Well, looks like he drew in the Mountain Dew, but he forgot to include the Cheetos. I’m beginning to suspect that Jack Chick may not be very familiar with Dungeons and Dragons at ALL!

As for not being familiar with DnD, he definitely got the boobs to balls ratio wrong at this table. And I’ve never gamed under a female GM. Almost did yesterday, but I refused specifically so I could make this outrageous and irrelevant claim today. Don’t say I never did anything for you people.

So, here’s a question: If Debbie gets real wizard powers later on, does Marcie somehow suddenly have lock-picking skills and stuff after playing a thief?

I’d like to think she keeps that panicked pose like that and just vibrates her way across the floor and out the door.

I suspect that Jack is trying to go for some kind of “D&D makes people feel like you don’t exist anymore after you die” thing, but if fantasy gaming and literature has taught anyone anything, it’s that you can die basically infinite times in these universes and still be brought back via magic or prayer or gods or prophecies or whatever else.

So, “You have the personality for it now.”

That’s like calling Viva Piñata INTENSE GARDENING TRAINING.

And as earlier mentioned, do the other classes receive training in their own respective proficiencies as well, or…? Because why be anything but some kind of wizard type?

This panel looks like Jack took a day off from the artwork and had someone else do it for him. Seriously, Deb looks like a videogame sprite. Also, god damn, she just shows up , says she played DnD, and she’s instantly a priestess? Must be hard up for membership, this particular batch of wicca-bes.

And hey, can you really blame them for ranking her so highly? She did, after all, receive all that INTENSE OCCULT TRAINING. I managed to get a multi-million-dollar record deal just by telling the studio I’ve played Parappa the Rapper and Guitar Hero.

Though maybe we have this all wrong. Clearly this isn’t a room, but actually another plane of existence! That she’s there at all proves her worthiness. The Dirac Sea is (this time at least) a place that initiates must survive reaching! Oh wait, the only thing that’s reaching here is my bad joke. Well, I’ll make fun of the bloated witches instead. Seriously, they look like Catholic Friars who’ve hit the buffet a bit too hard.

Additionally, this little logic trap is probably just Jack looking for the most “big scary” thing he can imagine. “I learned to swing a sword” is college level sports. “I learned to cast black magic” is something an order higher on peoples’ “Oh shi-” meter (I almost wrote meater).

Anyway, apparently some nerds writing a gaming rulebook a couple decades ago somehow brought forth dark powers from hell or something. Yeah, Gary Gygax, man — that dude was fucking dangerous.

This house almost feels like they hired Doctor Seuss as an interior decorator.

“I used the mind bondage spell on my father! It gave me some kind of facial palsy!”

“I cast mind bondage on dad, and then he hit me so hard I’m deformed!”

What’s going on with Frost’s head, by the way? “Damn you… spine… curl up over… my… skull… already… grrnnnhhhh!” Either that or she’s trying to swallow her own jaw or something.

Of course, admitting that ONE fantastical element that some people believe in is imaginary could lead to them realizing that there are OTHER beliefs that are imaginary. If Satanists really can’t control reality… does that mean prayer doesn’t work either? Can the influence of God still exist if the influence of Satan does not?

Yeah, it is kind of weird. I’ve asked this before, but seriously, who the fuck is this woman? The maid? Their teacher? Her stepmother? Her, I dunno, pet woman or something?

I, too, am fighting the Zombie. (Playing Dead Rising as I write this. Damn, we’ve made a lot of video game references.)

For a while “I’m fighting the Zombie” was my voice mail message, by the way.

Given the mom’s extremely awkward posture, I wonder what her legs are doing. She seems like she’s crippled up from the waist down with some kind of palsy. Or maybe she just got off a horse she’d been riding for six or seven straight days.

Yeah, man, ever since Mario fell off that asteroid in Galaxy, it’s like part of me fell off an asteroid in Galaxy, too.

I can’t believe she hasn’t played D&D since one of her characters died during a single campaign. It’s like if you were playing, say, Super Mario Brothers, and after dying the first time, you just set the controller down and ran off bawling to your bedroom. “He DIED. It’s OVER.”

“No, Marcie! You didn’t have to do that! I mean, we’re all really glad you did and everything because with your profound mental issues, you were a constant burden and a total fucking nightmare to be around, but you didn’t have to. Thanks, though. Saves us the trouble of having to covertly suffocate you in your sleep.”

That dragon looks less like it’s about to breathe fire and more like it’s soaking her bedsheets with vomit.

That is one ugly hand, by the way. It looks kind of like an emaciated headcrab.

I’m not sure what’s going on in the background, here, either. Either there are giant translucent vinyl records overlapping, or… I don’t know.

“Ms. Frost, I can’t get Marcie out of my mind, no matter how many chunks I claw out of my scalp.”

Apparently Wiccans subscribe to the Hippocratic Oath.

