Chick Dissection | Charlie’s Ants
Through Charlie’s ants, young readers learn that God became man to die for us. Great salvation message!
A story about a little boy and the three sexy ants he sends out on missions of espionage and intrigue.
Actually, this is yet another cartoony, oversimplified (even more so than the adult-oriented ones) one aimed at kids. Get ‘em while they’re young! Nip their independent and rational thought in the bud, before it gets a chance to blossom!
It’s also yet another failed attempt at a metaphor for God, and is just plain fucking silly in general.
“Ants are so neat, the way they go around hauling food, piling up dirt, spontaneously bursting into flames somehow whenever I look too closely at them…”
Thirty years later, he grew up to say the exact same thing about the five-year-old girls he kept nude and chained to the wall in his basement.
At first glance, I thought his mouth was his nose and his actual nose was a stylized bump on his larger, more bulbous nose, and that his mouth was obscured by the magnifying glass, which all for some reason made his creepy, pervy little statement seem even worse.
“Like my dress? Some guy said it looked so hot I could fry eggs on it. So I did! Want one?” “No thanks, I’m already working on this glass lollipop.”
What the… fuck? Just… all of it, the kid standing on his head (or maybe standing right-side up but with an inverted internal physiology, as possibly implied by the position of the speech bubble), the suddenly enormous ants burying the kids up to their knees, the blubbering, head-shaking, chipmunky, gaping, horrified expression, ears like the bells of goddamned trumpets… damn. How delightfully surreal.
What does he mean by “this land”, anyway? All of America? Why not “this place” or “this area”?
Actually, in this panel, he looks a little like I’d imagine Uncle Whatsisfuck from The Missing Day would’ve looked as a child.
All right, so far, we’ve gone from regular-sized ants to ants the size of a fist burying the kids in a mound up to their knees to a tiny kid running toward a mountainous ant hill populated by dog-sized ants. If they keep growing like this, I think they’re going to be just fine by the time the place is flooded. (Yeah, yeah, I know Jack is trying for a more challenging angle and all, but come on.)
So this kid’s apparently so incredibly, profoundly fucking stupid that he thinks ants will understand English. Hey, kid, doesn’t look like it’s working. Maybe you should try French or Morse Code or semaphore or something.
At first, I thought this was going to end up being a metaphor for Noah. But now that he’s furiously striking the ground because the ants can’t understand him, screaming that by hurting them he’s saving them, this is obviously a metaphor for the fundie God.
“Everyone! In my mouth! Right now! Come on, hurry! I’ll take you to safety!”
“Can I use your ants to show you something really important?” “I guess so.” “Okay, see this ant? See his little legs? He’s got six of ‘em. See his little antennae feeling around, trying to figure out what’s going on? And how he’s got this little bit of food or something between his front pincers? And his little exoskeleton? Okay, now, see how I’m using this ant to gesture toward that ambulance over in front of your house? Well, your mom’s dead.”
Looks like she’s got a bad case of navel-mouth. Seems like a pretty common childhood disease in the Chick universe.
Erm, I hate to be a pedant, but all you really need to communicate with ants are some ant pheromones.
“You know, you could also, uh… collect the ants in, like, a jar or something and move them to, say, your back yard or an ant farm or something. But that’s totally beyond your power, seeing as you lack opposable thumbs and the ability to move your body or obtain a jar. Just like with God — he had to go through a painstaking, elaborate, and extremely contrived process to try to help humanity. He couldn’t just, y’know, outright forgive people or let them into heaven. It was totally beyond his power.”
Give up everything? Since when is an omnipotent being creating a physical avatar considered “giving up everything”? If truly omnipotent, God could’ve created an infinite number of Jesuses, and he could’ve made them rain down from the sky ceaselessly for generations, splatting one on top of the other until people finally gave in and agreed to do anything he demanded. She’s kind of overstating the “sacrifice”, here.
“But I do love them! I mean, I fuck them… that’s kinda love, I guess…”
“YUK! You gave me navel-mouth! Don’t you know it’s contagious?”
That’s spectacularly assumptive. You tell someone they’re in danger and it makes them kill you? What kind of fucked up… Why couldn’t the ants just not give a shit? “Eh, some guy keeps talking about some big disaster. What do you guys think? I just wanna dig some more holes.” “Yeah, whatever. We die, we die.”
