In Ron Wheeler’s words …

Ralph was a comic strip I wrote and drew for the campus newspaper (The Daily Nebraskan) for a few semesters at the University of Nebraska in the mid-1970s. My social status went from nerd to rock star overnight … and my ego inflated right along with it. It was also a very confusing time. This experience eventually led me toward a spiritual transformation. I eventually placed my trust in Jesus Christ to be my Savior in 1979.

Whether it was journalling, sending letter updates to friends and family, writing comic strips, or even now writing a blog for my website, I have always wanted to express to others what I see in the world around me. The Ralph comic strip in the 1970s opened an avenue of communication inside of me that had never been tapped before. Turns out, what I expressed through this strip other students on campus experienced as well. The strip resonated with them. Thus, I became everybody’s best friend … everybody except my true friends. They saw what the popularity of this strip did to me. I became so full of myself that I actually thought I was better than others. I also thought the drunks at a party who greeted me loudly from across the room actually liked me. Instead, they just wanted to springboard socially off of my popularity. I got caught up in this for a while, but eventually realized I didn’t know who I could trust. After college I would occasionally run into a fellow Nebraska graduate who wanted to talk about “Ralph.” I couldn’t do it. I was struggling with life issues and I didn’t want to cling to hollow glories from the past.

I still wanted to be a cartoonist. I believe I was created to be one, not for the notoriety, but because it was a vehicle from where I could explore life and reflect it to others. I stretched the edge of the envelope with my writing. On one hand, Ralph became homecoming king. On the other hand, I raised racial tensions on campus and hurt a lot of people. Go HERE to read The “Ralph” Controversy … a collection of those complaints (and my assessment today) related to the strip below.

My cartoons were often sophomoric, vulgar, profane, full of sexual double entendres, and sexism. At one point I wrote a series of strips of Ralph’s little brother naively getting high on pot. I will admit, the series WAS clever. I had the characters waiting for the “Great Turkey” in a marijuana patch (similar to Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin in Peanuts). And the jokes WERE funny.

My life in crisis:

While in school I came down with mononucleosis. I met a doctor at the Student Health Center who had just returned from Vietnam as a missionary. He told me that he enjoyed my work, but he felt compelled to tell me that the communists he treated overseas told him they were going to conquer the United States without firing a shot. They were going to do it with drugs. That was several decades ago. Look at our culture today. Would you say they were effective in their mission?

That was a turning point for me. I began to ask myself, “What do I want to accomplish with my cartoons? Do I want to hurt people, or do I want to help people?”

As my life continued to decline, and my syndicating Ralph efforts ran its course, I finally cried out … “God I give up!” At that point, I placed my total trust in Christ, and I gave up my dream of being a cartoonist. God gave it back to me the very next day by opening my eyes to a company that was looking for a cartoonist right across the street from my apartment. That event transitioned into a lengthy freelance cartooning career for Christian ministries and publishing companies all over the globe. Yes, God had called me to create cartoons, but He wanted me first. Once He had me, He used this gift inside of me to spread His Truths all over the world.

The Ralph Archive:

In separate batches below are all of the Ralph comic strips I drew while in college. I’ve also included Ralph strips done after college in my futile attempt at self-syndicating my work to other campus papers. Plus there are some advertisements featuring Ralph, and a few media stories on Ralph included below. None of this material is for sale nor should any of it be reprinted. (What I do have available are 100 illustrations I created at this time to accompany several of the Daily Nebraskan newspaper articles. You can find these drawings in my Image Vault. Just type in the keywords … “Daily Nebraskan” in the Search box.)

Honestly, even though Ralph had quite a following for its day, I am somewhat embarrassed to display any of this material on my website now … not only because there is so much inappropriate content (they were written before I knew Christ), but also because many of them were poorly drawn, poorly written, and are full of inside jokes only people on that campus in the mid 1970s would understand. In hindsight I am amazed any newspaper syndicate would give this work a second of attention … and yet they did. No syndicate ever bought my strip but my experience working with them helped me to grow in my ability to be a professional cartoonist today. This work might be enlightening to aspiring cartoonists just trying to figure things out … or for old Nebraskans who fondly remembered a cartoon character winning Homecoming King in the 1970s.

Ralph’s Homecoming King Story:

The first set of strips here are the ones that led up to Ralph being voted Homecoming King. With this kind of publicity the other candidates never stood a chance. (Full disclosure: Ralph was never actually crowned the official Homecoming King at the University of Nebraska. Even though he got the most votes, this was all done in good fun by everyone involved.) I do feel sorry for the kid that really won the award. He sort of got overlooked.

Ralph Batch 1:

My first published comic strip was one making fun of Campus Crusade evangelist Josh McDowell. Josh was visiting NU’s campus as part of an evangelism campaign, and I was the staff artist for the Daily Nebraskan. I wrote this cartoon for our editor, an atheist. He loved it and said, “Let’s put this in the paper tomorrow and start running Ralph cartoons every day.” That was my start. Ironically, after I became a Christian, Josh became one of my clients. Below is my first batch of Ralph strips.

