Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

I managed to actually get a hold of some real, paper Chick Tracts in the subway station near Times Square the other night, and realized another Dissection was long overdue. So, without any further ado, I bring you the following culturally misguided sack of abject bullshittery.

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Hey, big deal, so is a bunch of water, apparently. AND SO AM I HURK SNERK SPLORT Also: Awww, I thought this one was going to be about the Addams Family. : (

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Man… I’m so HIGH! This fact is completely irrelevant to the plot, and an unusual thing for me to blurt out given the intensity of the upcoming situation, but I’m going to announce it anyway!” I think you may find, sir, that it matters much more than you realize. He’s currently pointing the gun at the driver. If he pulls the trigger, you’re probably not going to be very happy. If he turns it and points it at you, you’ll be in even more serious a predicament.

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“YAAAAAH” Wow, he really must be high if the car is cheering for him. The fact that they’re apparently driving through total nothingness doesn’t bode well for his state of mind, either. The guy in the middle isn’t shot - he’s just doing his Godzilla impersonation to try to scare away the gang members. Now, who REALLY says “I’m hit!” when they’ve been shot? Isn’t that a little “cop movie” cliche? Who has the presence of mind not to just scream “BLAAAGH FUCK!” and fall over? And why are gunshots the only kind of wound where the immediate reaction is apparently supposed to be to describe one’s injury? I can’t imagine there are, say, people who get blown up by grenades who shout “I’ve been exploded!“, or whose hands slip into wood-working machines who shout “I’m mangled!” Admittedly, this is a bit of a nitpick, but I think it’s an illustration of Jack’s general inability to write dialog.

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Do Jack Chick’s drawing “talents” begin and end with how to draw caricatures of Jewish people? This kid’s supposed to be hispanic, apparently. That’s some damn fast reporting. Near-instantaneous, evidently. Did they shoot them all right in front of Channel 6 Headquarters or something? What is with the backgrounds? The first panel is, I guess, an explosion of some sort. The second: “Agh! The room’s on fire! What the fuck are you guys sitting around watching TV for? Evacuate! Hurry! Shit!”

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Hey, man, you could’ve fucking specified when I asked you in the car which one to shoot.” Ah, no worries. I guess the fire in the background of the last panel is going to be put out by the heavy rain in the background of this one. It’s all okay! Who let the Asian guy into the Latino gang? They’re letting someone called “THE BUTCHER” out of prison? A guy even murderous gang members are terrified of? Uh, why?

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	And suddenly it’s daytime. But back inside, it’s still raining. (”It was a dark and stormy… uh… room.”) So we’ve got, what, Alex Van Halen, a Stevie Ray Vaughan impersonator, and… I dunno… Jewish Axl Rose, I guess? That’s not a gang, it’s a mediocre 80s rock retro band.

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Pretty narrow streets for a place with such lavish houses. And is that a bread/milk delivery truck from the 1950s? Come on, guys. You don’t have to hold a gun to his head AND a knife to his throat. Surely, the gun is enough on its own.

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Now, why would he shout “NO!“? Why wouldn’t he just keep totally quiet while trying to climb out a window or something? It’s like shouting “WE’RE NOT HOME” if a Jehovah’s Witness is knocking at your front door. Further, why would they even bother knocking if a single swift kick apparently completely dislodges the door from its frame? Especially if they knew he was in there and probably unlikely to give himself up willingly. It probably wasn’t even locked, I’ll bet.

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	You know, just like a butcher does. So, uh, how’d this guy get released from prison, again? He must have had one hell of a lawyer. This is kind of stretching suspension of disbelief to the point of light tearing. Now wait just a damn minute… why would the bars on the windows be secured on the outside of the house? Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose if anyone with a ratchet set can just pop the bars right off and come in?

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	…”a taco supreme”, huh? Is this some kind of sexual overture? And gee, what a surprise that Jack can only think and write in cliches. I’m surprised he didn’t have them all carrying around piñatas on sticks or driving El Caminos or something. Damn. I mean, if this had been, say, a Chinese gang, would the line have been “Tonight, we’ll serve you an egg roll…”? Come on. “Because tomorrow, you’ll never have to worry about eating again. We’re going to alter your cellular structure so that you can photosynthesize!”

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	I really, really don’t understand why they’re letting him out. This doesn’t make any sense at all to me. HOLY SHIT A JACK CHICK TRACT THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!? SOMEONE GET ON THE HORN WITH THE PRESSES, AND HAVE THEM STOPPED IMMEDIATELY. Though, I dunno, maybe they got him on tax evasion charges or something.

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	What in hell is he exiting or entering or whatever in the first panel? Is he stepping off a cruise ship? Deplaning? Stepping in from the cargo bay of a space craft? You could maybe ask him why he’s not talking to you. If you’re that fucking scared of the guy, why are you even spending time with him?

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	That doesn’t exactly look like a secure tie, with the ropes, there. He could easily slip that right over his head. Given that they’re probably guarding him with guns, the rope seems kind of unnecessary anyway. If they really wanted to restrain him, they should’ve either done it properly to really keep him secured, or not at all, which would probably have made more sense since there’s really no way he could’ve escaped anyway. “You can’t DREAM what I’m about to do.” Because being tortured to death (or, as we shall soon see, proselytized to) is totally unfathomable to the human mind. I guess.