Also, how do you say “Shut up, Charlie!” in pheromones?
FANG! Hooray, looks like he’s featured pretty heavily in this one.
I think Skinhead Dennis the Menace back there is trying to tell us he’s going to try shoving Antigrav Cat’s tail into his left eye.
T HIDEOUS FUNDAMENTALIST CHILD: HE DOESN’T HAVE TO GIVE HIS LIFE FOR THE ANTS! IT’S REALLY FUCKING SIMPLE! HE JUST HAS TO GET A GODDAMNED JAR AND MOVE THEM SOMEWHERE ELSE!
“No way! I don’t love — Ooooh, my cheek is so soft.”
Yeah, no human ever gave their life for anyone before. Never happened.
Here’s the wind-up…
…and the pitch!
So why didn’t God send down an Ant Jesus, then, if he fuckin’ loves ants so goddamn much?
“God loves it because he created it” isn’t anywhere near sound reasoning. There’s no cause/effect to be found at all in that assumption.
What is WITH that kid? Is he not subject to gravitational forces or something? So we’ve got Antigrav Cat and Antigrav Kid.
Not only does he have a saw for a tail, apparently Fang’s nose is a bug zapper! What can’t that dog do?
GYAH! KILL IT WITH FIRE! IN FACT, GATHER ALL THESE HIDEOUS LITTLE SHIT-JUGGLERS INTO A PILE AND JUST TORCH THE WHOLE LOT OF ‘EM!
I’m picturing her going “PTTTHHHHBLBLBL TTHHHHHHHH PFTHHHHH PTHHHHH” here.
Urgent message to Antigrav Kid’s ass: INCOMING BIRD.
“But long ago, God lied to the people he’d made. When they discovered the truth and acted on it, they were in real trouble! From God!”
No, it all started when God created two incredibly stupid but curious people, gave vague and arbitrary instructions about a tree, and then was shocked — SHOCKED! — when they disobeyed him, bettering themselves in the process.
Really informative Bible quote, by the way. “For all have sinned…” …and?
Fang apparently burned out his bug-zapper nose in the stream.
Is that a bird riding a meteor, over on the left?
Why can’t God let sin into heaven? Who or what is stopping him? Shouldn’t THAT force be the real God, if it’s more powerful than God? I… I don’t quite understand.
Bahahahaha. What? How the fuck did he arrive at that conclusion? “Gee, how could an omnipotent being save lowly humans from being rejected from heaven? Let’s see… he’d have to… become a MAN! That’s it!” Like, “so how could the rescue workers in New Orleans save the people effected by Hurricane Katrina? I know! They’d have to become bloated, floating corpses!” Or, “so how could the man save the dog from its abusive owner? He’d have to become a dog!” Just… so stupid.
Now the Littlest Skinhead’s goose-stepping. Someone get that fucker some Ritalin or something.
In a smelly stable, people. SMELLY.
“Okay, so, all the people you know who are dead are fucked right now. Oops! That’s our bad, but there’s nothing we can do — we’re only fucking omnipotent. But sorry, your mommy and your daddy and your older siblings who’ve all kicked it — they’re all getting their faces raped by the spiny dicks of demons, and will be for the rest of time. They didn’t know about me — because hey, I wasn’t born yet — so they’re fucked. GOD IS LOVE. Now, someone come up here and pull my finger.”
What’s with the dude in the sport coat over a black shirt? Were those in fashion back in about A.D. 25?
Jews!
What’s… I don’t… where’s the… where is gravity, here? Her hair’s being pulled up toward the top of the panel, her body seems to be pulled toward the right, Charlie is standing up (or maybe hanging from a tree branch? Though, no, then his magnifying glass would be falling out of his back pocket), Antigrav Cat and the Floating Skinhead seem to be getting pulled toward the left… I… don’t know. And what’s he trying to do to her arm?
Ah, gravity apparently went suddenly back to normal.
Yep, Jesus was the only person who was ever hurt “REAL BAD“.
Blah blah blah. I hope he doesn’t re-draw this one each time. He should really just get a rubber stamp made of it.
“Wow! That all makes me want to clench my fists, lean forward and have a really explosive, violent fart! HERE IT COMES!” *PTHHHHHHPUPUPUPUPPPLLLLPPPPLLLPPP*
So we’ll be forced to live in mansions forever? Why is everything in the afterlife an infinite, unchangeable outcome? Wouldn’t that very idea be hell for some people?
