Rejected by his family, unemployed and with no one to turn to, Jimmy was ready for suicide. But then he met the One who truly loves him.

...Neo?

Weird, they have a half-finished drawing of a lamp on their wall. Guess their interior decorator just kinda gave up.

Well why don’t you go beat the kid up, then?

Chick’s villains always look like they stepped right out of Nazi anti-Jew propaganda.

Yet another narrative that relies entirely on caricatures of human awfulness. Once again, Chick demonstrates he’s about as subtle and nuanced as a rape joke shouted through a megaphone.

“Grr, your report card’s so bad it detonated my spinal cord!”

Nobody has the heart to tell poor old deranged dad that these were both just blank sheets of paper.

Look, he tried so hard he brought a baseball bat to a soccer game. Give the kid a break, geez.

So, the villain is a man incapable of understanding that sports teams can sometimes lose. Got it.

“DISGUSTING!” I’m picturing him sitting in the stands at a Mets game or something, all squirming in his seat going “ew, gross!” every time the other team scores a run.

Dude, change your fucking clothes already. Jesus Christ, it’s been 10 years!

So far, the daughter’s entire characterization is that she proudly hands her father pieces of paper. It’s very two-dimensional. Get it? Because it’s paper? Ahaha, enjoy, folks.

Poor Jimmy hasn’t really even aged at all in an entire decade.

The situation’s gotten so bad that now all dad reads are blank pieces of paper.

“How come you haven’t got a job yet?”
“How come you haven’t changed your bowtie?”

For that matter, how come he hasn’t aged? He’s been in his late 40s for the last 12 years.

With the seams of his shirt merely suggested instead of actually drawn in, it almost looks like he’s wearing only the bowtie, here, and maybe has a crumb on his chest or something. Stripper Dad, this fall on FOX.

To be honest, I don’t blame him — I wouldn’t want Shadow Men lurking around my house, either.

Wow, a single case gets you partner, huh? The law firm of Esa, Lee & Impressed.

5 years later, they’ve all merged into some horrible three-headed shadow monster kept inside a cramped cage.

Come on, guys, I’m sure your house is big enough that you don’t have to stand literally inside each other.

Such natural speaking cadences. “I just got laid off, Papa. The company went bankrupt.”

I know the suspension of disbelief kinda snapped and fell down the side of a cliff right at the start, but these people are just unbelievably evil and unsympathetic. It’s almost like Jack isn’t confident enough in his own story’s moral, so he has to contrast it against an exaggeratedly terrible strawman as a backdrop. But that would never happen because Chick’s a really great writer.

You know maybe they ought to think about why their kids don’t seem to tell them about major events until the same day they’re happening.

Ooh, what an exciting character development: the sister now also holds phones.

“…AND he can fit an entire hardhat upside-down on the roof of his mouth!”

As always, the inflection is just… really something. It’s like the only conversations Jack has ever heard in his life have been non-English speakers phonetically sounding out dadaist poetry.

So far it’s been, like, 18 years, and none of these people have aged. Somehwere in their attic is an extremely ugly painting.

“Ehhh, I don’t really feel like drawing hair, so I’m just gonna scribble across the top of her head. That’ll look good, right?”

I prefer to think he means “three bratwurst.”

This might seem harsh, but it turns out his wife is Marjory the Trash Heap.

Three more years and still no sign of aging. Or changing clothes.

Uh, excuse me: “here are your grandchildren.” Come on, I thought you went to college.

“Come play with us… forever… and ever… and ever…”

Haha, what? Did he just, like, teleport directly in front of them or something? What the hell is going on? Is this supposed to be later in the same scene? If so, these people have some really severe mood swings.

Women, am I right? Can’t live with ’em, can’t make crappy religious comics with misogynist slut-shaming undertones without ’em! Am I right?

I guess he should’ve listened to his dad, huh?

I can’t imagine any sounds coming out of the face of the lawyer guy other than a nasally monotone groan.

I’m pretty sure you can’t just… take all of someone’s money and leave, even if you’re married to them. That’s called theft.

Why doesn’t he just get his sister to help him out? So far we haven’t heard her take on her parents’ horrible neglect and abuse of her brother. It’s like she doesn’t even know he exists. But she’s apparently loaded, I’m sure she can spare some cash or get her Senator husband to pull some strings to get him a job or something.

Never before has any woman had such intense hatred for a person that came out from inside her.