I think Jack is trying to make some kind of implicit critique on the idea of people being able to do whatever they want as long as they don’t harm anyone else. Sort of a “but if you don’t abide by God’s dictate, you’ll still be a terrible person and fuck up other people’s lives! You NEED law! You NEED to be domineered or else you’ll still hurt other people!” Which fits well with what I’ve realized about many of the more fundamentally religious folk: It’s quite possible that if they didn’t follow (or at least attempt to follow) these specific instructions, with fear of punishment, they’d actually give in to all these “temptations” to, I dunno, rape and kill and slaughter. Things that people with actual consciences don’t view as “tempting”.

And I think I actually figured out Ms. Frost’s outfit. From this angle she looks like one of the straightjacket zombies from Silent Hill 2.

Also bizarre is the idea that people actually somehow become whatever character they pretend to be. Like, if you were trapped in a jungle with Richard Dean Anderson with a ticking bomb, surrounded by terrorist thugs, and he was all “damn, how the hell are we going to out of this”, and you grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted “I THINK YOU’D BETTER LET MACGYVER TAKE CARE OF THIS”. I mean… what?

I guess the message of this panel is “God is less powerful than a teenage girl who gets magical powers from an RPG.” Considering this kid has been praying and fasting, and it’s done basically nothing to help her at all, but she’s been able to mentally enslave her father into at least doing a bunch of goofy things like buying her $200 worth of D&D guides, I’d say God must not really give that much of a shit. “Sir, if I could have just a little more power, here, it might allow me to save this girl.” “Meh, fuck it. I’ve been wanting to eternally torture all these people.”

Speaking of tangents, protip art for Jack; leaning a book against another book only works if we can SEE THE BOOK IT’S LEANING ON. As it is, the line that should be the prop book just looks tangental to the line of the speech bubble. Layout and design, you goddamned hack!

I’ve never seen a tree with branches like the one in the background, but goddamn is that a nightmarish kind of awesome.

“The speaker came out of witchcraft.” What was he, like, some kind of clay golem or something? A summoned gremlin?

I’m still not seeing the downside of the dungeon of bondage, here.

The idea that “rock music” is somehow “occult paraphernalia” is pretty hilarious. It’s just these arbitrary designations for things that old, conservative-minded people find generally unpleasant. KNEE SOCKS ARE OCCULT PARAPHERNALIA. I DON’T LIKE PEANUT BUTTER. YOUNG PEOPLE NEED TO PUT MORE CLOTHES ON. TELEVISION HAS TOO MANY COMMERCIALS. IT’S WAY TOO COLD IN HERE. LET’S BURN IT ALL.

This man’s expression is kind of like what my cat looks like when he’s defecating.

It looks like she’s about to break into dance, in the second panel. She’ll do a really frantic number in her “working class girl” suit and then a bunch of holy water will rain down on her.

Captain huge glasses to the right there looks kind of dumb. “Oh, wow, GIRLS play DnD? Dammit, and they’re converting her away. There’s just no justice here.” The lady behind her meanwhile, just looks pleasantly dazed and distracted.

For a second, I thought that read “I order you spirits of the occult to leave Debble”, and thought that maybe he was trying to convert the actual evil spirits themselves. “Leave the Debble, foul demons! Turn toward the light!”

Speaking of foul demons, what the fuck is it that’s coming out of her spine, there? It’s like a cloaked man with a fireball for a head holding a bat on a stick while reaching to hug the wish bone of a giant chicken? I… I don’t know.

DebbLe’s hands seem all mutated. I don’t think that’s how clasped hands look. At all. Also, I don’t recall ever turning my whole life over to a DnD manual. I mean, once I looked into it for tips on how to be diplomatic, but it was all fanciful ye olde timey speak, so it just got me beat up by the bullies. Joking aside, DebbLestar’s (god her name is so fun to mangle!) obviously got some issues in the head going on, if she’s this willing to be bullied around by various authority figures (does she ever make a choice of her own, discounting the fighting the zombie incident?)

Anyone who lets a D&D manual be in charge of their life is in serious need of immediate psychiatric help.

So, wait, pretending to be a wizard to slay imaginary demons using dice in a game scenario is the same as actually using black magic? I mean, I know that in real life, both of them are equally effectual at manipulating reality and conjuring evil spirits and everything, but in the Chickverse, I mean… gah. This whole “the pretend is reality” thing is kind of… fucked up, and indicates some really disconcerting things about Jack Chick’s mind and the minds of those who buy into his Tracts.

“Thank you, Lord, for setting me free, by completely dominating my life and arbitrarily controlling anything I can do in it, including listening to music that has a rhythm, and reading or watching anything having to do with anything imaginary that doesn’t actually exist in reality. (Well, other than the Bible.)”

Anyway, until next time, everyone. Tell your friends.