Page 31 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Uh... I'm pretty sure the Vatican's main stance on the Inquisition is "Okay sorry, we fucked up there." and not " No this is totally justified!"
Jessica	Best kept secret. Not the JFK assassination. Not J. Edgar Hoover's secret files. Not Area 51. The Jesuits. Full stop. And he feels the need to provide a note for authority (right or power). I get the feeling the intended audience of this thing are most familiar with the concept.

Page 32 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Fun fact: There is no evidence suggesting this story actually happened. Outside of a few references found in Christian apologetic books and websites (All of which seem to have gotten their information from Alberto's claims) I haven't been able to find any records of a Dona Isabela being executed by the Inquisition in 1559. Seems like the trial and execution of a cousin to the friggin' King of Spain would be something that they'd have written down in great detail. It's not like there was any shortage of IRL examples of the Inquisition's barbarity, Alberto is just that damn devoted to the lie.
Jessica	She seems awfully calm for someone actively IN LABOR! I think the term you are looking for is "with child." Chick does know where babies come from, right? That weird neck thing the dude is wearing in the first panel always reminds me of that shitty movie "Wild Wild West."

Page 33 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Yeah, as much as the Evangelicals like to play the Martyr Card to satisfy their persecution complex, the real Spanish Inquisition was mostly targeted towards Jews and Muslims. When this wasn't the case, it would usually be a target for political reasons. Chances are she was carrying the King's bastard child or something like that, that is if this incident actually happened.
Jessica	Catholics believe in "God." The Inquisition believed in "God." Nothing she is saying strikes me as particularly heretical and definitely doesn't make me think "witchcraft." You're stretching. Then again, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, so who can say.

Page 34 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Sharp cloth torture? Yeah, outside of biblical sites recounting Alberto's story, there is no evidence of the Inquisition using this method. There was a similar technique, but the goal of it wasn't to shove the cloth down their throat to lacerate it, it was to give them the sensation of drowning. This was because the Inquisition was (officially speaking) forbidden from shedding blood, and would go out of their way to bypass this rule and exploit any loopholes. Also, it's kinda hard to get a confession out of a target when they're choking on their own blood.
Jessica	Yeah, waterboarding has been in the news quite a bit in the last ten years or so. You aren't going to fool anyone with this. Or maybe Alberto is trying to say he has secret Jesuit Knowledge™ that the history books just won't tell you!

Page 35 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Real Historical Fact: Nothing indicates that Philip II had a cousin executed by the Inquisition at all.
Jessica	Isabella the First of Castile was related to Philip I and brought crime to a new low in her region. She died in 1504 (not 1559) from unspecified illness (not execution).

Page 36 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Yep, you read that right. Alberto actually claimed that the Jesuits have infiltrated every major church in order to sabotage them from within. So the next time you hear about Ted Haggard snorting coke off a rentboy's ass, Kent Hovind cooking the books, or Jim Jones staging a mass suicide, it was ALL THE WORK OF JESUIT SLEEPER AGENTS.
Jessica	Yeah, it kind of looks like he's about to rock out Yankee Stadium or something. I really have a hard time believing any religious order would have the money to pull off something like this.

Page 37 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	A secret police within the Spanish Government? Somewhat true, though once again this was more of a feature of the Franco Regime rather than a long-standing Catholic conspiracy.
Jessica	And the Hitler Regime. And the Stalin Regime. It's kind of what fascists do.

Page 38 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Heh. I imagine if Alberto were alive today, he'd be bitching about how women always put him in the "friendzone" despite his basic grasp of manners. Though I can't imagine many women being able to resist a bouquet of lollipops.
Jessica	Oh yeah, Al here is quite the looker. Be still my beating heart...

Page 39 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Yeah, sure. You got your name featured in the Spanish newspapers at the age of 17. I'm sure the Jesuit secret police worked very hard to purge it from public record since, y'know, no one can find the papers in question. I do like the expression on the Green Shirt Guy though, I had the same face the first time I read Dick Haefer's stuff.
Jessica	Were "heretics" actually listed by name in the newspaper? That seems rather inefficient, expensive and time consuming to me.

Page 40 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	The names of every Protestant minister and church goer? Yeah, I'm sure the computers of 1979 had the processing power and storage space for that.
Jessica	The computer I had in 1994 didn't have a hard drive. You just swapped out these huge floppy disks. Wristwatches have more power than that these days.

Page 41 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	"Yes, it won't be long now." Over 35 years since and the clock is still ticking.
Jessica	Says the man in 1979. This is getting old.