Severe Overreaction Syndrome. “Hey, dad, can I borrow some money?” “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! YOU’RE OUT OF OUR WILL! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN! EAT A BAG OF SHIT!”

So far this kid has supposedly aged about 22 years, but he still looks like he’s in his teens. Does Jack just not know how time progression works, in addition to everything else he’s wrong about?

“WAIT! Don’t jump! This bridge is literally resting directly on top of the water, making it an ineffective method of suicide!”

I really can’t tell how high up this bridge is supposed to be. I think the dark smudge running left to right across the bottom of the frame is supposed to be its shadow, but given the perspective of the drawing, that doesn’t make any sense. Wait a minute… none of this Tract makes any sense!

Actually, technically it will. I mean, even if you buy into all the afterlife heaven/hell nonsense, suicide will put an end to all his current problems.

“I got cancer… I’m such a failure.”

This poses a fun philosophical question: Could an omniscient being ever actually understand what it’s truly like to be a human? Their understanding of it would come through the lens of omniscience, so really they would only have an understanding of what it’s like to be a human from the perspective of an omniscient being. That omniscience would color the entire experience.

In order to truly understand being human, you have to be trapped within the same restrictions and limitations. Could omnipotence overcome this logical conflict? Sure, I suppose. But then what’s the point of anything if nothing has to even try to demonstrate any consistency or make any sense? “God knows what it’s like to be a football. Nope, even though footballs lack sensory organs and the ability to process experiences and the very concept of being, he knows. I know it’s not possible to know what it’s like to be something that can’t actually be, in the existential sense, but he’s God! He can just do that!”

I mean, really, imagine someone coming up to you on the street and saying something this fucking nonsensical, especially in a serious context like this. “Oh wow, this is totally going to stop me from killing myself!”

Also, considering Jesus was the physical manifestation of God, according to the narrative, how did he “leave heaven” to become a baby? Jesus didn’t really exist*, at least not in any meaningful sense, until his physical presence became manifest on the planet.

And God’s supposedly omnipotent — why would he have to be “born a baby”? Why not just show up? Babies are pretty useless and vulnerable for a number of years. They can’t even walk on their own for a while, and they’re pretty defenseless until they get to be in their teens. There’s a lot of bad shit (e.g. the Massacre of the Innocents) that could’ve been avoided for everyone had he just, y’know, appeared fully-formed. It would’ve been way more impressive, too.

Alternatively, of course, he could’ve just snapped his fingers(?) and said “Original Sin doesn’t exist and you guys are all forgiven” instead of all this dumb, convoluted bullshit.

Welp, be prepared to jump, then, guy.

“The only way?” “Yeah. He’s omnipotent, but not THAT omnipotent!”

So once again, a character in a Chick Tract is familiar with Jesus and God and Christian theological terms, but somehow has literally zero idea at all what the associated narrative is. “Oh, THAT’S what Jesus is famous for?”

* Full stop?

He came to save sinners, just constantly jerking off, deluded into thinking it was somehow helping people. …sorry, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get through one of these without making a “Jesus came” joke.

“You know who also didn’t have a job? Jesus.”

Since when is being “unlovely” or “unwanted” a sin? I mean, okay, okay, “Original Sin” and all that nonsense, but here, Jack specifically seems to be saying that people were sinners just because they were ugly or unpopular.

If I recall the Bible correctly, I think the story was a little more complex than just “they hated his guts and wanted him dead.” It was more like they felt their power was being undermined. Man, it sure is a good thing Jesus came along and did away with religious hegemony, huh?

Why would someone carve a rounded hole into the side of a small hill like that? Does a giant cartoon mouse live there or something?

“Hey. Hey, pass me the ball. Hey! I’m open! Don’t leave me hanging over here!”

So can Jesus just, like, not put his arms down or something?

Those crazed eyes... it's like he's so deluded it's giving him strabismus.

Good question, Jimmy! See, it just so happens that the majority of religious folk don't understand what "omnipotent" actually means, and that the Bible was written by people who had a very limited grasp on the idea of "infinite".

There’s no way he’s actually talking through that tiny hole. What is he doing, communicating through hoots and whistles?

Hey, did you know that in the United States, people literally owned other people, forced them to work and often abused and tortured them? But yeah, wow, sounds like what Jesus went through is without parallel. Oh man.

