This soldier learns that it’s not what you know that gets you into heaven. It’s WHO you know… Jesus!

This is the kind of shit that gets us “I… I never thought about it, Whoopi. Is the world flat? I never thought about it. I tell you what I’ve thought about. How I’m going to feed my child […] how I’m going to take care of my family. The world, is the world flat has never entered into, like that has not been an important thing to me.”

They’re all fighting over whose dialog is less natural.

“Hey, guys, let’s stand up and wave our guns over our heads and make a big scene so that we’ll be obvious targets for our adversaries!”

So, the Islamic jihadists are firing rockets, but it’s bullets that are whizzing by.

Of course, considering it’s likely they pray nearly incessantly for every little thing that could possibly happen, the statistical likelihood of their prayers coinciding with a favorable outcome are increased dramatically. That is, if they pray every morning for clear traffic, and/or that their children will come home from school safely, and/or whatever else, they’re more likely to have their prayers “answered” more consistently than if they only pray once for one large, unlikely thing. Of course, there’s no divine intervention involved, it’s just that statistics are on their side, and humans have a bad habit of being impressed by seeming successes while dismissing the failures (which is part of what makes them so susceptible to cold reading and other “psychic” tactics). And if something happens where the prayer goes “unanswered”, it’s just that it “wasn’t God’s will” or whatever other excuse.

ZING You can’t really see it here, but the other bullets that have been passing by have been going BUUUUURN and OH, SNAP.

Oh, ouch, the dude on the left was just shot through the jaw. I think. It’s hard to tell with all these lines. I know Jack is trying to indicate “bullets are going through the air”, but it ends up looking more like “everyone is using laser sights” or “oops, our ammunitions guy fucked up and ordered us nothing but tracer rounds”.

“The sand is blinding me! The goggles, they do nothing!”

I like that it took God ten fucking minutes to whip up a little bit of wind. What, did he have to tickle a butterfly on the other side of the planet or something? “God, we need help urgently!” “Yeah, uh… I’ll get right on it. Hold on. Lemme just get to a save point, here. You guys can withstand… oh, about ten more minutes’ worth of casualties, right? Sorry, it’s just… boss fight. You know.”

“Benny, look what God did for us! He got us into this horrific, pointless war with a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks we’re supposed to be seeking justice for, where nobody has laid out any conditions for success, and where we seem to be consistently losing while accomplishing none of the ever-shifting and laughably tenuous goals we’ve had throughout this depressing fraud. Oh, and then there was a sandstorm ten minutes after I prayed. Isn’t God awesome?”

The U.S. military is getting so desperate for recruits that they’re apparently now accepting horrible mutants with six-inch thighs, small lumpy asses, and eggplant heads.

It’s not even a “freak” storm. It’s just a storm. Weather happens.

Oh, no! They got Max! Nooooooo!

“Is this Jesus guy some big deal up in heaven?” I just… I don’t think there’s anything I could possibly say to mock this line any more than it already mocks itself.

He looks like he’s gargling a light torrent of post-nasal drip.

Everyone get a good look at the titular chaplain’s birdlike visage, here, because we’re not going to be seeing him again for another ten pages.

This one has even more unusual emphasis than many of his other Tracts.

“Wow, anything that in any way challenges anything I’ve heard anywhere else is strange and terrifying!” How does this end up overriding what he heard on TV? If he watched or ended up being told something else after this that said something entirely different, would he be “scared” by that as well and end up believing it? Like, “Benny, your friend the Preacher was wrong. Jesus didn’t create the universe, Ted Danson did. He sees everything you think, even in your dreams!” “You’re scaring me!”

What’s with this guy’s facial expressions? Now it looks like he’s trying to swallow his cheek, or make his lips touch his ear, or like he found something really tasty on the inside of his cheek and is trying to lick it all off.

I think the classification system here is a little broken. Anything you don’t want other people to know about is a sin? So, say, if you “don’t want anyone to know about,” for instance, your fear of spiders, or that you’re an adult who still wets the bed, or your computer password, or that sometimes you retreat to the basement and cry because you’re incapable of pleasing a woman, or whatever else, that’s a sin?

It’d be a lot cooler if that was a tiny helicopter and it was coming in for a landing on the top of his head. Too bad they’re not in the Air Force, because then this one could’ve been all about B-b-b-benny and the Jet– nevermind, no, I am so, so sorry.

It’s amusing that a whole nickel is all that stands between this guy and pummeling the life out of his worst enemy. I know it’s supposed to be a kind of hyperbole, but it’s just such a stupid and unnatural piece of dialog. What would the five cents do for him? It certainly wouldn’t offset the cost of any legal repercussions or anything. It’s just such an insubstantial sum that it’s basically irrelevant. Though, it’s possible this takes place about twenty years in the future, where we’re still fighting the war in Iraq, and the U.S. economy has become so spectacularly horrid thanks to neoconservative financial policies that five cents is the equivalent of several million dollars or something.

But you don’t have to kill that stinking rat, Benny — Tex Wilson died in 1946 at age 45, his only notable accomplishment apparently playing in the Major League for two whole weeks.

This guy really has problems. No wonder he’s so vulnerable to cultlike “we embrace you, blemishes and all” tactics.