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“I’m going in anyway. I’m not worried… I’m half Vulcan.” If they’re this fucking scared of the guy, then why do they hang out with him? And why was he let out of prison? This is… gah. (Psst, you have to always cover your face when you pray. It’s so that when Jesus comes into your heart, he won’t get any in your eyes.)

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	So all it took was a single chaplain talking to him ONE TIME, asking him ONE QUESTION, and it made him no longer want to torture people to death. What do they even have prisons for, anyway? Why not just put cages in church? What in the hell would give a person that kind of a scar?

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	We now return you to The Bold and the Gullible, already in progress. Uh, don’t mean to split hairs, but “MURDERED” means the end of a life of something. If God existed before Jesus, and Jesus was apparently simply the physical manifestation of God on Earth, and then Jesus was killed, then only the physical manifestation was killed, not God himself.

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Oh, “MEANER than [him]”, my ass. That’s Al Roker. Everybody loves Al Roker. So everyone who lived and died before Jesus automatically went to hell because they were inherently sinful. Because God essentially made them that way. (No, don’t give me any of that bullshit about the apple and the talking snake. It’s still cruel to create a certain preconditional attribute with which all humans are born and then judge them based on it.) And because God is omnipotent, he couldn’t just flat-out forgive people’s sins with the unlimited power he possesses, he instead had to come up with this mind-bogglingly contrived thing where he created a physical manifestation of himself, then set all these events in motion leading to the torture and death of this manifestation, then inspired a bunch of people to write about it in rather unclear terms and put all the writings together into a book that had already been started supposedly millenia before that included all of these laws and rules and regulations and things that he’d already come up with and inspired other people to write about, making it so that he totally contradicts himself (in addition to many contradictions that already existed in the writing) about how a person reaches acceptance in his eyes, and then has the book added to even more and then translated a bunch of times and then has it finally end up in the hands of a bunch of different groups of people, each with their own interpretations of it, who all have a different idea of what comprises “belief in Jesus” and which particular actions will get a person into heaven. Fantastic. So much love, there, coming from God. I can just feel it. Nah, fuck it, if it turns out he exists and he’s that huge a moron, and that petty, and that big of a dick, I think I’d rather shoot for Hell for my afterlife, thanks.

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	No, no, see… it doesn’t make any sense if he just “let” people murder him. In order for any of this to work, he HAD to be murdered. According to the rest of the Bible, this was apparently the only way the whole plan could’ve worked. So something had to inspire all of that to happen. Something had to have set in motion Judas’ betrayal, the anger of the Jews, the cruelty of the Romans. ‘Cause if Jesus just lived his whole life and died an old man, would the story have been that big a deal? “God sent his son to Earth. His son did a whole bunch of miracle things, and tried to get people to be nicer to each other, and then one day passed away in his sleep. Oh, and somehow this absolved the sins of man. Or didn’t. Or whatever.” Either God was taking an ENORMOUS chance and hoping that every last detail worked out just right, or else he already set the events all in motion himself in order to ensure that it did. But why did Jesus have to die in order for people’s sins to be forgiven? What intrinsic property of the death of some physical manifestation creation of God makes sins go away? It’s like saying that if I don’t tap my hat in a particular pattern every time I go through a doorway, Garth Brooks is going to die. Come on.

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Because I’m a gullible doofus who’ll believe anything anyone tells me. Hell, Tom Cruise could’ve walked through that door and told me all about Lord Xenu and aliens dumped into volcanoes getting their souls all stuck to me and all of that and I’d have fallen on my knees and begged L. Ron Hubbard to accept me. Someone could’ve walked in and told me that a rubber duck covered in tin foil would love me unconditionally and fill the time after I’m dead with cotton candy, beer, and loose women, and I’d have begged it to be my savior. I guess that’s just who I am, really. Anyone can tell me any wild story about God or aliens or giant space meercats or hyperintelligent million-armed bees that live in the center of the sun and are responsible for the movement of galaxies, and I’d believe it.”

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“God changed me and took away my hatred… even for Ricky! And I’ve always hated Ricky.” “Even though he killed my kid brother, I could forgive HIM… because Christ forgave ME. I’m not sure how the logistics of all of that work out, really. Then again, a four-minute conversation with a random stranger about the supernatural completely destroyed everything that I used to be and turned me into an entirely different person, so what in fuck do I know? I’m just going with it. At least I’m not outside screaming at the sun demanding delicious honey.”

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“The devil LOVES IT when unsaved people die, because they go straight to hell. So my new plan is, we all become preachers, and convert people before we kill them. Then it’ll all be a-OK.” “And God is working miracles in my life.” Well, you were apparently slated for release from prison prior to that, since the conversion took place the night before you got out. It seems like it would probably take a miracle for a convicted torturer/murderer to legally get out of prison so easily. Was he pre-emptively working miracles in your life, then? Or are you just talking about, like, the miracle of guys driving you home from prison, and the miracle of walking through a door, and the miracle of not killing a kid? What in fuck does the Bible excerpt in the bottom of the right panel have to do with anything? Where was he putting his faith in man? What? I don’t… what?

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	This is just about the gayest drawing I have ever seen. The guy on the couch raising his hand with the torso that looks about half as long as it should be looks like he’s embarrassedly admitting to a support group that he wets the bed. “Satan has deceived you. Into being afraid and seeking comfort in groups. Muahahahaa!” Bleh. Whatever. The end. Good.

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

So, uh, real life example of anything even remotely like this happening in reality? Anyone? Kind of ironic that Jack Chick is trying to reduce hatred for a change.

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

Other Reviews & Commentaries ⇑