Ralph Batch 2:

I was a junior when I created these strips below, but they might as well have been done when I was a sophomore, because they are the very definition of sophomoric humor.

Ralph Batch 3:

Now this is where I really got in trouble. I thought I could make fun of anybody and everybody if I did it indiscriminately. I’m lucky I didn’t get kicked out of college after the fuss one of my strips kicked up. See if you can guess which one. If not, you might want to visit this page … The Ralph Controversy.

Ralph Batch 4:

In the following strips I started writing more episodically, meaning there was more than one strip in a series as part of a storyline. This allowed me to develop more personality in the characters and more clearly define the world they lived in. Much of that world related to my world, and there was still a good amount of sophomoric humor even though I was now a senior.

Ralph Batch 5:

As my college career neared completion, my drawings started improving and I learned to add more personality to the characters’ expressions. I also started to have more confidence in drawing physical humor. Here’s the background from an inside joke you might not understand when you read one of these strips … Gerald Ford was running for president at this time and there was an assassination attempt on his life by a young woman who was recently paroled from prison. She was part of the murdering Charles Manson cult. Her name was Squeaky Fromme. True story.

Ralph Love Stories:

Wrapping up, what would college life be without a little romance? I wrote a number of strips along these lines even though I didn’t have a clue what love was about. These are more like “infatuation until you get hurt” stories rather than love stories. I was clueless, but so was everyone else.

Ralph in Advertising:

I don’t know if I made a lot of money off of drawing Ralph in ads and selling Ralph T-shirts, but I sure had a lot of fun capitalizing on Ralph’s popularity. I even got three hours of college credit for “Promoting Ralph” as an independent study business class. It was the easiest college credit I ever got, and it was probably the most beneficial college course I ever took. I still use the principals I learned from the experience in my cartooning business today.

Ralph’s Next Step:

After college, a marketing/advertising graduate friend of mine and I made a feeble attempt at self-syndication. We geared Ralph to be sold to campus newspapers. But there was no common publishing consistency or money found in college newspapers. Plus, without the personal connection of the cartoonist being part of their own campus, most were not interested. I WAS able to bring Ralph back to the Daily Nebraskan, however, much to the glee of a couple of people who wrote into the paper.

Here’s one letter to the editor written BEFORE Ralph’s return …

• Humor Questioned … The UNL campus abounds with humorous material for a comic strip, but none seems to find its way into your current strip. Whatever happened to the caliber of wit and satire displayed by Ron Wheeler in Ralph? Your current strip‘s character who was “flunked out for not partying,” and similar attempts at mirth have been pathetically sophomoric. As Pat Oliphant, Ron Wheeler, and Garry Trudeau have demonstrated, cartoons for adults can be enjoyable. How about it D.N.? – Eric, Senior Advertising Major

I never read the strip he referred to (I feel for its creator, though), but in reading my work 45 years later, I find it funny that he didn’t see my work as sophomoric. Maybe as a senior, he was only two years removed from being a sophomore himself. It was nice of him to include me with great cartoonists like Oliphant and Trudeau, however. That should qualify him for knowing something.

Here’s another letter writer who wrote the following AFTER Ralph’s return …

• Ralph Welcome … Upon returning to classes this semester I noticed a pleasing change. The change I speak of is on the editorial page. Ralph is back! I have been in forty-severn states and one foreign country and the Ralph comic strip is one of the best I have seen. It adequately suits the student body. I do not wish to discredit the creator of your current comic strip but, it just isn’t Ralph. Most of my friends share my opinion, and we welcome Ralph back. Good luck! – J.S.III

No, that wasn’t from my mom writing under the pseudonym “J.S.III.” I hope you can understand how receiving these types of accolades can give a person an inflated sense of self-worth if he doesn’t know Jesus Christ … or even if he does. I remember walking past the first floor window of a dormitory and seeing the wall of someone’s room completely covered with Ralph comic strips cut out from the school paper. I don’t know why something like Ralph could be so appealing to some people, just as I don’t know why newspaper syndicates never found my work appealing enough. The best answer I can rest in is … God had a different plan to use my gifts, and I’m not the one in charge.

Ralph Self-Syndication Efforts:

Below are some of the additional strips (plus some I recreated for marketing purposes) I created during my self-syndication efforts.

One note of irony … I worked on some of this extra material during down periods while working in the corporate world. The head of the department I was training in saw these strips and wrote me up for inappropriate communication material (drug usage). While in another department someone wrote me a nasty note because propping my feet up on the desk didn’t communicate proper office decorum. Sigh! I really didn’t fit into the corporate world. Praise God I got fired. The first thing I did after being let go was take off my necktie. The second thing I did was I started writing comic strips.

Ralph in the News:

Finally, below are examples of some of the articles written at the time about me and the “Ralph” experience.