He was supposed to be executed for his crime, but someone took his place. Jesus has taken our place too.

Pretty sure this one is intended for kids or developmentally disabled adults, based on the artwork and the sheer ridiculousness of the plot and the metaphors. I really can’t picture anyone with a fully-developed, fully-functioning brain reading this and thinking it makes any kind of sense on any level at all.

You know, maybe she should try Ritalin or something. The “gentle pleading” doesn’t seem to be working.

And what the hell did she expect, dressing him up like Chucky from Child’s Play.

Let’s say someone’s frontal lobe is mangled, and they can’t really control their actions. They have wild mood swings, ranging from impulsively torturing another human being to donating half a year’s wages to orphans. You’re a fundamentalist, and you try to tell this person “hey, accept Jesus or you’re doomed!” In response, they stomp a cat to death. Is God going to send this person to hell? If so, God is a fucking monster. If not, well, why not?

Given that we’re all a bunch of shifting chemicals producing patterns in meat, why should our thoughts and actions here — limited severely by the meat medium through which we express them — have any bearing on, well, anything? Especially anything outside of the observable world. So if God will excuse frontal lobe damage because such damage has an uncontrollable effect on one’s consciousness, what about the myriad other naturally-occurring, common factors that exist that impact or limit or interfere with the way we think?

When Sonny grew up, he traded his neck for a rat.

He’s not really a very effective thug, is he? “Oh, here’s some old guy on a park bench reading a newspaper. He’s definitely going to be my ticket to Richville!”

“Captaaaain CavemaAaAaAaAaan!” *KLONK* I wonder how many people use big goofy clubs to commit crimes nowadays. Why not just, like, club him with a woolly mammoth femur or something.

Oh, yeah, he’s a real badass, calmly complying with police like that. He’ll club some random old man over the head, but he won’t resist arrest?

Considering he seems to be just randomly aggressive with no real care given to whether there are any witnesses around or what happens with his life, that really seems like further illustration of a substantial mental problem.

Uh, the police officer on the right: Where’s his other leg? And why’s he kinda squatting? And… and why is he smiling like that? You know what, I really don’t want to know.

The jury foreman looks like he has gout or something. Maybe he ate too much of Wilbur.

“Your honor, I move for mistrial on the basis that the jury has been seated in an ant farm this whole time.”

Uh. So we’re not going to make any kind of first degree/second degree separation, here? Because that seemed to me like second degree murder, the sentencing of which normally doesn’t include the death penalty. I dunno, maybe this is Australia or something.

Judge looks like he’s clubbing him on the head with the gavel for emphasis. And that’s one fuckin’ sinister-looking bailiff. Looks like he’s going to eat Sonny’s eyes as soon as they’re out in the hall.

I’m pretty sure every man in this thing is balding or fully bald. Even the kid had no hair.

Heyyyyy, mother is hot!

Yeah, cookies. Cookies are going to make everything fucking better.

So, the warden just decides when people’s executions get carried out. No appeals or anything like that.

Oh, now he exhibits a little self-preservation instinct. Could’ve used this several panels ago, when he could’ve maybe killed a guy for his money not in broad daylight with a bunch of eyewitnesses.

I think Amnesty International might have something to say about a prison where snakes and rats run loose in the cells.

At this point, I’ve conceded that Jack is just incapable of depicting an antagonist who’s a generally awful person without making them just unequivocally, fractally horrible.

Seriously, what’s with the fucking cookies? Does she just not know how to cook anything else? Maybe that explains why the guy’s so horrible: Chronic malnutrition throughout his development led to stunted neurological growth.

Hey, in the second panel, he could just vault over the bars! If he wasn’t such a fatass from all of mom’s cookies, that is.

Do they have him leashed to the wall on a chain?

For how many days is this rat going to be fighting the snake? Or is this another snake, and the prison is just plagued with the damn things?

“Oh my God! My hair is gone! I’m too young to go bald!”

Sorry, it’s just… goddamn, where else can you go with this one?

