Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

The nation that stops being thankful and forgets God is heading for judgement. Alec has a great introduction for this one: “There’s something I like to call a ‘Dude Point’. In passing it, the only reasonable reaction from the given crowd to anything you say is ‘…dude’. Chick passed the Dude Point of reasonable people in the 90s, what with prophesying the end times, the Gog-Russia interpretation of the Apocalypse, and claiming the Catholics are responsible for Islam, etc. Surely this is him passing the dude point of even the fundamentalist crazies.” Just… just see for yourself. This is certainly not as crazy as Fairy Tales, but it’s up there.

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Surely, he is the turkey messiah!

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Wow, Hitler’s really been letting himself go. “So how’s der Juden — I mean… how’s dinner coming, Lucy?” His first two statements seem like they’re entirely unrelated to each other, especially if you read it that he’s talking about, y’know, the mob mob. “The mob is on the way! They just called, we’re due with our protection payment. So how’s dinner coming?” “It’ll be on time… I hope they will. I cooked a bomb into the turkey. I’m going to wipe those motherfucking mafioso pricks right out.” So… people sensitive to their blood-sugar levels, people who watch football, and people who aren’t disingenuously respectful of other people’s cooking are all bad people? I’m surprised there’s not an “I brake for trees” sticker or something on the back of one of these cars. @!!!**!

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Wait a second… these people aren’t the mafia. What the hell’s going on, here? We’ve been misled! I sure hope he’s being ironic when he says “anybody home?” If not, he’s demonstrating such a thorough obliviousness to his surroundings that it’s a wonder he’s not still at home walking repeatedly into a wall, nude, pissing all over, repeatedly asking anyone who might be within range what’s making that thumping sound. The guy in the portrait on the back wall is probably so unhappy and terrified-looking because every sound that is ever made anywhere on the surface of the Earth rattles in his gargantuan fucking ears like the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. This is a pretty diverse family. Let’s see, from left to right starting in the bottom left corner, we’ve got some kind of man-fish chimera having an allergic reaction, Zippy the Pinhead wearing a fake nose and glasses, a woman who angrily thinks hiccups, a dwarf with thinning hair who wants everyone dead, a goth woman who speaks through an anus in her chest, a tattooed goon with a blond woman’s head grafted to his shoulder and Margaret from Dennis the Menace for a crotch who’s apparently moved to tears by people coming to the door, Cousin It with a haircut, the girl from The Little Ghost all grown up and taking pictures (top), Professor Moriarty (bottom), a psychotically gleeful newscaster type, an Asian gangsta rapper, the world’s littlest drug dealer, and a transvestite Jewish caricature.

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Aaaand three panels in, we’ve already begun the full downward spiral into madness, our fall to be cushioned by a soft mound of puffy, sun-dried bullshit. “DURR… IS THAT THE SAME AS ‘TURKEY DAY’!??!” I’m willing to bet there’s not a single individual in the world who thinks of “Turkey Day” as anything but just a nickname for Thanksgiving based on the meal commonly associated with the day. It’s not like there are all these families in America just eating a huge turkey dinner once a year without really having any inkling at all what any of the contextual history might be. “Hey, mom… why do we keep arbitrarily eating a turkey on the fourth Thursday of every November?” “You know, honey, I… I don’t know!” It’s like he heard the term “Turkey Day” once in reference to Thanksgiving and panicked, thinking all of America had forgotten what Thanksgiving was. By the way, I’ve noticed yet another Chick trend: Nobody who’s fundamentalist is ever unhappy, and nobody who isn’t fundamentalist is ever happy. “Whoa-ho-ho, everyone! Three of my vertebrae just dissolved! Happy Thanksgiving! Falling backwards! Huhuhwhee!” Fang!

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	He’s not startled by the children’s lack of knowledge about Thanksgiving, it’s that a sniper just blew off the back of his skull. This is nearly as bad as “Jesus? Who’s he?” Actually, in some ways, it’s even more ridiculous. The idea that schools would ignore a key event in American colonization simply because it’s celebrated today as a holiday where Christians give thanks to God is just plain retarded. It’s like saying that nobody can mention Memorial Day because people often pray for the dead. And the “exclusively Christian” implication, here, about the nature of Thanksgiving is highly suspect. I’m about as secular as a person can get, but I still celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s a day to get together with family and be generally thankful — not necessarily to any kind of deity — for and appreciative of what you have. And why would these kids be given a day off from school if the school didn’t recognize the holiday? Like, what, they’re going to let kids out for a couple days for no other reason but to eat turkey? Most schools would be all “you can do that on the weekend.” Ridiculous. By the way, this is kind of a big “fuck you” to everyone in any country but America and Canada. “What’s that? You don’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Hahaha! You’re going to hell!” So, uh, listening to this guy’s story is going to somehow result in the reception of money… how… exactly? @!!!**!, you guys! Seriously, @!!!**!

