Bomb Throwing Pacifist

Ok, let's try this again. Once more, from the top!

Our guest today is Jack Chick, world renown carricature artist, born again Christian, Evangelist extraordinaire, and owner of the unfortunately named www.chick.com. But there's something really stuck in his craw this Halloween season. Hmm. I wonder what all the hubub is about...

Let's take a look at his website- specifically, this article entitled "Soul Winner Spook Satan on Halloween," from the October 2003 issue of Battlecry Magazine.

As we come up on "Satan's holiday" (Halloween), mankind is increasingly gravitating to the occult. Dr. Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the 70 million Anglican and Episcopalian "Christians," has been made an honorary Druid. On the internet, a search for the word "Wicca" returns over half a million web pages.

Conversely, a Google search for the term "Cross-eyed Moron" only generates about 27,000 hits. I can see why the Chick crowd feels threatened.

Many soul winners have tried to keep their children out of the trick-or-treat scene by refusing to be involved in Halloween. Churches have held "Harvest Festivals" on October 31 to provide an alternative for Christian families.

I must say that despite Chick's rabid Anti-Catholicism, it is nice to see that Evangelical Christianity also shares with the Catholic Church in the historic tradition of co-opting pagan holidays in the hopes of winning converts.

However, some bold Christians have turned the night into a major neighborhood outreach by including gospel tracts with the candy they give out. Chick Publications has received reports of many highly creative ways that customers have turned the night around to God's glory.

Some simply give out tracts along with the candy. Others have set up tables with an assortment of tracts that kids can choose from.

That's right kids, just when you thought getting a handful of Jolly Ranchers, stale tootsie rolls, and Dum-Dums couldn't get any worse, Jack Chick and his merry band of Christian malconents go above and beyond the call of duty to provide you with an ever greater awe-inspiring act of sucktitude for your pillowcases this Halloween: Chick Tracts!

In any case, lest you have any doubts of the exact, precise nature of this drivel, here is one of the Jack Chick-reccomended tracts suitable for use on Halloween. It's call The Little Ghost and is by far the scariest thing you will encounter all evening.

Roll on one!

Act 1, Scene 1
Setting: A country lane, one Halloween night.

In the opening scene, little Joey confronts little Suzy with the time-test watch phrase of Halloween, to which she responds with incredulous horror. Wether this is the result of her being hard of hearing, Bobby;s invisible doorknob getting in the way, or the fact that its Halloween night and all she could find for a costume was Peppermint Patty's vest and a vest made out of a shrimping net remains unknown at this time.

Undeterred (and, judging from the bags under his eyes and wild, trembling hands- entirely too stressed out), Joey tries again, only this time while pretending to wrestle with an invisible sterring wheel. An alternate interpretation is that following a horrible motor vehicle accident on the way to a trick-or treating party, Joey has suffered a traumatic brain injury and developed Wernicke's aphasia, severly limiting his ability to speak in coherent sentaces. Undeterred, he is nevertheless rebuffed once more by Shrimp Net Girl, who doesn't seem to think that blood-shot eyes, tremors, and mono-syllabic sentances is a particularly frightening experience.

However, this tedious little exercise in elementary Emergency Medical Care and interventive neurology is cut short by the arrival of the second major character in our morality play, the Devil, (who for some reason seems to have appropriated a Ronal Reagan costume for the occasion) and his Dog, who while not wearing a costume has decided to disguise his tail as a circular saw blade.

Incidentally, Joey's physical state seems to have deteriorated even further than in the last panel, with the internal cerebral hoemmorage now causing a marked area of distendage on his upper left cranium. Anyway, Suzy has good reason to be confident, because just when it seems she's about to be outnumbered and outgunned by the two Godless heathen Satan Worshipers, she calls on the mystical forces of...

The J-man...which, judging by the vapid, empty look on Satan's face and the rather self-reflective question on the part of Joey, is someone who hasn't exactly done a whole lot of traveling in this part of the world. Fortunately, Joey's head trauma seems to be improving by the minute, despite his bulging eyes and permanently akimbo limbs. Perhaps driven by a sense of companionship, or the feeling that Joey is about to keel over any second and provide him with a good source of succulent man-flesh, kitty moves in and begins tenderizing his prey.

Having already established the fact that Joey is suffering from Wernicke's aphasia and that Satan apparently has more than a slight touch of teh krazy, Suzy obviously now feels comfortable to drop all pretenses and reveal her own dark, twisted secret. Tourette's syndrome, viz.:

See what I mean? Spooky.

To be continued...