It's getting close to Halloween, and for someone who thinks the Holiday is one big orgy of depravity, Jack Chick, like a well-oiled machine, gets into the season like your weird aunt. This year, the festivities concentrate of the dead who walk. Zombies, what a horrifying thing they are. They march, mindlessly and sexlessly, with a dull glaze in their eyes. They move in unison, with one single purpose; To find the lonely, scared, and isolated and add them to their ranks. Can you just imagine something so terrible? Something that hopeless. I'm sure this tract will tell us exactly how to avoid that kind of fate.
It's a mistake to think that, as wake of zombiedom that is mankind, God will be the Sheriff Grimes a stern but fair protector. No God is more like a Daryl Dixon, a half-crazed maniac that will gleefully axe us with his mighty thunderbolt, ed nearing himself to everyone despite his violent temper and almost sociopathic treatment of people. So embark on this journey, this black and white sequential art even more horrifying than Robert Kirkman's. Because that's the guy who made the comic Walking Dead was based on. Didn't know it was based on a comic, did you? Wild.
A very frightened man is hiding in the bushes, asking why his ghastly pursuer has turned sentry, and is not, at all, moving. Far be it from me to be the type to answer rhetorical questions, but zombies are not the most expedient of monsters. They're the "sit and wait" representatives of the underworld, a sort of (barely) walking statement on how, when you're dead, you've all the time in the world. But it looks like an entire assortment of Hellions is in hot pursuit. You have the Wolfman, Freddy Kruger, a witch, and...who's that guy in the middle? He looks the ghost of a redneck who falsely claims worker's comp.
Notice that little mouse in the corner who looks just like Mickey Mouse! Poor Mickey, he is so going to get eaten by whatever monster happens along. But I can't blame him for having to check out that tombstone right there, that labels the dearly departed simply as "Mama". To say nothing of the picture which seems to be less an engraving, and more a photograph simply tacked on to the headstone. It's perhaps a wonder she has anything to mark her body and time on earth at all. I take it whoever buried her (after The Home was done with her, of course) must have seriously been considering embezzling the funeral expenses for a rager, or to cover gambling debts. As frightened as our hero is of being assimilated by the monstrous, I don't think it would be so bad. Between you and me bro...I'm thinking it might even be an improvement.
"The Last Grave"...that sounds like...well, it's not irony. Its not redundant. Man, I'm stumped for literary terms. In the meantime, I just wonder what "the last grave" is? Because most graveyards aren't done linearly, they're more like a grid formation, if anything. And gravekeepers tend not to plan the whole thing like a video game level, in case of being chased. It's not the tombstones you should mark as the home base, but rather the fence that surrounds all graveyards. Once you get past the gate (which at this hour is most likely locked), then you're something resembling home free.
So much for crawling! Can't win for losing, one supposes. On the other hand, isn't it nice that, as soon as the By the way, the comic explicitly states this as "The Walking Dead", but werewolves aren't undeads. They're perfectly alive demonic creatures. Is he there for P.R. purposes. Because becoming a zombie is a just plain awful fate, but more people would sign up for the Legions of Hell if they got to be werewolves. There's no rotting and shambling there, just shedding. But like I said, inclusive. We are famileeeee. Everybody get up and
scream.
Oh! It turns out it was all a dream. So that means that we're not getting a zombie apocalypse at all. Does this mean the promise of tying this into a show about sheriffs mowing down undeads was done under...*gasp*..false pretenses. You're on a slippery slope, Jack. To be honest, I don't know why we can't have gotten any zombies. I mean, there are demons, witches, and gay pride parades sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The Mythical was already part ad parcel, what's another shambling revenant added to the car pile of the impossible?
So it turns out the world's biggest scaredy-cat is, what the tattoos are telling, normally a bit of a hardass. You know, who lives with his aunt and uncle. "You ARE part of the walking dead." That seems pretty rude, (Even Aunt Emily seems to think he's gone beyond the pale) but to be honest, it does sound like it'd be pretty decent code word for "Get a job." Because Danny has got to be pushing 35 at least. Maybe 30 if his wild and crazy lifestyle has aged him a bit, and it probably has. I don't know whether the uncle is worried for Danny's soul, or worried for his stores of potato chips and cereal.
