Jok Church
cartoonist (1949-2016)
Jok Richard Church (November 28, 1949 – April 29, 2016) was an American cartoonist who created the Universal Press Syndicate syndicated comic strip You Can with Beakman and Jax, later adapted into the TV series Beakman's World. The series premiered September 18, 1992, on The Learning Channel (TLC) cable network and in national syndication (225 stations, a freshman year record). On September 18, 1993, it moved from national syndication to CBS Saturday morning children's lineup. At the peak of its popularity, it was seen in nearly 90 countries around the world.
He created his comic strip You Can with Beakman & Jax in 1991 for his local newspaper in Marin County, California—inspired by a stint answering kids' letters for Lucasfilm. It was the first-ever syndicated newspaper comic drawn and distributed by computer, a Macintosh SE using Adobe Illustrator 88. The comic strip does not answer readers' questions directly; it gives directions for creating an experiment for one to discover the answer independently.
His weekly newspaper feature was posted to his Twitter mini-blog page the week after newspapers had published it.
Jok Church died in San Francisco from a heart attack on April 29, 2016.
Early life and career
Jok Church was born in Akron, Ohio raised in Akron and Munroe Falls, Ohio and attended high school in Stow, Ohio.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jok Church” as cartoonist (1949-2016). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6269643. VIAF identifies the subject as 13966456. The Library of Congress control number is n92065965. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2016, 1992 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jok Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.