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“What do you mean, ’shut up’? We don’t have to listen to you, lady! Your head is a fuckin’ bran muffin!” [”Puritans were known for mocking other people’s hats to random passersby.”] “Have… have you seen that woman’s hat? Look at that thing! It’s like a cowboy hat custom tailored for the boss from Dilbert.” [”Hollanders were known for their baby-attacking birds.”] Erm, a quick history lesson that is suspiciously missing from this Tract: Puritans didn’t want to “reach the lost”, they moved from England because they felt the Church of England had become corrupt beyond repair, and because they were “persecuted” for not conforming to it. During and after the English Civil War, many Puritans even returned to England. So, uh, bullshit, Jack.

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Man, those poor, poor people. This “unspeakable nightmare” must’ve been the worst and most painful boat ride to America ever! One would think, if the rats were sitting out in plain sight like that, that they’d have, oh, I dunno, thrown them overboard or something. Of course, nowhere have I been able to find anything that talks about rat-infested food aboard the Mayflower. Then again, I guess it could be pretty much taken as read that all food in that time period was infested with rats. Uh-oh! What could it be? What could possibly be watching them from behind the trees? I’M SCARED!

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Uh, where they landed, they found a Native American village and cultivated fields, you fucking liar. That’s where they found corn and corpses that had been buried by Native Americans. And seriously, come on, God has nothing to do with people finding corn. THINGS EXIST. PEOPLE CAN FIND THEM. That’s like getting all celebratory and thankful to God for finding the remote behind the couch cushion. Truly the act of location is a miracle! Did God help them unearth the dead as well? “Oh, Lord, thank you for guiding us to find this rotting, maggoty corpse of a total stranger. Truly you are mighty.” And God encouraged them to steal corn from others? Should we take this to be Jack’s endorsement of theft by the needy? They arrived at the beginning of winter, and remained aboard the Mayflower. That’s where sickness wiped out half of the boat’s crew and nearly half of the Pilgrims themselves. The following spring was when they built shelters. In the first panel, there appear to be tiny meteors pelting a snake, for some reason.

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Doomed, you say? Why, that calls for the Doom Song! 🎵 Doom doom doom, doom-doom-doom-doom, doomy doom doom, doom-doom-doom-doom… Death was indeed “all around” them — look at how fat he’s gotten. When that Death sits around the settlement, he really sits around the settlement. Hey-ohhhh! At least the Pilgrims still had relatively sharp razors. Two months of travel across the ocean and an even longer period of time sitting aboard the boat, and this guy has barely a week’s worth of stubble. You know, why would Chick think these people wouldn’t have tried to grow beards? It was fucking freezing and any additional protection from the elements would’ve been really helpful. Eeek! Who could it be? Who, I ask, who?

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The Pilgrims — specifically the Shallop party — first saw the Native Americans on an exploration of the area the first December after they landed. The natives ran, then attacked with arrows the next morning, eventually being driven off with the settlers’ guns. This tribe had already had experience with English settlers from several years prior, when Thomas Hunt rounded them up and tried to sell them as slaves. This was the same reason Squanto — or, rather, Tisquantum — spoke English. Of course, that doesn’t explain why he has a head about 1.5 times larger than the guy standing next to him offering him the invisible grapefruit, or why he appears to be a statue of George Washington carved out of wood. And come on, it’s not like people didn’t know how to fish before they came to America. “The Pilgrims praised God for letting them live. They honored and thanked God for bringing them to America. The Native Americans? Meh, fuck ‘em, it was all God.” In reality, though the original Thanksgiving indeed included a prayer to God, the Pilgrims were far more thankful to Squanto and the Native Americans who helped them survive their harsh arrival in the New World. So, again, I’d just like to stress: Bullshit.

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Trouble? Right here in River City? That kid is WAY too excited. And gropey. What’s with the death-grip on the guy’s arm like that? Yes, God really saved their necks. You know, when they found the corn he buried in the ground near his ancestors, and when he was extremely kind and helpful toward them even though they stole from him and years before kidnapped and tried to enslave him, and when he taught them how to plant New World crops. Yeah, God really saved them, didn’t he? “BLBLBLBLARGHH! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, TROUBLE? I’VE GOT ALL THE FOOD I CAN EAT! AND TRUST ME, I’VE TRIED TO EXHAUST THE SUPPLY! BLBLLALUBLUBLARGH!”