Page 42 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Implications of a devil woman ruining the lives of innocent men because they can get away with false rape accusations? Jesus, Alberto was ahead of his time in all the wrong ways.
Jessica	Fred Carter seems to be able to only draw one seductive woman.

Page 43 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	AHHHH!!! TEXT WALL!!!
Jessica	'nuff said.

Page 44 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Yeah, I'm sure the Vatican has the power to bump off anyone in the world at any given point. Christ, the 9/11 truthers would tell Alberto he's being too paranoid!
Jessica	His face here just seems to scream "I believe you have my stapler."

Page 45 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Y'know, this Costa Rican church has an awful lot of white people...
Jessica	There's the same woman again. And this time she has the same hairdo as Gloria from "Marriage Mess." All these comics run together after a while.

Page 46 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	If Carmen was able to seduce 17 boys and have them expelled, why didn't they just expel her? Oh right, because Women can get away with lying about these things. *rolls eyes* Alberto was born too soon, he should have partnered up with Jack Elam.
Jessica	And there's Frank Miller without the facial hair. This IS "Marriage Mess"!

Page 47 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Wow, once again Chick's made the black guy into a gibbering idiot. Alberto just told him that the plan was to discredit the church by destroying its reputation, sex scandals tend to do that. Though I question the logic of only using two women and one man for this so called master plan.
Jessica	Jack Chick clearly thinks all women are Jezebels, so it's really telling that isn't where Jim's mind goes first.

Page 48 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	As much as this hurts me to say it, Alberto's right. Purgatory isn't in the Bible, it was invented by the Catholic church centuries after Christ died. But I will argue that Chick's own theology is an even more powerful and despicable brainwashing tool, since it lets murderers and thieves get into heaven so long as they make a deathbed conversion.
Jessica	Why did they break Alberto's speech bubble into three parts in Panel 2? They do this quite a bit in both the tracts and comics but it never seems to make any sense.

Page 49 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	I like how Alberto calls mass a "Beautiful Invention" despite all the venom and mudslinging he spouts against Catholicism.
Jessica	Jim doesn't know what mass is? I think there are uncontacted tribes in the Congo that know what mass is.

Page 50 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Actually, the Catholic Church's veneration of Mary doesn't run as deep as Alberto and Chick would like. Officially speaking, the Vatican has made it clear that Mary worship is analogously worship towards God. Honestly, it makes just about as much sense as honouring a certain Carpenter for being the Avatar of your God.
Jessica	I like how indignant Jesus looks in the first panel. He is NOT going to pay a lot for this muffler!

Page 51 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Funny, that's the exact same passage many Catholics use to justify their exaltation of Mary. Note how Jesus effectively declares Mary the mother of his disciple, this is frequently interpreted as Jesus stating that she is in effect the "mother of all", and all Alberto can focus on is the use of one word. It's a little disrespectful to call ones mom "woman", but it's not like the Bible has a history of showing women respect. "Man, no real Christian would buy that!" 1.2 Billion people apparently did.
Jessica	Now they're asking about immaculate conception. They know plenty about the occult but absolute jack shit about the beliefs of other strains of Christianity. Or their own for that matter.

Page 52 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Unlike your system which requires you to spend all your hard earned money on cheap paper comics. *Smirks*
Jessica	How do YOU know that a Roman Catholic doesn't have Jesus in his heart (presuming Jesus is real). If he says it, who's to say he doesn't mean it?

Page 53 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Wait a second Alberto, you said this ID was issued in 1967? Odd, because he had been in the US since at least 1965, when he had a warrant for his arrest issued in New Jersey. Plus, his earlier accounts listed him leaving the church in 1952. Fact checking, yo!
Jessica	He kind of looks like Eli Roth in that picture.

Page 54 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	If you were hoping to ordain Alberto into your secret order, then why did you teach him to villainize your friggin' organization!!?!
Jessica	A black mass? I find that very hard to believe. Are we just calling a standard Catholic mass a "black mass" now? Holy shit... you need a foot note for "corruption?" Is your audience functionally illiterate?

Page 55 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	I'm just going to put the "Citation needed" here, I have a feeling we're going to need it very soon.
Jessica	This is Aldolfo Nicolas, the so-called Black Pope. Does that look like an evil genius to you?