Dead as a doornail. Dead as a
doornail. How are you going to convert the masses if you're saddled with such a Biff Tannen-esque grap of idioms? Hell, doorknobs are probably very alive, metaphorically. We haven't all converted to the automatic doors found in supermarkets. Danny does have a point. "I just had an awful night, and then you just started shit-talking me." I'm surprised the guy didn't start making him feel ashamed for any prison rape that might have happened to him.
God was trying to warn Danny, in his dream. Well, even though that dream lasted all of a minute, it was filled with contradictions, plot-holes, and patches from other works. I guess that proves he did write the Bible. So the guy fibbed his way into parole? Is this specifically targeting Jack's core audience of ex-cons that sign onto team God to cover up their horrible, horrible misdeeds. "Okay, you little rascals. I've been hearing that some of you don't mean it when you say that you're saved , and then you proceed to murder hookers. So I just want to make it clear that you really, really mean it that you're born again."
If Evangelical Christianity goes "over your head" son, that's probably the very image of "hopeless". I mean, you can't understand evolution, but you can't understand people being formed from earth in seven days. There's not much more society can do for helping you around being a dumbass.
What's the difference between "soul" and spirit anyways? I mean, is the latter God's holy and inherent need to participate at pep rallies? That would explain why High School football is so big in the Bible Belt. Ah, to have the mysteries of the universe unfolded. I do think God should have set up more rules. In a weirder way, it's easier to follow multiple rules because you can't choose which one to break. But one, one tantalizing rule, it just makes you wonder what the whole deal is. I suspect the whole thing was a trap, and God invented reverse psychology. But as we all know, Adam got Frank Darabounted the hell out of there.
I kind of wonder...is the strip enlightened for putting the whole thing on Adam's shoulders, instead of tempting Eve as the tempting hose-beast who screwed us all...or is it extra backwards because Eve is not mentioned in
any context whatsoever? I always had trouble figuring out how all of humanity could have sprung from one couple, but there "It was just Adam, just him" theory is probably even weirder. When he was cast out of the Garden, how did he go about begetting? An armadillo here, a duck there, maybe a juniper to broaden the horizons. Hey, he's Earth's most eligible bachelor, he can do what he wants. Okay, Uncle John is certainly being the usual missionary dick, but I do wonder if you really have as good a heart as you're professing, my man. I mean, you served hard time. You're out on parole. You have a mustache and smile that screams "Legally mandated to stay fifty feet from." Your tattoos have tattoos. And of course, you mooch off your relatives. What's his "good heart"? That when he and his friends all hang out and trash the place, he makes sure to tell them not to steal/defile Aunt Emily's wedding dress?
Actually Jack, the heart is the source of blood-pumping respiration. It's the source of breathing and fighting off disease with blood cells. It doesn't cause fornications, that's our dicks. It's our dicks, Jack. Though I'm kind of now aroused by the prospect of a "heart job". Danny doesn't know what a soul is? At all? I know the tats scream "Aryan Nation", but I can't believe he spent all the decades of his life thinking "soul" as a thing white people do not have or need. How was he even able to hoodwink the clink into releasing him under the pretenses finding God? "Guys, it's a miracle! I'm saved! I feel in the depths of my tingly God-thingy. You know, the thing with the gold ring-thingy above my head. I feel it there."
Okay,I'm pretty sure this guy is talking out of his soul's ass, right here. For one thing, if the dude is having such a hard time grasping the concept of "souls", the very least you can do to answer that questions is along the lines of of "A little, but it's more complex and not nearly as creepy." Also, I'm pretty sure the point of a soul is it transcends such bodily concepts. But does sound pretty swanky that it comes with a white robe. I mean, our earthly bodies don't come with that. We come out naked. Which is probably why we're all such sinful creatures. If only God thought to whip up tiny white robes in the uterus, we probably wouldn't nearly be in the trouble we are now.
