Friday, August 31, 2007

No, Seriously You Guys, This Thursday the World Will End!

Ah, finally! I've got the energy to analyze these godawful things again! I'll format and format, but my hard drive will never be clean. (I don't hotlink these pictures, because even if Chick is evil, hotlinking is just douchy.)

So, it seems the Rapture is still imminent (as it has been for several hundred years). Except this time, we follow the child of Satan around as he appears for like six panels, and then disappears. Nothing you haven't seen before, just a condensed version of all of Chick's beliefs about how sinners will perish, and his screwy idea of redemption. Also, gore. Enjoy (If you're a masochist).

----Um, what? Oh-OH! Oh my god, Jesus is coming! Look busy! Here, have preach at this heathen baby or something!

There's something really important you should know, Spawn of Satan. This isn't my real hair. This is actually someone's pancreas draped over my scalp. Also, my real hair is in your vest.

YAAH! !@***!! They oiled themselves up, so when the airbag deploys they'll both launch out of the moonroof!

Ugh. Next to Li'l Susy, Uncle Mike is the most irritating recurring character. Except this time he's Bob. Something about that passing resemblance to Hitler....

As stupid as Chick tracts are, I'm glad he's an equal-opportunity artist. He'll include people with psychological conditions like OEGTYS Syndrome (Observe Every Goddamn Thing You See). And it looks like gradation is bad for roads, considering now they scream "SCREEEEEEEECH!" if your car skids. Glorified Rumble Strips, except they emulate a shirll back-seat driver.

OH NO! They lost Fang?! Why do these things continue without him? Well, I guess this whole scene does have a purpose: to impart the wisdom that crashing into telephone poles will make them generate bottles of alcohol, condoms, and giant, open-mouthed eels.

I wish Chick was better at conveying age. Like, why is Damien still living with his parents?

...Oh, those aren't his parents, I guess they're the prison wardens. But that doesn't explain why he's got that nice bed, and... oh, whatever. I don't care anymore. It's too hard to figure out where he is anyway.

"Damien, you're already a Christian. You know all this. But the viewers at home might not. So let us now explain one of the stupid tenets of Christianity, the looniest one whose acceptance is spotty, in case people didn't already realize that Jack Chick never leaves the house."

Jesus will rapture his church? Not this again. Not again. We've been over the creepy innuendo with "God's love gift". Jesus will rapture his church. I hope it's not just me, but why does salvation sound so sleazy?

"...the tribulation saints will be beheaded"? WTF? Seriously. Please, contrive some more. And Then the three-headed Garden of Eden horse will reign for the next few weeks, after which a rather large Inuit woman will take over and all foods besides Fritos and clear beads will be expressly forbidden. Anyone caught with anything but Fritos and clear beads will be placed in a large aquarium for public viewing. Then they drop tigers into the aquarium. Rainbow ones, to the delight of children, who wear red smocks until the age of 12. Yep, that's how it'll happen. And it will happen, I assure you.

"Are you interested?" "Are you kidding? I just woke up. I don't need this. Tell me about your day instead or something." "Well, so the story goes...." "No, stop. I don't want to hear it. I already know all of this--" "THE STORY GOES...."

Jesus got a makeover. Good for Him. It's never to late to improve yourself, I say.

Oh no! The four horsemen! I thought they were War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Nope. They're Catholic Klansman, Saracen Mounties, Skeletal Lawyers, and Flaming Ventriloquists. I need to go on Wikipedia more often.

Oooh, gory carnage. God is love.

Why Germany and Russia? Why isn't Kazakhstan or Austria or Spain a threat? They weren't around during the Old Testament either. What's that? Chick hates Germany and Russia for some reason and decided to demonize them under the guise of scripture? That's odd.

Of course, maybe I don't get it because I wasn't alive during the Cold War and I don't keep grudges against entire nations (since I stopped reading newspapers 53 years ago), but isn't the Bible supposed to be timeless or static or something? Like, true Christians wouldn't manipulate its contents to fit their agendas-- oh, I'm sorry. I forgot for a second that we were talking about the Bible. Silly me.

Here's a tangent. Something that especially pisses me off about Jack Chick is his ability to seek out a fairly uncommon group and relentlessly offend. I bet this tract doesn't go over very well in Germany, Russia, or the Muslim world. Well, I wouldn't know, because it's not translated into any of the languages those people speak. But the Cold War is over. They're not the CCCP or Third Reich or whatever you made them into anymore, they're modern nations (there's that word "modern" that fundamentalists hate so much, because they'd still live to be so fucking old if America was the still the Christian Nation they imagined it to be in the 1950's, the kind that forbids science). I'm going to pop some veins if I continue, so let's just go to the next panel.