Doesn’t a law that “demands death” for any crime be considered maybe on the questionable side?

Since when do light beams have hard, visible edges? And since when can they wrap around and illuminate a patch of wall around the corner from the light source? Unless we’re actually inside of a room, here, and not outside a building. Or… gyah, it’s hurting my brain. It’s just all wrong.

I guess they called Father Cancer Man to do the last rites.

How many state-sanctioned hanging executions have there been in the United States since, oh, half a century ago?

“The gallows is out in the yard.” *chin-poke* “Mmph.” *chin-poke chin-poke*

Boyoyoyoyoyoyoing! Wait, what?

Okay, I’ll save you guys the suspense, here (since Jack is taking his usual route of padding out over about a half dozen panels what can be said in just one or two) and reveal that Sonny’s mother was executed instead. Which, well… wow. Not only is that some profound ignorance of the American legal system, but it also seems completely oblivious to the reason for the death penalty in the first place. (Thought continues in the next panel’s commentary to keep up with Jack’s padding…)

I know, I know, he’s just trying to use this as a metaphor. But the premise is so absolutely fucking retarded that you’d have to have a rake through your head to read this and go “heyyyyy, this makes sense” and subsequently subscribe to the fundie perspective.

You could chop firewood on that guy’s face. Damn.

“Sonny, you have very soft elbows for an ex-con!” *stroke stroke* *caress*

Hey, I thought Sonny’s mom just demonstrated that someone else can love you that much. But, oh, I forgot, Jesus is the only person who ever suffered any kind of substantial misery out of sacrifice for another person.

So, here’s the thing: Even though Sonny didn’t believe in his mother, even though he effectively told her she could go fuck herself and that he didn’t care about her at all, she still died in his place. Did Sonny’s mom send her maid over to his cell to pester him into accepting his mother as his savior? Did she refuse to save him because he rejected her? So what does that say about God? Sonny’s mother has more unconditional a love than God does. Especially when you consider that Sonny’s mom didn’t just send her avatar off to be executed — an avatar that she could’ve mass produced, had she been omnipotent — she actually sacrificed the entirety of her being, as far as she knew.

“God’s a giant pervert who arbitrarily stares at each and every one of our lives with a critical eye, judging every one of our actions, even though he knows we’re imperfect beings, and for some reason what we do is really important to him, even though he could be doing more interesting things like trying to make a rock so big even he couldn’t lift it.”

“Because God loves us, he made a way to get rid of sin… A POINTING FINGER. And this is the only way.”

@!!!**!

Just who is this… *arches eyebrow* “Jesus”?

Jesus looks like he’s imploring all of us to shoot a game of hoops with him.

Jesus was crucified on top of a giant Cocoa Puff.

Waaaaait a second… I thought they were the same person!

What stands out about this one is the depiction of “justice”. I know Jack’s trying to be satirical, telling a kind of “morality fairytale for adults” or whatever, but it just… fails. The suspension of disbelief required to ignore how absolutely ridiculous the premise is is impossible for a working brain to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Jack uses a metaphor of a mother’s unconditional love to try to demonstrate that Jesus loves you more than anything else, even though Jesus will only save you if you believe in him, and Sonny’s mother would do anything for him regardless of how he behaved or what he believed.

I guess there’s kind of a “with great power comes great responsibility” thing to inject into this as well: Christians tend to claim that humans sacrificing or risking their lives for other humans is nothing compared to the sacrifice made by Jesus, mostly because this physical lifetime “doesn’t really count”, or whatever. But really, if God is the only one who can save us from a particular fate, then he has an obligation to do so. By the same logic that humans sacrificing their lives for each other is trivial, it’s also trivial for God to sacrifice for us. Especially considering that he’s omnipotent and we’re not, so our sacrifice for each other is more complete and irreversible.

Just because whenever anyone other than Jesus gets tortured to death, they can’t subsequently break free from hell to save others, it doesn’t mean that Jesus’s love is somehow “better” or “greater” just because he has more superpowers.

Until next time. Tell your friends to tell their friends.