Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This November 1980 Classic article chronicles the ascent of cartoonist Jack Hamm it the top of the niche world of religious cartooning.
Jack Hamm may be the most widely read Baylor Bear of all—if such a thing could be determined. But it’s a safe guess that cartoonist Hamm’s twenty books (most still in print) have reached a giant audience. And, at one time, his well-known religious cartoons were printed in 52 different countries, in 1,013 publications. That’s a lot of exposure for a fellow who took fifteen years to graduate.
“Well, fifteen years isn’t exactly correct,” Hamm said in his Dallas home. “You’ve got to remember that during those years I served in the Army and World War II, went to art school and worked to raise enough money to reenter Baylor.”
Hamm, incidentally, tends to be overly modest. In 1933 he attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago; he came to Baylor the following year to pursue a career in the ministry. But art was the other love of his life, and it would be several more years before he was able to reconcile the two. He returned to Chicago in 1936 to study at the prestigious Frederic Mizen Academy of Art.
During the early war years he illustrated the syndicated newspaper column “Let’s Explore Your Mind,” the Newspaper Enterprise Association’s “Alley Oop” and the forgettable “Boots and Her Buddies” before serving a tour of duty in Alaska.
Once back at Baylor, Hamm was the primary illustrator for the legendary Centennial Round-Up yearbook—a position he said “carried a grave responsibility.” It was during this second tenure at Baylor that Hamm began to bleed green and gold. He stayed on after graduation to teach art for five years and did freelance work for the Waco News-Tribune.
At this point Hamm found a way to combine his gifts of ministry and art: religious editorial cartooning.
“I did a few at first, mostly a hobby,” Hamm said, “and they seemed to be well received. So finally I decided this was the way the Lord wanted me to go. My wife Dorisnel and I loaded up the car and mapped a route to thirteen cities to talk to the newspaper editors. At the outskirts of each town, we stopped and prayed that God’s will would be done. Of those thirteen, twelve agreed to run the cartoons. So each week I mailed the cartoons free of charge.
“They were accepted far beyond my wildest expectations. For a time we were getting twenty-five new subscribers a day, and in the ‘50s we had over a thousand newspapers in our little syndicate. But with that many newspapers it started costing $50 a day just for postage.
“After giving the cartoons away for nearly four years. I took the advice of Harry Provence, editor of the Waco News-Tribune, and started charging a nominal fee. We lost a few papers—and we knew we would—but we’ve continued the ministry on through today. The list of publications changes weekly and with the trend toward chains, we don’t have a thousand subscribers anymore. But it is still a thriving, viable ministry.”
Hamm’s cartoons are the mainstay of his nonprofit ministry, now in thirteen languages. Eighteen different denominations have supported his work and he continues to draw with the same enthusiasm as when he began twenty-nine years ago.
“There have been a number of religious cartoonists in that time,” he said, “but I’m not sure all of them placed scripture at the center of their work. That’s my primary intent. The heart of it all has to be the Word of God. It is the lifeblood of this ministry. And Jesus Christ is the only way to God. That’s what I want to convey. The more I study, the older I get, the more I see that the Christian word is heavily substantiated by fact. In every way.”
Hamm’s influence reaches far beyond the Christian world. His books on art have sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide; and five (Drawing the Head and Figure, Drawing Scenery, Cartooning the Head and Figure, How to Draw Animals and Still Life Drawing and Painting) are considered classics in the field. Incidentally, the bears in How to Draw Animals were drawn from bears in Baylor’s very own bear pits. Hamm even designed the imposing bruin on the side of Baylor Stadium. Publishers Weekly calls Hamm the “expert’s expert” in art instruction.
He is presently artist-in-residence at Dallas Baptist College, teaching, among other things, the only class in Christian art in the country. Hamm has just completed a highly successful month-long exhibition of his collected works at the DBC gallery.
Dorisnel Hamm was director of Baylor’s first nursery school, nearly thirty years ago. She reports some of her earliest “clients” are now full-blown Baylor professors.
“Is this really for The Baylor Line?,” Hamm asked. “Well, keep it short. Few like to read at length about a fellow, except the guy and his mother. And she soon tires of it.”
A couple of million readers would probably disagree.
