Jack Chick’s “Angels” Dissected

I think we all know the answer to this question. This is Chick’s attack on rock music, and all the evils that have resulted since its creation back in the 1940s and 1950s.  The cover page also reminds me of a billboard I saw in front of a MacDonalds near our apartment:

Originally there were two question marks.  I’m not sure whether they’re offering the product or questioning why they even have it (OMG FROZEN LEMONADE WTF?). Moving on …

Instead of calling the pastor a cheapass, you might want to consider the fact that you guys consumed about $300 worth of food during the course of the evening and left an upper decker in the parish bathroom as a parting gift.  Besides, very few of the priests I know are loaded, so they I doubt they would be well equipped to pay through the nose for anyone other than some no-name fourth-rate Christian rock band like yourselves. Seriously, if you guys are interested in paying the rent on time, playing for church functions isn’t the way to go. While your talent might arguably be good, you aren’t too bright.

On second thought, our pastor seemed to be able to afford a new BMW every few years, so who knows?

Ah, the plot thickens! The pastor stiffed our heroes because they got a little too Iron Maiden on the congregation. Well, let’s be honest. When you’re sitting in church reading the passages form the bible, the last thing you expect is ear splitting gospel rock guaranteed to blow out pacemakers and hearing aids within a one mile radius.  Next time you have to pull a Bart Simson and slip some Iron Butterfly into the hymns.  They won’t know what hit them.

Oh, and a little side note: “Take me baby, lemme put it in you sideways, you my ho, bling bling, Jesus loves you, take it from behind …” doesn’t exactly count as “Christian” rock.

Jack, you’re still stuck in the 60’s. The late 60’s. “Go with the flow, and if it feels good, do it!” Thought I do have to agree that playing in churches probably isn’t the path to the charts. But what the hell do I know, I’m not a talent scout.

Maybe the preacher was annoyed by the way you’re drawn holding food.  You’re holding that burger like it’s a burrito.

Survey time … how many of the reading audience actually uses the term “bread” for money?  I sure as hell don’t, but I would love for little “$”’s to float up to the ceiling every time I wave my bills around.  I would definitely carry more cash on a regular basis.

What’s the deal with the couple on the right?  That woman is totally giving her husband the stinkeye.  Someone’s not getting any tonight.

He’s got enough money for a great view, but no guard rails on his balcony. That’s to make it easier to dispose of the dead weight.  Hope you impress him.

I consider myself more of a non-corporeal Christian. On Lent, I don’t even cast a shadow. And thankfully, yes, we do “know how it is”.  Most people in the Western world can’t bring themselves to actually die in defense of what is written in a 2,000 year old book and the invisible undetectable god described in its pages.  We have rational inquiry and critical thinking to thank for mitigating blind faith by planting in people’s minds that they may not want to take everything they read at face value, no matter how many people in nice suits or funny hats tell them to on pain of eternal torment.  Of course, Jack sees this lack of devotion as nothing more than a plot device to set up our tragic heroes for the inevitable fall.

I’m forced to admit there is a possibility – though I can’t say for sure – that I know of one person who would potentially die for his beliefs. The difference is, I would hardly call him a fanatic as much as someone so dedicated to the love that Jesus showed to his fellow man that he would put that belief to practice even if it meant he would potentially come to harm.  Still, I doubt he buys into the whole “we’re all going into our mansions in heaven” crap that Jack tries to sell us.

I would remain unconvinced of anyone who would claim that a band could be simultaneously successful in the Christian rock genre AND have all of the booze, women, and drugs they wanted.   If you’re going to try that kind of thing, you should become a televangelist or open up a creationist “museum” instead.

First, if anyone asks you to sign a contract in your own blood … WALK AWAY. Look, I don’t even believe in Jehovah or Satan, but shit, that’s just wrong.

Unless it’s Angelina Jolie. Then I want pictures.

Second, I don’t think this guy knows much about contracts, considering that in order for it to be valid, you have to sign it in either blue or black ink.  Blood might be binding in hell, but not in a court of law.

Third, if one of the things you supposedly have to give up as part of your contractual obligation is your soul, you might not want to sign just based on principle.  Believe what you will, but if someone’s going to go through the trouble of including that in a legal document, they might not be in the best mental state for entering into a long term agreement involving your money.