Uh-oh, their Spider-Senses are tingling.
I’d like to think he’s riding the kid like an emu or something, here, ’cause that’s kind of what it looks like.
“You must believe that Jesus died on the cross for you. But you must also… pull my finger.”
Girl should become a dominatrix. She wouldn’t even need to buy a whip, she could just let that wild, goofy pony tail whip around on her head like she always does.
“HOMPH HOMPH MMM, YOU GUYS HURMPH HOMPH I NEVER THOUGHT THESE ANTS WOULD BE SO TASTY HURMPF HOMPF GLOMPH”
“I feel GREAT! Addiction to the neurochemicals that result from induced, powerful emotions is a BLAST!”
That is totally that Peter Paul kid from Palindromes.
“We just LOVE our new lion haircuts! Thanks, Jesus!”
“No, Charlie, this is how you squeeze a nipple. Thumb and index finger, see? And cupping, like this.”
Oh, I see, that’s their kid. Ahhh, that explains why he’s so fucked up.
“Now I’m going to be a smug little fucko with a moral/cultural/national superiority complex who thinks that my way of living is somehow intrinsically preferable to that of anyone else! And somehow, I’ve magically figured out how posture works! Go fundamentalism!”
Jeez, kid, get a fucking comb.
You know, Jack never did resolve that whole “ants” subplot. All that buildup, and now we’ll never know whether the ants get flooded or whether Charlie figures out that, y’know, ants are fucking movable.
Anyway, until next time.
Jabberwock
July 30th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
I like to think that after that final panel, Charlie turns to Sarah and says, “So, Jesus is going to help me move the ants, right?” Or, he gets down on his knees and prays: “Jesus, now that you’re my personal saviour and all, could you save these ants? Like, move ‘em somewhere else or stop the dam project? Thanks!” Then, the ants aren’t saved and Charlie loses his shiny new faith. “Man!” he’d say. “Sarah was totally full of shit! Jesus didn’t help me at all! If he can’t save a bunch of ants, what am I relying on him for? Fuck it.”
July 30th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
It’s too bad we didn’t actually get to see Charlie become an ant, complete with a crucifiction on a rather complicated little cross. This could’ve been the most surreal Chick tract since “the Confused Witch.”
July 31st, 2007 at 12:20 am
HAW! HAW!
-wipes tear out of eye-
That was beautiful. Just, beautiful. The mouth thing, the bloated corpses, everything.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:37 am
Another argument that undermines itself, because it suggests an analogy that requires an extension to omnipotence. Basically he’s saying that God had sufficiently advanced technology to become a human. And isn’t it a bit closer to Noah? God didn’t have to Jesify for Noah, he just sent some angels or whatever. Send in the ant-robots, Charlie!
July 31st, 2007 at 2:45 am
You know, these are the kind of things that ruin my respect for Christianity. I go on a mission trip, feel all great, and then i see one these and the feeling’s gone… Fuck Jesus, I’m going cold “holy” turkey.
July 31st, 2007 at 3:42 am
Why do ants get bigger? It’s evolution!!!!!!!
July 31st, 2007 at 4:43 am
you should put more advertisement up for this stuff. You have a gift for hilarious critique.
July 31st, 2007 at 5:03 am
So, due to the kid’s new found love for God, he just says ‘Fuck the ants’ and walks off to spread the ‘Word’? Try to explain that one to me Chick. Unless demons implanted a fascination with ants into his mind to divert his attention from God…
Also I really don’t think ants would have the intelligence to realise whatever a ‘Flood’ was. Then again, I’m not a Bibleobiologist like Chick!
July 31st, 2007 at 5:57 am
Wait, I don’t get it. Is Jesus somehow his own dad, because they keep saying he IS god, and then that he’s the SON of god…is this like that one episode of Futurama?
I was raised Catholic, and this is so confusing.
July 31st, 2007 at 6:49 am
Okay, before I comment, let me go and wash up, because I’m currently sitting on a three-foot pile of my own laughter-induced excrement.
I think the “I’m trying to save you!” panel is actually meant ot be God, not Charlie; that hand is a Batman Action.
When the girl’s head goes Batman Action, she looks like someone of far-Eastern origin. With Down’s Syndrome. Hoo-ee, Chick likes his disabled types, huh? Chick can’t even form a proper fuckin’ parable, either, as we can see from the fact that Charlie could just move the bloody ants. Gyah, Jesus fuck, I dunno.
