Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

This ain’t a Tract for the broken hearted. A silent prayer for faith departed. You ain’t gonna be just a guy handing out Christian comics at a college, I’m gonna hear your voice when you rant your fundie knowledge… It’s your liiiiiife, and it’s now or never. You’re not gonna live forever! You just wanna live while you’re alive. You’re heart is like an open highway. Like Jesus said, you did it your way. You just wanna live while you’re alive. It’s. Your. Life. …Sorry. What amuses me about this one is that on the list of Tracts on Chick’s site, this is one of several noted as being “Adapted for black audiences”. I guess that means “ssh! Pass this one out to the darkies“. Is black salvation different from white salvation? What must, for instance, Mexicans do differently from, say, Inuits in order to achieve salvation? And how do Asians fit into God’s plan? Read on to find out! (Hint: Or not!)

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	This one’s about, I dunno, black people being black, doing black things, getting their black on, blacking it up, and Jesus. Or something like that. For blacks.

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Is he inflating her head? What’s going on? It looks like he’s playing her skull like a trumpet.

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“WHAAA?” I think his confusion stems from the fact that he’s clutching the wrong side of his chest, which is, y’know, kind of where a person wouldn’t expect to be having a heart attack. So, he drops the wine glass straight down in the first frame, yet in the second, it looks like it ends up about four feet above the head of his fallen corpse, somehow managing to displace itself approximately nine feet. SURELY THIS IS A MIRACLE OF GOD. And why wouldn’t they have carpeting in their seemingly otherwise very comfortable room? I’d like to know, by the way, what the aforepictured woman is doing during all of this. Regarding the Bible passage in this panel and the previous one: In other words, don’t spend your last night enjoying what little you have left of your life - be miserable instead and spend each moment dreading your inevitable demise!

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	You know, this is an interesting angle and all, but it just looks like they buried him with his legs sticking out of the ground. And, I dunno, some rabbit ears or something.

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	So wait a second: Only after he’s been carted off to the mortuary, embalmed, laid out in his finest suit, and finally buried in the ground for an indeterminate amount of time does his soul finally leave his body? What in fuck was it doing all that time? What is he, in the ground, on the ground? I don’t get it. And why does he have to be naked, Jack?

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Uhh, did we skip a line? The word “judgment” hasn’t been mentioned in any of the dialog until this point. Wait, no, seriously, Jack must have taken out a panel. This just doesn’t make any sense at all. Suddenly the guy is standing up and there’s an angel there and instead of being all “HOLY WTF ANGEL”, he just yelps “JUDGMENT?” like it had been brought up in conversation. “Come, you have an appointment. Due to weight restrictions, I’m afraid I can only take your head, right arm, and shoulder.”

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“I’m sorry we had to leave most of your body behind. It’s just… really hard for me to fly with one big wing on my back and one tiny wing growing out of my left ear.” (Yes, yes, I know Jack (or, actually, his stand-in illustrator, in this case, I believe) is trying to do perspective and all, but even so, that wing is way too small, too far forward, and seems to be growing out of a spot somewhere in the air behind his head.)

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	I’ve led a really good life! Here, let me rub your shoulders to demonstrate such! Er, though, wait, how is he doing that with those wings in the way? Somehow he’s standing between the angel and the angel’s own wings. And he’s got a really stumpy left upper arm. “No, not one! Not even Jesus! Seriously! Fuck the whole lot of you! Filthy, filthy, filthy!” Romans 3:11

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Ah, so by “Adapted for black audiences”, Jack means that he made God slightly grey.

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	With Ralph Edwards! Wait, “review”? But I thought once you go black, you can never go back. (TIP YOUR WAITRESS)

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	The kid’s not even playing the drum, it’s just sitting near it and shaking. So after you’re dead, you have to watch your whole life all over again on a movie screen in space? Gah, how fucking boring. Isn’t this just like that really, really bad trip described in Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly? “Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts.” I’d imagine the difference is that in hell, you have to watch it over and over and over and over again forever.

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Hey, God here. Yeah, remember that time you got a boner? Well, unfortunately, because of that, you’ll be having hot coals shoveled into your rectum while centipedes run races through your urethra, for the rest of time. Oh, and that whole ‘finding a woman attractive’ thing doesn’t help your case, either.” I’m confused: I’m not supposed to want to fuck guys, but I’m not supposed to want to fuck women, either? Should I even ASK if I should be wanting to have sex at ALL? “UMMM NICE” He’s not masturbating - he doesn’t even look aroused. He looks taken aback, and angry.

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Whoremonger”? This guy was a pimp? And since when is whispering considered a sin? I guess horse whisperers must be ESPECIALLY on God’s shit list. I tell ya, it’s a good thing there aren’t any fundamentalist Christians who exhibit any of these traits. They make the world such a pleasant and peaceful fuckin’ place, huh?