This is the second Tract I’ve done so far where there’s been this weird emphasis on the smell of the stable. I mean, though physically embodied, he’s supposed to be God — is the tangy aroma of animal shit really going to bother him? Are we supposed to feel like it was somehow some kind of sacrifice because the place smelled bad? Does it make someone a better person if they transfer at the smelly 53rd and Lexington subway stop?

That’s not a nose, there’s a gnome with huge boots living inside his head, kicking out the front of his face.

You know, I’m wondering if there’s some kind of correlation between the gigantic noses Jack always draws, and the obsession with the smell of the manger.

“And Jesus allowed it to happen!” Yeah, but, uh, why? Why was this so much easier than God just saying “welp, I know I put the tree there, and it was kind of stupid of me, but you guys still disobeyed which kind of grates on me a little, but you know… let’s just put that all in the past. Can we be buds again, you guys?” And how does this even make anything better, anyway? How is “we brutally tortured and murdered the physical embodiment of God” somehow more acceptable an action than “crap, we ate that apple we weren’t supposed to”? Further, how is the latter a solution to the former?

Plus, it’s obvious that both of these huge “fuckups” were orchestrated by God, or that he was chiefly responsible. For starters, why put that tree there, and then make people incredibly stupid — even more so than even the dumbest people today, which is already fucking profound levels of stupid — and incapable of knowing that what they were doing was wrong? If you create people without a sense of right and wrong, and then tell them “eating from this tree is wrong”, how do you expect them to interpret that, let alone obey your instructions? And if it was Jesus who created everything, as Jack claims, then his existence as savior was predicated upon the fall of man, so it was a given from the start.

And then when we get to Jesus and the whole “salvation” thing, in order for that to come to the desired fruition, man had to murder Jesus. So unless God wanted this bizarre little plan of his to fail, the events set in motion had to ultimately lead to the crucifixion. Otherwise the whole thing was a bust.

So, uh, someone explain to me again how a) any of this was the fault of humanity, and b) God somehow isn’t an enormous, insane dickhead?

“And if I… hold on *sniff sniff* What’s that smell? It smells… *sniff sniff* It smells like… like durian and unwashed scrotum. *sniff* Oh God! Oh, God, it’s my mustache! Does… *sniff sniff* Does anyone have any… I dunno, hand sanitizer or something? Good sweet fuck, how did that happen?”

Now, are we supposed to dislike that the chaplain isn’t enthused about being prodded to the front lines of a ridiculous and unjustified war?

He’d be quite a bit more fucked up than that, by the way. There’d certainly be more damage than a bloody nose and some light burns.

Fang! What’s Fang doing at a military base in Iraq?

Grr. You know, it’d be really, really nice if for once — just once — Jack had an antagonist who wasn’t a peevish, cowardly, arrogant shitclown. The sad thing is, I imagine this tactic is actually successful in some cases. That is, that there are people stupid enough that they form their opinions and personal beliefs by getting drawn into the ridiculously unrealistic characterization. “This guy is a total jerk, and he doesn’t believe in Jesus, therefore if I don’t believe in Jesus, I’d be a jerk, too!” or some equivalently ridiculously broken way of thinking.

I want to edit this so that all the chaplain’s speech bubbles say “buk-buk-buk-BUK-buk-BUK-BUK-buk-bukAAAH!” instead.

Wow, what comforting and healing services this guy provides. Definitely someone you’re going to want to have on the front lines, contributing to the morale of your soldiers. “Your friend — you know, the one who just died — was a fraud and a liar. Anything else I can help you with today? I’ve got some Kleenex here if you want, though you’re probably just faking crying, you fucking phony.”

HOLY SHIT LOOK OUT THERE’S A GRENADE GOING OFF BEHIND Y– oh, never mind, that’s just the radiating flatulence power of the Lord.

“You know, Benny, you’d be a lot more attractive with breasts out to about here…”

Nobody. Acts. Like. This.

“Something wrong, chaplain?” “Yes! Why are the seats pushed so far forward? My nose is practically touching the windshield. And what the fuck happened to the back of the truck?”

“The unit is on the move” is my new euphemism for getting an erection, by the way.

Ah, well, looks like Benny wasn’t a believer long enough for his prayers to manifest themselves in physical alterations to reality — the chaplain never did move to the back seat. Of course, maybe it just hadn’t been ten minutes yet. God was occupied reading on the toilet or something.

I don’t quite get why people pray for physical changes, or why God should grant them. After all, it’s not this lifetime that matters, right? So why even bother trying to make life better for anyone, if all that matters is whether they believe in Jesus? Right?

“*cough cough* *swat swat* Uh, you guys will have to excuse all the smoke, I, uh… I tried microwaving a burrito back there in the kitchen, and the package said three minutes, but I dunno, I spaced or something and read it as thirteen minutes. So, uh, yeah. As you can see, kind of a mess. But, y’know, learned my lesson for next time. Anyway, welcome to heaven, thou who didst believe. Just, uh, open up your window when you get to your room and it should help air the place out.”

Looks like he forgot to include a third option:

or

Will you actually just not believe in God or Satan or any of this goofy nonsense?

There, Jack, fixed that for ya.

The art in this one was better in some ways and worse in others. The noses are less of a Jewish caricature variety, but instead they resemble different types of boot. It’s still goofy-looking in so many ways, and the facial expressions are hilariously grotesque, but at least he used shading this time.

Sorry this one took a couple weeks — things have been kind of busy. But I’ll do my best to keep bringing you Dissections as regularly as possible. Stay tuned, and tell your friends.