A Second Shot of Coffee with Jesus

Those who need more than one cup a day, rejoice: a second shot, er, volume of the Internet comic strip Coffee with Jesus is served up. Suit-wearing, coffee-drinking Jesus is back, holding a cuppa, fielding questions, offering counsel and correction, and regularly matching wits with a mustachioed Satan. The four-panel strip is all wit, since it relies on static clip art drawn from the annals of Sunday school lessons and 1950s advertisements. Of the five human characters—two women, two men, and clergyman Joe—the only one who ever changes expression is Carl, a chipper older fellow who occasionally wears a ball cap or glasses; Satan is always sly and supercilious, one eyebrow slightly raised. The comics are a kind of 21st-century parable: short and provocative, gentle and non-judgey, examining common questions and (mis)conceptions about Jesus. They’re extra-funny for readers who are churchgoers, who will get the digs at church-y Christianity. But they also function as Christian theology 101 in their simplicity, and Jesus always has the last, wry word. (May)