Carter & Atwood's iPlates Are iGreat

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

So, I've been a single dad to my eight and six year-old boys for the last nine days while my wife and two oldest travel throughout Thailand, Cambodia and South Korea on a service vacation. That first Sunday I was already exhausted and used the excuse that, "Boys, ward conference is kind of like stake break conference. Let's just take a family day." I felt no different yesterday morning, but decided to get them up, bathed, fed and dressed before our nine a.m. sacrament meeting.

I was already regretting my decision 15 minutes into sacrament meeting. The boys had somehow squirreled hot wheels into the building and were on their knees racing them on top of, around, and over every available surface. I tried to distract them by drawing what I thought were pretty decent renditions of a cave troll, Treebeard and Gandalf, but didn't get much more than two minutes respite. Desperate, I thought, "There has to be something in the "church bag" that will keep their attention for more than five minutes."

I passed over two iSpy books before noticing Stephen Carter's iPlates, a comic series based on the Book of Mormon. My first reaction was one of guilt ... Stephen had sent me a complimentary review copy months ago, but after failing to get my oldest to write a review of the comic book for MMM, I'd forgotten about it. Now, volume one of iPlates had my attention, and as I flipped a few pages into Ammon: Warrior Missionary and saw this, I thought, "This should do the trick."

As a seasoned member of the church who still finds the Book of Mormon incredibly dull, I enjoyed that iPlates wasn't a strict retelling of the narrative. At the end of the comic book, Stephen describes the collection as "historical fiction - with an emphasis on the fiction ... featuring 100% of the Book of Mormon's violence, tons of bonus character development, and a dollop of preaching big enough to keep your mom happy."

Well, Stephen, this time you kept the dad happy. And you also kept my two boys happy for much longer than five minutes.

About the authors: Stephen Carter is the current editor of Sunstone and the drawings are by Sunstone cartoonist, Jett Atwood. Support them (and volume two) by purchasing iPlates.