“Hi, Charlie! My name’s Satan! I’m gonna rape you!”
Anyway, if Dennis is there, where’s Gnasher!?
Brilliant as always, Jabbs. Keep it up.
July 31st, 2007 at 8:00 am
Made of epic fail, as usual. Geez, these things are just the same fucking thing each time, aren’t they? *Sigh*
The ant metaphor could have been a little less subtle… He really needn’t have gone into JEEEEEEEEZUS TALK MODE to get the point across. A little subtlety goes a long way… Even if the message is as idiotic and misguided as this, it would help. But, subtlety is out of the mental capacity of Chick, yes?
July 31st, 2007 at 9:43 am
That panel where Sarah is against the tree with Menace trying to lick her…I sense an opportunity for a rewritten panel featuring BDSM dialogue.
July 31st, 2007 at 9:44 am
I think Chick is really running the metaphor well dry here. The fact that several of his tracts are just re-hashings “for black audiences” shows just how uncreative this guy is.
Actually, I’ve noticed that Jackie boy’s little debaucheries tend to fall into specific categories.
1) The obscure “analogy” to the old Paradise Lost/Found story which has more holes than swiss cheese. Seriously, who relates to these?
“There’s an ink stain on my favorite carpet!”
“You’re going to hell because your distant ancestor ate a piece of fruit.”
“Oh no! The ants are going to drown!”
“God became a dude and let us kill him ’cause that’s the only way we could be with him in heaven.”
2) Some one gets influenced by satanic stuff (DnD, other religions, homosexuality, music, science, thinking like a fucking human being) which leads to actual Satanism (really!?), but luckily gets “saved” just in time by the Jesus robots. Because, you know, being a good person means never having any fun.
3) The great debate between the hedonistic science and the holy fundie “truth”. Somehow, each time the scientist gets blown away by the fundie’s “evidence” (Where do they get this? This stuff isn’t even in the Bible!) In the end the man of science has to admit that all his facts are merely an illusion by a creator who doesn’t want it to be clear that not believing in him results in eternal damnation. God Is Love!
4) An evil, murdering, raping bastard repents at the last moment and gets to go to paradise (where the mansions are), while the good person who helps people all his life but doesn’t become “saved” gets thrown into the lake of eternal hellfire. This can be summed up best in the last line of “The Gun Slinger”: “Going to heaven is not a matter of GOOD or BAD. It’s a matter of SAVED or LOST.
Fuck you Jack Chick!
July 31st, 2007 at 10:57 am
The ending would be mildly improved if there was a part where a few months later, the boy is sitting weeping next to the newly formed lake and then all his ant friends float over on a log or something.
But to extend the metaphor, the ants probably wouldn’t be able to make it to make it out of the lake zone in time on account of having to gather food, move the queen, avoid predators and lawnmowers, etc. If kid!Jesus just picked them up in his jar of godly love, they’d all be all right anyway.
In conclusion, the fundie god is a worse person than your average kid.
July 31st, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Jabberwock, your dissections used to be much better. But now it just seems like you’re nitpicking and hammering on about unimportant details. I actually thought that this was one of his better works. It doesn’t offend homosexuals, it doesn’t attack any other belief systems, and it comes across as generally more friendly and unoffensive. Unlike a lot of Chick’s other tracts, this one seems only to be concerned with itself, and not tearing others down. It tells the salvation story in terms I’m capable of understanding (whether or not it makes sense is a different story, but I at least could figure out what they’re trying to say). In truth, I see very little bad things that can be said about this. I’ve seen hilarious reviews from you, but tracts like this are not worth your time. Go after something that deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. Don’t waste your abilities in tearing apart relativily compassionate stories when the big bad offensive motherloads are in surplus.
I will recant nearly every word of this post if you can give me a reason that this tract was offensive and stupid enough to deserve a dissection.
July 31st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Erm. I take it you’ve never watched MST3K.
Anyway, the point isn’t to write profound theological counterpoint essays — there are already plenty of people who often do that much better than I do, both in published books and on the internet (see: Slacktivist, specifically his Left Behind stuff, for instance) — the point is mainly to entertain through mockery. Just about anyone can suss out why the theological implications and the logic of it is so broken, and I received several complaints a while back when I got too serious about all of it and stopped being as funny for a while.