Souls? HAW HAW HAW!! Who believes in SOULS??? Far out, man! Go with the flow, man … *gag*

Yeah, call me LEW SIFFER … and here’s my assistant Mr. B. L. Zeebub. You’re about as subtle as a case of herpes in sandpaper underwear, Jack.  I think I found a relative of yours:

A distant cousin, on his mother’s side.

And for the plot twist, I made a cameo in a Chick tract … thankfully he gave me a better hairline and more expensively drawn clothing. And to think I was concerned that all of the time and effort spend fisking these tracts instead of wasting my life going outside and living life was for nothing.

He plays it “Low Key” … “Loki” … GET IT??? HAW HAW.  Maybe, maybe not. With Chick, you never know. Personally, I think it would be cool to have an agent that most people thought didn’t exist. Sorta like Morden. Hey, did you guys know that the character of Mr. Morden was born in Summit, New Jersey?? It’s true because I read it somewhere.

Could it be that the reason why no one believes in you is because they don’t have any compelling reason to?  Remember, kids. Every time you say “I don’t believe in the devil”, somewhere, a little demon dies. So come on everyone! Clap your hands!!

Oh, this should be rich.  Show us your cunning plan.

I knew it … Satan will achieve total world domination using 4-4 TIME. That bastard. Okay, so let’s look at his flowchart, which apparently took Lew a shade under 2,000 years to cobble together after leaving in a huff when Jesus wouldn’t jump off a cliff to demonstrate his divinity. Doesn’t this remind you a little of your standard James Bond villain, coming up with some hare-brained scheme every 6 months only to be foiled by a bikini clad bimbo with a microfilm and a .25? No? Where the hell is your imagination, people?

Whoa, whoa, wait. Elvis and the Beatles are part of Satan’s plan?? Oh yeah, that’s because it forced teenagers to dance suggestively, and think about sex, and therefore pork all the time where they wouldn’t have considered it otherwise. Before this time, people never thought about sex, and simply underwent mitosis – fully clothed – when they hit 30.

Jack, you ninny … don’t you know that many of the protesters were fighting for civil rights for blacks, the end to the Vietnam war, and equal rights for women??

And a near revolution against the establishment?

Sort of like what Jesus was doing with Judaism?

For KISS, Black Sabbath, and others, the world thanks you, Lew. Was Rush your brainchild, too? How about Yes? Or is progressive rock the work of the Norse Gods?

In another revelation, people are destroying country, home, and education by direct orders of ROCK MUSIC. Our education has never suffered at the hands of fundamentalists. Nope. **cough**creationism**cough**.

Okay, well, I’ll admit you have a point that nowadays, pretty much all music does sound the same.  I turn on 105.1 and every single song I hear is some auto-tuned assault on the senses with an oversampled electronic beat.  Truly horrible.  But if we are to believe that Satan is alive and well in the music industry, we might want to consider that he’s in charge of the RIAA.

As long as the wolves genuflect and put money in the collection, I don’t mind.

Funny that this guy says that the Angels are “bought and paid for” when in another tract he says that no contract with the devil can condemn you to hell. What a load of @!!!**!

As long as it’s in the church, it’s okay because God will bless it? Who the hell came up with that one? Good idea, Jack, let’s move on. You’re making little sense here.

Rock and roll zombies … who don’t think for themselves, can’t make their own decisions, react out of primal instinct, and follow a mob mentality.

Sort of like fundamentalists, actually.  Belief in the bible, a young earth, and a desire to understand just enough science to ask questions without caring about the answers.

Oh, Jack, thank you for clarifying which church Lew Siffer belongs to. Just in case someone had opened up my head and removed my brain with an ice cream scoop mid-tract. Which brings us to …

Survey Number 3: If you HAD to die for one or the other … would you die to a) defend your nation from attack, or b) die at the whim of the likes of Justin Bieber?  This notion of people being willing to die for their “rock and roll gods” sounds nice, but like everything else you say, it’s pure fabricated crapola.  Even if I think it would be pretty cool if Justin suddenly decided to amass an army of fanatics.

Can Satan actually “bless” anything? I don’t think he can … someone else back me up on this …

Give them a big New York welcome! Let’s all walk past them without making eye contact and take their money while they’re not looking!  (kidding, kidding)

And to further illustrate the evils of rock music, we have demons flying around the stage, ready to devour the souls of the unsuspecting fans. These are not to be confused with the Homodemons, seen perched on the shoulders of homosexuals, ready to spread TEH GAY to anyone who comes near them.