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Hahaha, hold on, when was it “our most honored day”? I really don’t get what Jack is trying to argue with this, either. Is Thanksgiving supposed to be more honored than Christmas? Easter? Does he want it to be? Yeah people on the brink of total starvation, suffering from very serious disease like scurvy, tuberculosis and pneumonia, freezing in the harsh winter of an unfamiliar place, lost and hundreds of miles north of where they expected to be, is exactly like people not being thankful. You’re right, Jack. God sounds worse and worse to me the more these people describe him. So now, he’ll torture an entire nation for all of fucking eternity just because the nation in general has stopped being thankful. “If you don’t obsessively thank me for every little normal thing that happens in your life with no real evidence of any kind of divine influence at all, I’m going to have demons stretch out your asshole with their spiny, giant dicks, and then shovel hot coals into you and use you to smoke the flesh of your loved ones like jerky. I AM LOVE!” “But… God, that sounds a little har–” “I SAID LOVE!” You know, when you start going that bald, mullets look even shittier than they do with a full head of hair. And, y’know, why not just shave the whole damn thing? What’s the point of hanging on to a wispy, goofy-looking ring circling your shiny melon?

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“You’re ruining our dinner! You know, the one that we’re not eating yet. Let’s go eat what you’ve been ruining!” Er. “Kiss me”? Wh… what? “I’m too mad to eat. So I’m just going to lazily rub this turkey leg up and down my lips sullenly.” “Billy, aren’t you going to sit down and eat? You can talk with Uncle Mortimer later.” “No thanks, mom! I don’t need to eat as long as I got Jesus! Plus, Uncle Mortimer’s fear-inducing stories that he’s using to get me to believe what he does have kinda ruined my appetite. I think I might have an ulcer now.” Yes, everyone who’s not Christian absolutely hates Jesus, and even hearing his name makes them angry. Why, what brilliant social observation!

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Wow, that’s more smug than even a cartoon face can possibly take. “Jesus keeps your heart beating. He controls the very air you breathe. So DON’T PISS HIM OFF, if you know what’s good for you. He could crush your heart like an overripe grape without even touching you. So just be ass-kissingly thankful that he doesn’t kill you.” Blah blah, more goofy trinity shit. “God himself died for you. By which I mean, God made a physical manifestation of himself, and then that died. God was still alive the entire time. But they’re the same thing. Exactly. Only, one of them was a physical manifestation, born to a human woman. But exactly the same. Oh, and the physical manifestation existed since the beginning of time, because it created the universe. So it needing to be born was really just kind of arbitrary, because he’s omnipotent and could’ve just showed up fully-formed, and it probably would’ve made the whole process a lot quicker and easier.” And etc., etc.

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Actually, “allowed” isn’t really the right word. I mean, if Jesus was destined to die from birth — which is the only thing that would make sense, because why would God create a physical manifestation for the purpose of it dying for people’s sins if there wasn’t a guarantee of him dying? — then he didn’t just allow events to transpire and hope it’d end in his being tortured and killed. There had to have been a proactive manipulation of events by Jesus or God or whomever in order to bring about the inevitable crucifixion. So really, Jesus made mankind kill him. Or, rather, mankind didn’t have a choice. You know, it’s never really Thanksgiving until you’re told you’re going to hell (or ordered to) by at least one family member.

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	I like this first panel a lot better as a non-sequitur. Just remove it from context entirely. Or, like, insert your own previous panel. Here are some examples: - “I’d rather pull the gun out of my pocket and blow my fucking brains out than repeat this story one more time.” - The kid asks Uncle Mortimer, “why does God let retarded babies be made?” - Uncle Mortimer farts the alphabet in Morse Code up to “Y”. - Uncle Mortimer, caught in thought, accidentally blurts, “if there’s one thing I don’t like about niggers…” then realizes he’s speaking aloud. - Unable to keep his turkey-fucking fetish a secret, Uncle Mortimer begins to tell the family. “There’s something you all need to know… about… about what I did… to the turkey.” - Uncle Mortimer wraps up his war story with, “and that shrapnel is still embedded in my left testicle. You can even see it if you know what you’re looking for.” “Jesus did something that only God could do. [Big, long, overcomplicated, contrived, bizarre process, the symbolism of which is extremely confusing and arbitrary and doesn’t seem to really have any meaning at all, considering God is omnipotent.] Because only God could do that. Something God can’t do, however, is just, y’know, forgive us outright. That’s beyond God, sadly.” Is there any particular reason the big, tattooed goon is always quietly weeping?