I don't know what the fuck is going on in these two panels. Are these just random non-sequiters he's throwing at us now? These aren't full sentences, the pictures don't make any sense, everything is out of context. Does not parse. I'm wasting 'skip panel' credits now, but I genuinely have no idea what's going on.

Oh, I get it, Catholics are the Antichrist. I'm pretty sure this much lying and fabrication will get you buttspanks from God in heaven. This is just plain stupid, and apparently makes it onto Wikipedia's Jesuit article.

Um. Yeah. Of course. When you're spiritual leader of the world, that means you rule it. I'd want to check in with the athiests, the Muslims, the Episcopalians, to find out how they gave away their beliefs so easily. Except this has not and will never happen, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Also, I wonder how the Amish feel sharing principles with the Buddhists, and that evil religion science. Religions don't all agree with each other, that's why there are different ones. Conflicting religions will reconcile and merge when Chick steps outside. That is, never.

Oh, cool. I guess he likes to make up alternate endings to Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's got quite an imagination. Maybe he should've been a writer, like Ann Coulter or something. It certainly wouldn't bother as many people, because it's expensive to dump books in gas station bathrooms and bus stops at innocent bystanders.

"WOOO! DISPENSATIONALISM! ROCK ON!!!

Unable to buy or sell? But how will I purchase my parchment, goats and slaves? What am I going to buy my sheaves of papyrus and myrrh with?! It truly is the end of the world!

In the future, Christian heads will be easily removable. Simply side off by placing your hand on their cheek, and apply gentle pressure. The presence of a guillotine, which can usually be rented out from historic French museums, eases the process. Make sure to dress like a Hellenic Army guard.

All kidding aside, if they are really Christians, wouldn't they have been poofed into the air before they get harmed in any way?

Apparently, God's wrath comes out of wands and looks like spit. I wonder if it's safe for angels to just line up in an orderly fashion and dump Wrath out one by one with all those crosshairs floating around.

And I think beheading people for their beliefs constitutes a horrible nightmare. Why does it begin now? Why are we even talking about this? I thought the guy (who we will probably never see ever again) already knew all this?

That sounds an awful lot like Saharan Africa. Except their crises are caused by depleting resources, genocide and ineffectual governments, not Gawd. The typical Saharan African isn't white, either. Latent racism?

Ten leaders? I thought the only leaders allowed to whatever are the Rockstar Pope.

You know, it's not exactly subtle that this story was written 2000 years ago. Kings of the East? Fixation on Israel? Yeah.


Oh, not more of this avatar-metaphor embodiment crap again.
These bible quotes are more disarming than menacing. Oooh, everyone run, the Lamb is coming.

Loving god indeed.

This is so stupid. Just so, impossibly stupid. Well, the angels tossing people into Hell is kind of funny.


"The devil is judged by the Lord Jesus"? About damn time, huh?
Well, okay. I guess the worst thing they can come up with is throwing the devil into Hell. Okay. Sucks for him.

Wrap it up, people. I wonder if this is what casual Fundie conversations are like. "Hey Bob, tell me about the Rapture."

Oops! Was that the fourth wall I just knocked over? Shoot. Hey, reader, what's up?

.... Actually, this sounded like one huge joke. Whether it was funny or not is a different issue, but it did sound far-fetched and outdated, so it probably hit a few absurdist funny-bones.


Um, what was that? The tract is called "Here He Comes!" in such a silly, disarming way. Like, it should be followed by an "Oh, brother." and an eyeroll from a 90s sitcom. Well, not quite. Unless you find paranoid dispensationalism as funny as Chick does, or doesn't, or whatever he was trying to say. I wish this all made sense, I really do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

okay, so I read one of your comments on the comic and it was pretty easy to figure out how smart you think you are are and how not smart you really are. In the one comment i read you mentioned something about a gullible liar, that is not actually possible. To be gullible means easily tricked or you believe things too easily which means you aren't lying because you actually believe it to be true, you think it IS the truth. You are mistaken, not a liar.

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous

That's an awesome story bro.

Loren said...

A pleasure as always. Hope there are more up soon. To clarify, I think the saints who get beheaded are those who convert after seeing the Rapture, the beginning of the Tribulation, and the rise of the Beast. Perhaps they are the 12 tribes who are gathered together in Israel and convert to Christianity.

Anonymous said...

Wait, God -lets- the Beast escape? That loving God thing looks weaker and weaker in this tract.