That man descending into the depths of Hell is naked. Naked! Where's his robe? Did it fall off during the fall? Worse, loosest robe ever. I'm really surprised how much the story presents the afterlife in such...corporeal terms. I've heard of bible literalism before, but this is literally the most superficial interpretation of Jesus's teachings I've ever seen. It's almost like it's there to counter the whole "Hell isn't so bad, I like it where it's warm" snarking. "Oh no, it sucks. because everything is solid and it's just like the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Which by the way, you're going to hell for because you watch them."
Oh, I see, we're all zombies because we don't have the light of God is in us. Well, if that's the case, I demand me some brains, right now. With spaghetti, in a pie, I don't care. I want muh brains. What's with that zombie on the far right? Is she the reanimated Cathy of syndicated newspaper comic strip "Cathy"? It's so devastating to know that even the sweet peace of eternal rest is denied her, and she has to walk the earth, as neurotic as ever. AAAAGHHHHHHH.
Who's the black-hooded fellow JC is meeting with? It's like they're out having a secret Baptism, by night. Scandalous! Danny is very, very nervous, which can possibly leave to salvation, but it can possibly also lead him to fall off the wagon and start doing (and selling!) smack again. Oh well, collateral damage.
I wonder how Jesus being sent to Earth would condemn it in the first place. "I am the Lord, thy God, and bring unto you...Cinemax. Heh. Heh. Heh." Did that guy just punch Jesus, while he's carrying the cross? He, didn't he? He just pulled a sucker punch on the son of God, the King of Kings. I can't be too impressed, because he's walking possibly very slowly and can't see from the blood in his eyes, so it's totally a punk move.
Whoa, that image is grisly. I wonder if Jack just heard about this little movie a certain guy named Mel Gibson made, and thought "All the blood and gore that God intended!" Because that nail going into Christ's wrist? That's an artery. It's just squirting around. This is the kind of thing me and my friends would draw as kids, if we knew how arteries worked. But this is just Italian horror film stuff, right here."It is finished" is a little on the nose for last words, though. That's like "With my last breath, I die."
It's the greatest story ever told because it's true. I'm not sure I can fully sign on to that train of logic. I mean, I think the Doctor Zhivago is an inherently more interesting story than the story about how I chose what to eat for dinner. But I suppose that's the reasoning for creationism, as floods and thunderbolts make for a riveting tale than fish slowly growing legs. Although I disagree, the first Rhipidistia to stalk the land were pretty badass.
See, that arrow helpfully points out where the soul is. It's in the person! Not in the floor, next to the person. Not in a cloud, remote-controlling the person. It's in the person! Danny is really starting to turn around to the whole Godly thing, and his uncle is sweetening the deal with mansions! I mean, the truly pious will truly be beyond such things once you ascend to the hereafter. I'm sure Heaven is just a whole bunch of people saying "Oh I don't need this silly old mansion, why don't you have it." "Don't be ridiculous, I don't need it, in fact, why don't you have
mine?" "No, you have mine." "No, you." "No, you." It just goes on like that. Hell for the company, indeed.
Wait, so was that grave-loitering pack of horrors a dream, or not? And i any case, what are zombies doing around in Hell? But I like to think that Jack gave each of these guys little backstories. The bald zombie is Gary. He was unmarried pawn shop worker who nobody could prove needed to stay away from children, but parents felt comfortable telling them to stay away nonetheless. The lady on the far right is Sabrina. She was totally into Witchcraft, until she used all her teeth but one to do a summoning spell, but the only summoning that happened was her to Hades! Oh, and also the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Anyways, we finish things off with a look at...I think that's a skyscraper? Only, it's already in the sky, so it would be an ozone scraper? Way to give us skin cancer, Heavenly Hosts. Forget about Walking Dead, we're gonna live the post-apocalyptic scenario of Wateroworld. Now there's a scenario that's truly frightening.
