i mean i'd say the heart of it is like i didn't mean to interrupt him so bad The heart of it is like the five solas or the six solas or however many you want to say there are.
And I'm sure I generate the doctrines of grace.
37.
The 37 solas.
You guys have been more like intense about converting me to this.
Screw me.
Well, we just know like just every we just trust that God will do it eventually.
Okay.
We're Calvinists.
You know, we don't evangelize.
So yeah, I don't, I'm not like, I'm not like a scholar on any of this stuff.
I don't, I'm still learning, and that's one of the reasons I started Reft Tunes is to just kind of illustrate things that I'm learning.
Yeah, that's what it seems like to me is that you read a really good devotion or something and then you go, I should draw that.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
I'm reading through some of the Puritans things right now and a lot of the tunes, recent tunes have come out of that.
So would you ever consider making Arminian tunes?
I'd consider it.
And then reject it?
Actually, I thought about doing some, what's his name?
Oh, yeah, G.K. Chesterton.
G.K. Chesterton.
Yes.
Wait a minute.
Now Ethan's sitting there.
Wait a minute.
Now we're cooking with gas.
My ears just perked up.
Now we're smoking with tobacco.
I just stood up like a mere cat.
We want to see the sketch.
Can we see the sketch of GK Chesterton?
We need to see this.
Yeah, I'll post it sometime.
All right, cool.
But yeah, I have like a whole Google Docs filled with Chesterton quotes because he was hilarious.
Yeah, so many too.
Like the other day, I remember the other day Kyle was preparing for a speech and he's like, hey, you got a Chesterton quote on why comedy is important or whatever.
And I started looking and I found like, I found him like 30.
He sent me like a dozen of them.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
Too many.
And they were all perfect and they were all gold.
You can't decide.
Yeah.
But since starting Reft Tunes, I've learned that there are certain things that I can post that are fine and other things that I post or that I cannot post without getting a lot of flack for.
And a lot of those have to do with like hymns.
So I posted, I have these two tunes of hymn writers.
One is Fanny Crosby, the other is Horatio Spafford, who wrote it as well with My Soul.
That one I get the most flack for because, I mean, it's a really good song, but the writer ended up forming some sort of cult, leaving Christianity and forming a cult or something like that.
Oops.
So we're not allowed to like that song now?
I guess not, but I posted anyways.
So he's like the favorite songs.
He's like the Pedro the Lion of his day.
Pedro the Lion?
Or who else?
There's all these Christian artists that.
Who's the guy that single things?
Right.
He did.
Oh, too.
Gungor.
Yeah, that's a good fit.
Gungor.
I thought that was a Tolkien character.
Gungor?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's the troll and Morio.
He's one of the trolls.
Gungor.
Yeah, he ended up being like Jantheus, like we are all God.
Or like, there is no God.
Or the Icastating Goodbye guy.
There's a whole list.
Yeah, like Jars of Clay.
Wait, Jars of Clay ditched Jesus?
Well, wasn't that the lead singer of Jars of Clay?
I don't know.
He always sounded like a hippie when he was singing.
Oh, no.
Maybe I'm thinking of Gaiman's call.
No.
Oh, it's a Gaiman's call.
Was it?
I'm throwing out all these names and people are having like.
Everybody's like, what?
Yeah.
Hey, this is satire.
He's still good.
He's probably good.
Carmen's good.
Carmen's still good.
He's a life coach.
Oh, have you ever met Carmen?
Paul?
Not a death coach.
He's a life coach.
Oh, boy.
Have I ever met Carmen?
Yeah.
Or seen him?
You've been to a Carmen concert?
But I was at this thing called Life Fest up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
It's like a music festival.
And he was one of the headliners.
What?
Take your time.
Tell this story.
Take your time.
Go ahead.
This needs this time.
So we were walking around.
We'll make it interesting, though.
He was looking for a band to watch, but we couldn't find any good ones.
So we walked over to the Carmen set.
It was that.
It makes it sound like it wasn't very crowded.
At night time, there was lots of smoke, lots of lights.
You mean like fog, right?
Not smoke.
We popped into the crowd.
Like fog.
Okay.
Fog smoke.
Like smoke machines.
Gotcha.
Because it's a Carmen concert.
Yeah.
Well, you never know.
He was very dramatic, and he was very wearing black.
Pure black.
Like a black suit.