Really, there are only so many times that I can rehash the same serious arguments without readers giving up and saying “yeah, yeah, we heard it, we know”. It’s not like Jack really varies his messages much, and while I feel my perspectives have broadened and my debate skills have become much sharper and more intelligent than when I started, mostly as a personal intellectual evolutionary process that has taken place through doing these Dissections, I’m fairly certain my more serious critical analyses of the theological and philosophical perspectives for each of the different themes Jack seems to obsess over with numerous Tracts just start to sound repetitive. I know not everyone has read the entire library of Dissections (which is part of why I do often restate the same more serious arguments, even if not as fully every time), but I’d like for them to, and I’d like for them to remain entertained while they do so, instead of just glossing over them because it’s all a bunch of crap they’ve heard a few Dissections previous.
And I plan on doing them all, as long as people don’t seem to be getting tired of my commentary. I guess “I plan on doing them all” is my reason that this Tract deserved a Dissection. I don’t think I’ve ever really browsed the Tracts list and tried to determine “deservedness” for any of them. I just do ‘em. I certainly haven’t seen or read every single one, so the selection process is almost randomized. I just find one I feel like working on, and I do it.
I disagree that this is one of Jack’s better works. Sure, maybe it’s not homophobic or anti-abortion or anti-sex or whatever, but many of his Tracts aren’t directly offensive. (One Way, Kidnapped, Something In Common, Here Kitty Kitty, etc… even Fairy Tales, really, and some of the Noah’s Ark and evolution ones, to name a few.) That doesn’t mean they’re not logically inconsistent or hypocritical even within their own framing, or that they don’t employ circular logic, or aren’t dangerous in terms of their propaganda effect, or are in any way beyond reproach.
And as you even pointed out, just because it’s dumbed down doesn’t mean it makes sense. It employs really misguided and inconsistent logic, and is aimed at children in the hopes of getting them to sidestep real reasoning and rational thought in favor of this kind of “but God HAD to become man!” type of baseless conclusion-jumping that inhibits broader thinking. And in general, it’s just so bafflingly logically flawed and allegorically inept that even the narrative alone is worthy of mockery, regardless of its religious or philosophical intentions.
I understand your complaint, and I appreciate your feedback, but I think you’re maybe viewing all this in more serious a manner than is really intended. Yes, I hope that I’m helping make a difference in the world, and that there are people who read this who really need to, who need some help wrestling themselves away from oppressive conservative religious beliefs, and I really do want to combat the abominable attitudes and perspectives presented by Chick and his ilk in order to hopefully achieve this “turning people away from fundamentalism and oppression” goal. But ultimately, this is supposed to be more “MST3K” than “college theology course”.
If you have any more questions or would like to discuss this further, please feel free to get in touch with me using info on the contact page.
July 31st, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Jabberwock: Still good as ever, I started reading some time ago and Only recently began posting. I wanted post a link to one of my dissections in the comments section, unfortunately I get along with technology on par with an achoholic Amish elder. Could I e-mail it instead? Keep up the good work.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:15 pm
Ah, more greatness! Well done Jabberwock.
You notice how all of Chick’s illustrations of children have these really nutty looks in their eyes? Hey! Maybe that is way the kid forgot about the ants! Little Miss Chickdrone hypotised him with Fundivision!
I look forward to the next one!
July 31st, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I love how Charlie doesn’t have enough brainpower to figure out he could just lure the ants to higher ground with a trail of sugar.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:12 am
Okay…so WHAT IF…Jack Chick had a more secular outlook, and an interest in more orthodox comic book subject matter…say, something like super-heroes. And WHAT IF Jack still maintained his psychological need to see the guilty punished, his feeble grip on plot, and complete incomprehension of science?
Well, folks, it might turn out something like this:
http://www.themysterywalk.com/Stardust-Character-Page.html
Given Stardust’s bizarrely convoluted thought processes and planning, his general lack of mercy, and his vast superpowers, I wonder if maybe Stardust isn’t the God of the Fundamentalists, after all…
August 1st, 2007 at 12:21 am
Oh, incidentally, I didn’t mean to thread-jack, but these “Stardust” things ARE positively “Chickian” in their insanity.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:52 am
Maybe They too deserve a look at dissection. The paranoia of the Fifth Collumn stuff makes me giggle outright.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:07 am
I’ll love you forever if you do them all.