Even though Jimmy only knows the nouns involved in Christian theology, he still knows to capitalize the pronouns when he speaks.

Boy, if Jesus came to earth just for Jimmy, he’s in for a pretty big disappointment.

What a terrible price he paid, for some reason! It’s not like he could have done literally anything else. It’s not like an omnipotent being could’ve just said “this is the way things are now” and made it happen the easy way. Nope, it had to be the virgin birth of some sort of human/deity hybrid baby and all the weird, brutal crap that followed.

Yeah, this is what everyone wants when they’re feeling hopeless and suicidal — to have their experiences contrasted against those of a character in a book they’re unfamiliar with as part of a lecture on how they don’t have it so bad.

I’m picturing this guy walking up to a thirteen-year-old girl who just got violently raped by her father and is now pregnant from it and saying, “hey, you think you have it bad, kid? Pfft. Yeah right! Ever hear of a guy called Jesus?”

Why didn’t God create like a dozen Jesuses and then let one of them die and then the rest could’ve stuck around wandering around healing and feeding people and bringing them back from the dead and stuff? God can supposedly do literally anything — anything! — and yet he chooses to do nothing to reduce human suffering. But hey, maybe you’ll get a boring afterlife if you can figure out the mantra passcode to avoid his lake of eternal misery.

He’s coming back soon! Real soon. Any time now. Aaaaaany minute. I know we’ve been saying this for centuries, but just you wait.

Why doesn’t Jesus seem to be casting a shadow? It’s just the shape of the cross down there.

Wow, a lifetime of abuse and neglect, and all it takes is a two-minute conversation with some dipshit about some fantasy character in a storybook to make this guy feel loved. Shut down the entire field of psychology, everyone! Looks like we’ve got it all sussed out over here.

“Saviour”? What is he, British all of a sudden?

His eyes are just maniacal at this point. “Swear to me!”

* 2 Animorphs 5:17.

“A Dreamcast? Do… do I get a Dreamcast?”

o/` Like a bridge over shredded wheat / I will lay me down…

The tendrils of the Flying Spaghetti Monster reach down from the upper right to slap them both into the river.

Also, why a mansion? What if I don’t want a huge house? What if I want a nice, cozy little cabin or something.

Even more than that, what if I want to feel shitty sometimes? What if I don’t want to always get everything I want? That sounds boring as hell.

Asterisks.*

* Asterisks.**

** Asterisks.***

“You and Jesus both stand to inherit a fortune in marijuana.”

Oh, so not only do the angels have to wait on you hand and foot in your big mansion that you don’t really need, you also get to give them performance reviews? Man, it’s gotta suck to be an angel in paradise, huh? Do THEY get some sort of afterlife? Do they ever get to die and be free of their shackles? I mean, literally playing the devil’s advocate, here, you can kinda see why Lucifer would want to rebel.

Even the bridge is starting to disappear into the white void at this point. Why do they not notice or even care?

*** Asterisks.

This seems like a weird new spin on all of this, and I’m a little confused about the order of events. So, this guy will die and go to heaven, then be up there for a while judging angels or whatever, and then one day Jesus will be like “hey, everybody round up!” and they’ll… come back to Earth for some reason? Why? And I thought in other Chick Tracts, the idea was that everyone would be sitting around rotting in the ground until Jesus came back, and then all the faithful would be taken up to heaven to live forever on that big angel plantation in the sky. So what is it?

Yeah, an omnipotent being totally needs humans to help him execute the eschaton. Especially dipshits like this guy who fucked up at every turn.

You're a WINNER!

Really, though, what’s the fucking point of him not killing himself? He’s already dying of cancer, his life is total shit, he has nobody to love, nobody who loves him, and is homeless and undoubtedly struggling with a bunch of medical bills and things. What did the extra four months afford him other than more time suffering alone with all his failures, dying an incredibly painful, wasting death? Is that truly what a loving god would want? For people to stick around through tremendous pain and bullshit? Why?

“Come in, come in! Oh, and your dad’s here, too. That guy you met on the bridge talked to him as well, and even though he spent his entire life treating you horribly and nearly driving you to suicide and generally being a huge asshole, right before he died he said ‘I believe in Jesus’ and wound up here. Have fun!”

“Believe on,” huh?

You know, a lot of gay people are rejected by their shitty self-righteous religious families, so this is a little ironic.

Goodnight, folks!