Okay.
Suit.
And so he was being very dramatic.
There were lots of middle-aged women jumping up and down, screaming.
And one woman had this giant.
Walked walked into the back, and next to us, to the left, was this woman holding this giant poster of Carmen with it was like poster board with a giant picture of him and it said his unbuttoned shirt, something like that.
And she was jumping up and down, screaming, I love you, Carmen.
And we saw that, we looked at each other, and we decided to walk away.
You didn't watch it?
We watched for a little bit.
Did he have any pyrotechnics?
I don't remember the pyrotechnics.
I just have that image of this lady with the poster.
The ladies loved him.
So he's like a one-man boy band.
He's a man in a man-band.
I wonder if he has like a Satan guy that dresses up and comes on stage and he posts.
I bet he does.
He's like the Christian Fabio or something.
It's always over your mind.
Oh, man.
So right there, you were so close.
You were within spitting distance of goodness.
And sold it online.
Ethan would have thought about it.
I keep forgetting to tell that this is going to sound because we talked about Carmen so much, and I've never told the story that I made it up.
Our first time coming to California, we were at breakfast, my family, at this hotel that was supposed to be a fancy, cool hotel.
And I saw this guy sitting behind us.
I'm like, that guy looks so familiar.
Who is that guy?
So I put him in my head.
I'm like, I'm going to figure out at some point who that guy is that's having breakfast behind us.
I later realized, it was Carmen.
That was Carmen.
So I have a Carmen story.
I think.
I'm pretty sure it was him.
I'm pretty sure.
It might have just been any 40-year-old.
Could have just been a guy who looked a lot like him.
But I'm pretty sure it was Carmen.
I liked Paul's story better.
Yeah, I was better.
Yeah.
Both had potential to be a lot better if we had just taken the time to dig a little deeper.
Sad.
Yep.
Yep.
Very sad.
So, Paul, you mentioned that you get some online pushback.
I want to hear about the pushback.
So you've mentioned the hymn writers.
I'm sure like pictures of Jesus, you'll get a.
I like the weird stuff Christians get upset about because when I worked on Biggie Tales, we got some of these.
Let's hear some Paul Cox hate mail.
Let's do it.
Oh, yeah.
Let's see.
I didn't even know.
Like, there's this term 2 CV.
Right.
Do you guys know what that is?
Yeah, the Second Commandment violation.
Pictures of Jesus, basically.
I've been learning about this.
I didn't know what that meant until I started Ref Tunes.
I didn't know what that abbreviation was.
I thought it was like, I don't know, like coronavirus or something.
No.
I came down with two CVs.
So I had posted these, this comic.
I thought, well, why not do some Bible verses?
That might be better sometimes than just focusing on all these old dead guys and just post some images depicting different things from the Word of God.
And one of them was like the fiery dove depicting the Holy Spirit or like representing, not depicting, representing the Holy Spirit.
You got to be very careful here.
You're on very thin ice, Paul.
I know.
Breaking chains of some people and some dead people and making them alive.
Oh, I remember that one.
I liked that one.
I got a lot of people messaging me saying that was 2 CV or even when I do the catechism questions, I'll illustrate little things.
I try very hard because I know that some people are very sensitive to this in the Reformed community.
Well, I know now.
You found out very quickly.
Yes, it's amazing what you find out when you start posting things to the public online.
So I try not to show pictures of Jesus.
So I drew from behind in the manger two little baby arms sticking out.
And I get 2CV exclamation point five times.
You can't even do a baby, huh?
Yeah, I guess even just arms.
What do they do at Christmas?
They just lose, they completely just have like bowel movement involuntary because they can't handle what's happening.
Don't you know that Christmas is a papist tradition?
Yeah.
Sad.
Papist.
So yeah, there's I get people telling me that my Christmas tunes are evil as well.
Reformers don't celebrate Christmas?
I guess not.
I didn't know.
The hardcore ones?
It's hardcore.
It's all, you know, it's a spectrum, right?
Are you allowed to say Christ in the word Christmas?
You have to say like seamus.
Papal miss.
Or you could use a you could use one of these Martin Lutherisms and you'd say, this is rascal myths.
But yeah, so I try to steer clear of like anything that has to do with Jesus, but I try to steer clear from drawing drawing in the of the Godhead if I have to.
So do you go to a Reformed church?