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	Let’s make this fun with Mad Libs! “For God so farted the world that he spanked his only begotten marmalade, that whosoever believeth in a doorknob should not yodel, but have everlasting vomit.” Oh, the absurdity just tickles me!

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Oh, no! Jesus has escaped! Sure, God could’ve wiped us out of existence at any time in the blink of an eye, being omnipotent and all, but this is real trouble! Granted, Jesus didn’t kill us all down here while he had the chance, but, man, we’re dead meat. And, I mean, apparently nearly everyone will still be coming to hell anyway, but, man, this is really bad news.” So why is Jesus the Faceless, Batman-Action God, here, but in other Tracts, Faceless God can be found standing next to a guy with a beard in a robe?

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Hey, you’re the one who wanted me to tell this story, you stupid old shit!” You know, Jack, believe it or not, but many secular people really don’t get as mortally offended by discussion about belief in God as fundamentalists get about discussion about lack of belief in God. “HURMP FOUND SOME TURKEY ON THE CARPET HOMPH HURMPH OH GOD AND CRANBERRY SAUCE HURMPH HOMPH AND SOME STUFFING, TOO HOMPH HURMP oh shit that was cat litter.”

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“GUESS WHO!?” “Oh, right, here are a couple of passages that we can use to reinforce our beliefs even when they’re logically inconsistent, incompatible with reality, demonstrably cruel or downright retarded! If we question our faith at all or start to think that it might not make sense, then it means we’re going to hell! See? It keeps us rounded up with fear, just like I’d been talking about!” The whole “fear of God” concept is really amusing. The idea is flawed in so many ways. First is the supposition that Christians are simply by definition good people, and that any action justified by “following God” or “listening to God” automatically makes the person doing it a good person. This is followed by the implication that Christians would otherwise be awful people without fearing eternal punishment, and that it’s fear that prevents them from doing horrible things to other people. But the most amusing and troubling part of it is that it seems to place preference on being good through fear over being good of one’s own volition. The implications for God and Christians are definitely unfavorable.

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“Something nobody would ever say.” “Stilted, unrealistic dialog!” “Ridiculous line.” “Ridiculous response.” “Goofy statement with retarded phrasing.” So basically, intelligence is demonic influence. The more rational a person becomes, and the more they operate in life by comparing observable reality to observable reality, the more blinded by demons they are. And in order to believe in God, you have to ignore the world around you, instead completely buying a description and explanation of reality that can’t be observed that’s an interpretation of something in a book definitely written by man that claims to be the word of God, the only evidence of its validity, of course, being its claim that it’s the word of God. You know, it’s really not much of a surprise that fundamentalist Christians are some of the dumbest people who have ever fucking lived. Though, I can understand falling into it as a kid, because you don’t really know any better and you don’t really have any other perspective for comparison. Unfortunately, it seems that beyond a certain point, it becomes so self-reinforcing — thanks to passages like this — that it becomes almost impossible to get them to see any perspective but their own, because their perspective says that any other perspective is foolish thinking in God’s eyes and will land them in hell. It’s an extremely dangerous mindset, especially when paired with the “there’s no such thing as a secular person, just people who are influenced by demons” thing.

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock	“All parties canceled. We do, however, have balloons and a banner. The janitor keeps forgetting to take those down.” So… the biggest punishment in hell is that nobody gets any parties? “Did I make the wrong choice?” “Oh, yeah. You could’ve spent the rest of time in a place where nothing ever changes and there’s nothing fun or interesting going on with a whiny, omnipotent prick who terrorized you your whole life to get you to worship and adore him, who threatened to torture you for eternity for extremely minor transgressions. Oh, also, fundamentalists. Yeah, you totally made the wrong choice. Like, seriously. You betcha.” “DO WHAT HE DID: MEASURE CURVED SURFACES WITH YOUR MAGIC RULER HEAD!”

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Jabberwock

Again, it’s not as crazy as Fairy Tales, but it’s definitely fucking lunatic. It’s definitely along the path of progression from his earlier stuff to the latest Tract. It was wrong in just so many ways, including the history of Puritan colonization, especially with the depiction of Puritans in a positive (and false) light. Of course, it’s really no surprise, considering that fundamentalists are kind of “The New Puritans”. Anyway, until next time. Tell your friends, link to me, whatever.

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

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