And you know, somewhere in the audience, is Li’l Susy, the ever faithful groupie, ready to give it up to her rock and roll gods. I’ll assume this is before the Burt Reynolds Incident.

Girls are throwing themselves at a Christian rock band?  That actually happens?

This is the best line of the entire tract … “I’ll give you a little wedding present … some AIDS.” … thus providing more proof that he doesn’t even care to understand what the hell he’s talking about.  First of all, you need to have that old guy tell you that you’re going to die, while standing in front of a giant DOT.

I like the homosexual lover in this panel, too. The fu-manchu mustache and KISS getup really say “gay” … if you’ve never actually gone outside and managed to figure out on your own that a gay person is generally kind of hard to spot unless they’re holding hands with their significant other.  But hey, Chick has never let facts get in the way of his selling a message of ignorance and lies.  I assume his boyfriend’s wearing ass-less chaps, too?

Wait, wait, wait … lemme get this straight. Three months, and the HIV virus has taken hold, wiped out this guy’s immune system, and is ready to do him in. Jack, this is about as bad as your research on latex and anti-viral protection.  I would dismiss this kind of thinking as the ravings of an idiot fundamentalist, but the truly scary part is how the entire Catholic Church engages in the same willful ignorance about hormonal contraception, or that Congress is passing bills about the discredited concern about “fetal pain” at 20 weeks.

Eeeeeiiiii!!! @!!!**!

I love the exclamations of the Chick population. And the random little add-ins, like the guy in the hat with the “Just Say No to the Cross” jacket, the mean guy with the Mohawk, and the “Young Ones” band member with the pentagram. What “image of the Green Angels” was Lew referring to?

Look on the far right of the first panel here … is that Severus Snape?

“Embrace Me, Love of Death” … what the hell does that even mean? Or is this Chick’s attempt to sound all angst-ridden and Gen-X?  And what’s a Cream fan doing at a Green Angels concert?? Jack has it in for everyone!  So what … progressive music is Satan’s way of attracting Lord of the Rings and Star Trek fans to hell too?

Ah, this is wonderful. Bobby took three months to die of AIDS … probably after using a LOW GRADE CONDOM … Jim OD’d, which I can believe …

… and Don is into vampirism. That last one was sort of thrown in there as if the other two weren’t bad enough. Understandably, this guy is scared. In his defense, I suppose I would be too, though at least I’d be able to take comfort in the fact that I wasn’t a gay vampire crack whore.

And then Craig T. Nelson appears in a cheap suit to yell at our hero in an attempt to sway him back into his clutches. Doesn’t work. Funny, that. Little @!!!**!.

Survey 4: Has anyone ever seen this happen with the frequency Jack thinks it does? Has anyone ever seen this happen at all?

Better yet, what’s the point?  Seriously, when he’s rambling on about homosexuals, you can at least figure out why he’s complaining, even if it’s all crap.  But according to Chick’s doctrine, we’re all condemned to hell anyway.  Satan doesn’t have to do anything in order to claim the souls of every single Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Druid, Wiccan, and non-believer on the planet, to say nothing of the significant percentage of Christians who don’t buy into his particular interpretation of the bible.  Why did Satan have to strike a deal with a bunch of shitty musicians who weren’t Christian to begin with?  He would have inevitably gotten them all by default after an untimely overdose of Mad Dog 20-20 and paint thinner after their big gig at the Moose Lodge later that year.

Let me tell you a little story. I was in the hospital once when I was about 14 or so, and roomed with a kid belonging to a fundamentalist family. These folks put the “mental” in “fundamental”. His mother told me a story about how her daughter was at a birthday party at some roller rink where they had some of that “Satanic rock music”. During the course of the evening, she could “feel her body getting pulled around by Satan to the beat of the music”. She started struggling against it, and began to panic because her body was no longer in her control. It was only after crying out, “Satan I rebuke thee” that she was able to regain control of herself and escape.

The song? “Boom Boom Boom” by Paul Lekakis.

I swear to you this actually happened.

Now, boys and girls, quiz time: Was it SATAN?? Or was it a feeble minded teeny bopper who had become so helplessly indoctrinated by her parents that she became too obsessed with the bible and incapable of distinguishing reality with delusion? Again, an exercise for the reader.

The Bible says there’s only one way to heaven!

The Bible also says that eating shellfish is an abomination.

And I say it’s time for bed. Good night.