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	I’m beginning to think Jack only really knows about a dozen passages from the Bible, tops. There are the two vague references to homosexuality, a few about hell and the devil, one or two particularly prescient ones pertaining specifically to Dungeons and Dragons, a few about Noah’s ark, a few about Genesis (post Peter Gabriel), and this one, which appears in every single fucking Tract.

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	If he has this negative an attitude, why is he even bothering to go? Ah, right, so that Jack can claim that the guy was, in fact, informed about Jesus. Because fundies seem to have trouble arguing why God can justifiably send a person to hell who’s never even really heard of the whole “Jesus salvation” thing, so they tend to avoid the topic entirely. GOD IS LOVE.

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Wait, God’s white again. What happened to his grey tone from a few panels back? Guess Jack is (or his readers are) just a little uncomfortable having a black man demonstrating authority, or something. I wonder if the missing panel earlier on was something that was “whitewashed” as well. Nobody’s name appears - from the look of it, that book is blank.

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Get in the box.” Ooh, I like their muscle-tissue-patterned wallpaper. Hrm, I think it’s still technically “life eternal”, even if you’re being tortured throughout all of it. I mean, you’re continuing to exist in one form or another, even if you’re having your anus raked with molten sporks. Hold on… do only the “sinful” things you do before you die count? I mean, if you jerked off to internet porn in heaven, would you get kicked out? If so, what in fuck is the point of this whole “judgment” process, then? If not, why not? What makes pre-death sins so important? And if you can’t jerk off in heaven, is it really paradise?

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Oof, and the genitals are the first thing to hit the flame. Ouch. So, based on their little film reel, all this guy did in his life was tell dirty stories, be attracted to a woman on TV, ignore a priest, and vibrate while sitting next to a drum. Now, even if those were the only things he ever did, and he never did anything kind or nice or thoughtful or selfless for anyone else, why do his actions bear the consequence of eternal torture? I mean, man, God is really going overboard with this whole “love” thing, huh?

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Totally ripped off from the movie Clue. I can even hear the music playing over it. “That’s how it could have happened… …But what about this?” I guess what this passage from the Bible is saying is that God created people to be incredibly stupid, self-centered, insatiably horny, and easily affected by the world around them, down to the most trivial of experiences, and it’s some kind of arbitrary game they all have to play to find their way back to him like lost idiot sheep he scattered far away from himself and confused with an illusory world. What the fuck is WRONG with this guy? And how come I always get arrested when I try to do the exact same thing with children in my basement?

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Jesus said, “verily, verily, verily, verily, life is but a dream.” John 3:3 So the key to redemption is to be a gullible moron who’ll believe anything anyone tells them about some system of arbitrary protocols that exist outside the range of human observation. Oh, and by the way, which part, exactly, of the Bible do you believe? The one part, or the part that contradicts the first one, or the other part that contradicts and is contradicted by both of those? Or the other parts that all do the same things to each other? I mean, if you believe it all equally and fractally, you’ve got to be one confused motherfucker.

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“DO MORE MUNDANE TASKS! CONTINUE TO BE INCREDIBLY BORING! MORE EMPTY SYMBOLISM! HUAGAULGUALUALGUALUAUL!” Sayeth the Lord. You know, I, too, got on my knees and asked God what he wanted me to do. He said “MORE CHICK DISSECTIONS”. So there. He also said he was going to give me a pony and a Chevy Nova. “By ‘fine’, of course, sir, I mean ‘very thin’. He’s the perfect man to take over running wires through the walls!”

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	What the hell is he clutching at now? Is he having a thyroid explosion or something? What the fuck? Maybe he’s giving birth to some kind of trachea-parasite alien. The “striking chest” effect does, after all, make it look like there’s a large bulge forming under his hand, like something’s about to pop out. “WELL DONE! A WINNAR IS U! U WON LIFE! LOLZ! ENTER UR INITIALS!” 1 Corinthians 13:37 God’s black again. I haven’t quite figured out the pattern on that one. Whatever. As Janet points out: “WELL DONE, THOU GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT!” Way to go, Uncle Tom! Yeah, a Tract that praises servitude is something that’s really going to appeal to black people.

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

Yeah, standard Chick fucknuttery. The thing about this one is that I really don’t understand why he had to specifically note that this was “for black audiences”. Why couldn’t he have just had this one be about this black guy and his life and death without any specific mention of target race? There have been plenty of people of various races and ethnicities in his other Tracts, and he hasn’t made special mention of it as targeting some specific group or groups. And why was God seemingly of darker complexion from a distance, but white up close? Anyway, if it turns out God exists, and he’s so fucking petty that he plays a movie of my entire life, nit-picking every little pedantic trifle like an obsessive ex who secretly tapes and then transcribes all of your conversations to throw in your face in the event of your breakup, I’m just going to politely ask him to stop the tape so that I can dive off the cliff into hell without any further ado. Sheesh. Until next time. (Hopefully next week.)

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

Other Reviews & Commentaries ⇑