August 1st, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Hey. This is great stuff.
I’ve been trying to figure out something about Chick and the Catholic Church, what he thinks about their motivation…maybe you’d be willing to e-mail with me about it? I think this gives you my e-mail, though it’s not public. Anyway, if you get a chance, it’d be great.
Thanks.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:02 pm
That picture with the Jews is really funny. Nobody is talking, and everyone is angrily looking at one another. Then a Jew near the back says “Shut up!”
Just like it says he did in the Bible in Gal 4:16 (KJV obviously; the other translations are from Satan): “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” … OK the word “Truth” is in there, but otherwise I’m confused.
August 1st, 2007 at 5:34 pm
You’re all forgetting about the ants, the dear, sweet, innocent ants. Don’t you all wonder about their outcome? Did they make it through the Great Flood without a cute little popsicle stick arc made by the two naval-faced children? What if someone saved them by enticing them to move using a piece of forbidden fruit? You should all pray for being so cold and un-Christian and not worrying about the outcome of these precious lives. If only they had an Jesus ant to die on the cross for their sins—well it wouldn’t exactly look like a cross, would it? More like a telephone pole but that’s not the issue. The ants, people!
August 1st, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I, too, am heartbroken by the callous disregard for the tragic lives of the ants. Also, Sarah (whose name is mentioned only once near the end) has no regard for the ants’ lives, and when she talks Charlie into religion, she talks him out of his concern for the welfare of others.
Then again, they ARE just ants…
August 1st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I find this part of the Tract funny, probably way too much:
(Jesus politely and quietly tells them of Hell)
*beat*
Stereotypical Jew: SHUT UP!!!
August 1st, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Oy! I don’t find the crucifixion funny — but bitchslapping Jesus? Hilarious!
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:44 am
Entertaining as usual, although I’ve never posted here.
Also, do you plan to do any of the anti-Catholic tracts. I have no idea where you stand on the religion, but the tracts are easily his most paranoid and hateful.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
dope, dope, dope, dope, dope… On the plus side, incoherency and oddly drawn faces have never hospitalized anyone.
I’m still waiting for the rock ‘n’ roll tract dissection, the one with Lew Siffer taking control of a crappy band. That would ROCK.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
You know, if that antigrav kid knows that that land will be flooded, that means people are flooding it, right? So why would they let that kid onto the land in the first place? Shouldn’t they be preparing for the flood? Wouldn’t it be closed off so no one can mess with the project?
I like to think that some other dumb kid will be there in a month, playin with the ants and all of a sudden *WHOOOSH* the water comes down!
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Taj: Did your catechism class not cover the Holy Trinity?
‘God’ is one*. God comes in three flavors: Father, son, holy spirit. They are all the same god, just as ice, rain, and steam are all made out of H2O.
Or you could just read the Nicene Creed, which in my recollection was recited at every single Catholic mass I ever attended. “We believe in one God the Father Almighty… And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God… true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father …And we believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son…
*according to Christian beliefs laid down at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century AD.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
On the issue of The Worst Books Ever Written, here is a Jabberwock-like dissection on a Chick-like premillenial dispensationalism comic from the 1970s.
(note: it’s a multi page dissection, so take note of the “next” at the bottom)
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Linkage: LOVE that one. The “Great Snatch” panel pays for itself!
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Hahaha, yeah, I’ve seen that one before, actually. Pretty funny. One thing I especially love about Christian end-of-world prophesying is that the Antichrist is initially supposed to be a “bringer of peace”. It almost encourages people to vote for war-mongering assholes just so they can be “sure” they’re not voting in the Antichrist. “Oop, better not trust anyone who wants to make the world a better place — they’re going to turn out to be the Antichrist.”
August 4th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
No joke. That’s probably why conservatives think that people who want peace should be shut up. It’s very annoying, especally for Christians like me who want world peace (but that is probably because I am not a fundie Christian).
It’s very annoying: “Be a good Christain! Kill everyone! Compleatly forget the fact that 90% of Jesus’s teaching where about loving thy neihbor! GRRRRR! (mouth foam)”
August 5th, 2007 at 1:42 am
You know, Jon, maybe God made the workers forget to cordon off the lake area. Maybe it was so that God couold give that little shit the Noah treatment, but the kid then got saved. “WTF HES SAVED!?!?!? I BETTER NOT DROWN HIM LOL!”