Page 56 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	*Inhales deeply* Remember when I alluded to Alberto's special brand of insanity? Well, here we are, the proverbial mother lode of insane conspiracy theories. Take a moment to breathe this all in, because attempting to process the sheer  magnitude of the  paranoid lunacy all at once will most likely cause your head to explode. *Inhales again* Okay... according to Alberto, the secret Jesuit NWO plot is behind; The Church of Latter Day Saints, Islam, The Jehovah's Witnesses, The Orthodox Christian Churches, Buddhism, Eastern Faiths, The Communist Party, The Socialist Party, Labor Unions, The Free Masons and Judaism in general. There is no way we can possibly deconstruct everything wrong with this claim. So here's the meat of the issue: If these organizations are all under Jesuit control, why are they so prone to squabbling amongst each other? More than half of these are faiths of not only contradictory interpretations of the same Holy text, but also faiths sprung from completely different roots. Hell, the Muslims and the Jews are already at each others throats over in Israel, Atheism is outright illegal in nations such as Algeria, and in Saudi Arabia it's a literal stoning offense. So yeah, your whole conspiracy Alberto, relies on the assumption that one particular church can quell centuries of discrimination and conflict. I don't think the Flat Earth Society has this much concentrated bullshit in their entire organization.

Page 57 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	"The great whore of Revelations 17 is the Roman Catholic System." Funny how he dropped the whole "Babylon" aspect of the "Whore of Babylon". Two completely different Civilizations whose heyday occurred in different eras of history, centralized in completely different Geographic locations. For this particular prophecy to occur, this Unified Church would need to spring out of Iraq. Good luck with that. Alberto was apparently in Guatemala in 1966. Why do I get the feeling he drew up this conspiracy theory as one big elaborate alibi to escape his charges of real estate fraud? Oh right, because that's exactly what he did. 50,000 absent eyewitnesses and a lengthy criminal record in the US, you'd have to be a colossal idiot of epic proportions to buy this tripe. Ergo; Jack Chick and Fred Carter.
Jessica	And now a foot note for "unpardonable." I'm started to get offended on behalf of Chick's audiences.

Page 58 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Jack Chick's incompetence is truly boundless when can somehow manage to misspell the word "Oh".
Jessica	Now being committed to a mental hospital. THAT I can believe Rivera actually experienced.

Page 59 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Heresy through insanity!? Filthy Khorne worshipper!!!!
Jessica	Why would you be declared a heretic via insanity? You can't even be executed for murder if you are deemed insane.

Page 60 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Yep, you read that correctly. Alberto claims he was hooked up to an iron lung after ending up on the verge of death via a bladder infection, only for Jesus Christ to speak to him personally and magically heal all his wounds. I never thought I'd say this, but Tim Todd's claims of being resuscitated in the hospital after OD'ing (twice) suddenly seem believable.
Jessica	How is being told that belief will heal you any different than preaching it will make you rich? Neither is very ethical.

Page 61 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Damn it, another proselytizing section and I'm fresh out of humourous dismissals!
Jessica	This is pretty cardboard, but there's the trademark suffering Jesus Christ is so fond of including in all of his tracts.

Page 62 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Why would they release him? Wouldn't they just plant a bullet in his head since he's being such a thorn in their side? Alberto could have just as easily said he broke out, it wouldn't be the most outlandish thing he's said.
Jessica	Would have helped everyone if that guy really had gotten the straightjacket.

Page 63 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Wait a dang minute, isn't that the same guy who gave his mother her last rites, lectured him for refusing the homosexual advances of his roommate, and told him to be quiet about the whole Peter is the rock passage? Either this guy's some kind of ageless doubting Thomas or Fred Carter has no idea how to draw men who aren't well muscled adonis'. Experience tells me it's probably the latter.
Jessica	Fred's inability to distinguish his characters is seriously confusing to the plot.

Page 64 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Forty cents in his pocket, a fraudulent check book, and a collection of phony real estate deeds. The rest, as they say, is history.
Jessica	Is it Baal worship or masonic Baphomet worship? Make up your mind!

Page 65 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Gotta love these questionnaires, especially that VERY specific anti-Catholic prayer for salvation.
Jessica	This picture of Alberto's mom doesn't look at all how she was depicted in the panels above. Is this more true to life or are they?

Page 66 ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Sure, Alberto put his life on the line for the sake of our souls. I'm sure it had nothing to do with all the money Chick ministries threw his way.
Jessica	That's some good marketing. "Satan doesn't want you to buy this book. So if you don't it means you're a FILTHY, NO GOOD SATAN WORSHIPPER!!!" Reverse psychology anyone?

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Sean	Well, that was the first installment of the "Alberto" series, and it is just as gloriously insane as we'd hoped. In a strange way, I wish he were still around to comment on the recent state of the world. One can only imagine the shenanigans he'd get into surrounding our current Pope.

Further Reading ⇑