'What in hell you people were thinking of, I have no idea." That sentiment, from a reader in Contoocook, was among numerous angry telephone messages awaiting me yesterday after a long weekend out of town.

The subject of their ire was a full-page comic strip in the Sept. 5 paper by Monitor staffer Clay McCuistion about his recent civil union ceremony and celebration. To me, the comic was one of the more interesting things we've published in recent months. I liked experimenting with a new format for story-telling. McCuistion is a talented editor who moonlights as a cartoonist (you can also see his work in the weekly Concord Insider), and his artistic ability gives readers a different way to think about issues. His humor is not "in your face," in the words of one critic, but gentle and sometimes goofy.

Here's a JPEG image of the comic strip.

Here's a PDF of the cartoon. (It's a big file and may take a minute to load onto your screen.)

I particularly liked the comic strip format as a way to tell the story of one couple's civil union. The Monitor has published numerous news stories, editorials and opinion essays on the politics of gay rights and civil unions over the past year. It's been a big story across New Hampshire, where the law creating civil unions - one of the first in the country - took effect Jan. 1. A cartoon treatment allowed McCuistion to tell a more personal story.

Clearly, some readers didn't like it.

One woman said she didn't want to be confronted with "this garbage" and said she would canceled her newspaper subscription. Another said that the cartoon format seemed intended for children - but that the subject matter was inappropriate for kids. A third caller said he had no trouble with gay people but didn't want the issue of civil unions "pushed on me" by his morning newspaper. In a letter to the editor, the minister of a local church accused the newspaper of promoting "sodomy."

Actually, the comic strip struck me as rather tame. It certainly wasn't about sex. In fact, no one at the wedding even kissed - at least in the cartoon version. Much of the comic strip described a ceremony like any other wedding: fretting over the menu and tossing the bouquet; a justice of the peace who arrived late and employers (me!) who left early. Some of it was uniquely McCuistion's - like the guest who played video games at the party.

Of course, not all comic strips are for children. The critically acclaimed Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's 2001 memoir about growing up in authoritarian Iran, for instance, is told completely through black-and-white cartoons. That doesn't mean we're not mindful of what we put in the newspaper. But McCuistion's cartoon was promoted on the front page and the title of the strip - "How we got gay married" - certainly wasn't subtle. Parents reading the Monitor with their children shouldn't have felt surprised by the comic's content.

I can appreciate that some readers are opposed to gay marriage and civil unions - and that not every reader will like every article or photograph or drawing that we publish. But surely it is our job as journalists to present as broad a view of our community as possible.

Some readers wondered if "How we got gay married" was the start of a regular, recurring comic strip in the Monitor. This particular cartoon was a one-time feature. But our commitment to innovative story-telling about issues of all sorts is one we strive to keep every day.