August 6th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
yes, you should definatly do my-religion-is-better-ten-yours. The buddhism one is hilarious.
Also when you run out of tracts maybe you should do Alberto comics. I admit they are longer but their paranoid message is just begging to be dissected.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:25 am
so… this doesn’t seem to be set on earth at all, what with gravity being optional, ants magically changing size, and kids not knowing how to transport very small, sugar-loving insects whom they cherish a morbid passion for, but somehow arriving at the conclusion that jesus had to become a human to save us or else we’d all go to hell.
i’m mentally exhausted after reading this.
August 15th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Am I the only one who noted the kid’s resemblance to Harry Potter?
An Ant Christ, love to see that, esp trying to crucify the little bugger, the cross would look more like an astrisk: *.
I agree, this one is rather stupid, and sad too, seems once Charlie found Christ he forgot all about his tiny friends, or is it “unChristian” to have concern for animals?
Notice how the Rotten Kid in the striped shirt stopped tormenting Fang and antigrav cat once Charlie got redeemed?
The Demon carrying away Charlie is cute: Hey kid, wanna meet the Queen of the Ants?
September 7th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
I bet afterwards, he is so caught up being a religious preacher to everyone and trying to scare them into his religion, that the land floods and all the ants drown. He then realizes that God failed him and kills himself. Before he hangs himself, he finds an empty jar in his kitchen, and realizing that he could have just moved them, as he didn’t really need the spiritual message. After he dies, Sarah realizes she fucked up and drinks herself into alcoholism. Skinhead does more retarded thing.
By the way, I am a Catholic, and Jack Chick is an asshole for believing that we worship a cookie and that the Vatican is a house of demons and the Pope is the Devil’s worshiper. For fuck’s sake Jack, we believe that Jesus saved us, what more do you need. Also, we don’t use the wafer crackers with crosses on them at my church, we use real circular shaped brown bread that is rippable.
Overall, the kid fucks up, Chick is an asshole, and these are extremely hilarious. This is my favorite one so far.
September 9th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
actually, i recently saw an episode of the twilight zone where a thief died, and was given a mansion, pretty women, tons of money, and won all the time at gambling. Of course, the kicker was that he WAS in “The Other Place”.
so there ya go….some people’s idea of hell.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:42 am
I find this tract offensive! What happened to the ants, or are they suddenly not important anymore?! Ants need to live too, y’know! >
October 19th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
It is possible actually, that the rest of the story somewhat follows Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. When Charlie prays to save his ants, nothing happens, so he and his friend and a bunch of townspeople protest, then it gets violent, leading the head of the project to get dismembered, thus canceling the whole dam project, but leading the town to be cursed with people dying or disappearing every year on a certain day.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Pharisees: SHUT UP
um…ok
November 12th, 2007 at 1:24 am
what about the ants?!?
February 11th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Ants ARE mobile, but most of the ants you see are sterile females.
However, seeing as New Queens can fly, and that ants inhabit nearly all of the earth’s surface except the oceans and tall mountains, I really wouldn’t worry about the ants. Any action Charlie might do would be futile, but they’ll either take care of themselves or the colony will be wiped out, leaving millions of other colonies full of ants in the world.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
The other day I found this tract in the trash. That’s where all these crappy comics belong. In the trash. Or on websites like these where rational people laugh at them.
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Actually it would have been 30 A.D. also there is something fang can’t do,keep Jack Chick from being a goddamn nut case.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
The real reason the kid forgot about the ants? Maybe one of them was the ANTichrist.
HAW HAW HAW.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
*smacks Hazel*
WORST PUN EVER… not by a fundie of course.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Page 7:
“Guys! You’ve gotta move to higher ground because this place will flood! You know, like it does every year during the spring season!” “SHUT UP, CHARLIE!”
“Guys! Did you know there’s a bearded guy floating around in space that sent an avatar of himself to earth to get suicided by cop to free us from rudimentary moral responsibilities, and effectively prevent us from getting sounded by sandpaper-covered shoehorns for all eternity?” “Yea, okay Charlie, where do I sign?”
June 29th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Panel 8: If you imagine the line under Charlie’s mouth is his mouth, and his actual mouth is a moustache, he looks like Charlie…Chaplin.