I go to an evangelical free church that is more to hold more to reform theology.
Gotcha.
So you're not like confessional hardcore.
Like you're going to, you know, you're all on board with the 2C V and the anti-Christmas stuff yourself necessarily.
But, you know, you're sensitive to that because a lot of people in your audience have concerns about that.
Yeah, and I know that there's people whose conscience is really bound by that.
And so I don't want to make them upset by doing something that doesn't necessarily need to be done.
Sure.
If I can find another way to do it.
Sure, we.
And I guess that helps me to be a little more creative.
Sure.
When we wrote our book for the Babylon B, we had this.
Barnes and Noble didn't like our cover image.
And so they said that we needed to change it to an actor dressed up as Jesus with a big goofy grin taking a selfie.
And yeah, we're not like, at least me personally, I'm not a hardcore 2 C V guy or anything, but I was like, yeah, that's not going to fly.
Even me, and I have no shame.
That's too far.
I have no shame violating the second commandment.
Yeah.
No, I won't try to do a picture of God.
That's my exact thing.
Yeah, no, I won't do that.
There is a line for me as well.
And like, if it's something that's going to be like making fun of God or making fun of Jesus or something like that, you know, I'm not going to do that.
Kyle's time.
Right.
Sure, sure.
Just kidding.
I'm pretty bad myself.
That's a piece to work through, Kyle.
Yeah.
I know.
Try.
So, Paul, I want to.
We're going to do a subscriber portion.
Might as well.
I've always done it.
So before we go into our subscriber portion.
Talk about his history of crack dealing.
Paul's going to give us some juicy stories on his history of crack and chicken cheese trade.
Smuggling crack inside chickens in Wisconsin.
Hollowed out chicken carcasses.
Holled-out cheese wheels.
He shoves the into the hole where the head was, then throws the head back on.
That's right.
With my taxidermy skills.
I guess that was the plot of Breaking Bad, though, wasn't it?
Was it?
They hit El Pollo Loco or whatever.
They hit it in the chicken.
El Pollo Loco is a real restaurant.
Los Harmanos Chicanos.
We are not slandering El Pollo Loco in any way.
They have nothing to do with it.
Yeah, but we wanted to give you a chance.
We wanted to let our listeners know that Paul has a collection coming out.
So you're doing a collection of, is it all your stuff on your site?
Or why don't you just talk about it?
Because you know more about it than I do.
Well, the collection is, it's ready for pre-order, and it is my comics, my Reftoons comics from 2017 through 2019.
So anything in that time span.
It's from the beginning of Reftoons through the end of last year.
It's collection one.
And that's available for pre-order through the Reftoons shop, which is you can get there from Reftoons.com and click the store button.
Or you can go to reftoons.myshopify.com.
It's very, very professional.
Yeah.
When can we expect GK Chestertunes?
GK Chestertunes.
After I finish all the Puritunes.
That was pretty good.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Sometime, maybe you'll see Chesterton.
That was pretty good.
That was good.
We're a fan of a good pun.
And also, you illustrated a take on The Pilgrim's Progress, which is one of my favorite books.
And yeah, so that's also on your site.
Yeah, my wife and I turned the Pilgrim's Progress into a poem as a children's book.
I illustrated it and we both came up with a storyline based off of John Bunyan's classic.
So it's very, very much condensed into like 40-some pages.
And that is available through reftoons.com.
Click on the store button.
Or you can get it through Hessedandemmet.com, which is the publisher, HD Publishing.
Awesome.
Okay.
Well, and you guys should all follow Reftoons because it's a real good.
It's encouraging when I see it on my feed.
I get a little Puritan theology, a Bible verse, a Spurgeon quote.
And it's Christian comics that are not terrible.
That should be your tagline.
It should be.
So follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and check them out at Reftoons.com.
And then we're going to go into some juicy stuff in our subscriber portion.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
He's the one that kind of brought me out of my cage stage.
Listening to me.
What's that mean?
Cage stage?
Cage stage.
Give us hot takes on all the reformers, and here we go.
John Calvin.
He listened to Pavarati.
Have a plane out of his window, and like in the and then he'd just fart freely and he would not acknowledge it and just keep opera, flowers, farting.
I say, Kyle doesn't get that I'm too old for LOL.
LOL is like, I can't write it without feeling like I've sold my soul to Satan.
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Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.