...In which albion_witch auditions for das_sporking
I suppose you guys know me best as albion_witch and my spitefics. Today, I’m going to try my hand at sporking. To test the waters, I’m going to do a Chick Tract.
Okay, but first, a statement about my principles.
I’m Catholic, baptized and confirmed. I go to church every Sunday and I try to do the same for holy days. I also believe in being a kind and decent person and that goes beyond your personal faiths (or lack thereof). The works of Jack T. Chick also delve into more sensitive topics like abortion, but I will not spork them for the simple fact that 1) I am not the right person to discuss such a topic and 2) it is incredibly difficult to make it funny. So I guess my focus will be mostly on the extreme lapses of logic and misinformation common in these little comic books.
In this pilot installment, we are going to take a look at The Devil’s Night, originally published in 2004.
We open on a mother and daughter, doing some Halloween shopping.
Mom: I just loveHalloween, Buffy. It’s my favorite holiday.
As is mine, lady, though you might want to pull over. Buffy looks like she has to go.
And the following day at school, Buffy’s classmates are all excited about the Halloween party. I would be too if Margaret Hamilton was my teacher. However, not all the students are excited.
I’d like you to meet Lil’ Susy. In every class, you have that one kid who’s a perpetual killjoy, the one who feels that by abstaining from “childish” things like having fun and learning about different cultures s/he would seem more grown-up. You know, Bella Swan.
Well, Lil’ Susy whines to her Grandpa, formerly the president of Sebben & Sebben back in the day.
Lil’ Susy: Grandpa, Ms. Henn wants all of us to wear costumes tomorrow…and I WON’T dress up like a witch!
Grandpa: Ms. Henn is in authority and you MUST obey her. But Susy, there’s all kinds of costumes. Like this Birdgirl costume! Come on, make an old man happy!
Anyway, the next day, Lil’ Susy shows up in a Santa costume, much to the ire of Ms. Henn.
Ms. Henn: That’s not a Halloween costume, Susy!
Lil’ Susy: I know. But it is a costume!
Ms. Henn: I hate this little brat!
I do too, but don’t you have like twenty other students to pay attention to? The following panel has Lil’ Susy, who is suddenly out of her costume, chatting with Buffy from the opening panels and is it just me or does it look like Buffy’s wearing a dress made out of a tablecloth?
Anyway, Lil’ Susy explains that she hates Halloween and shares with Buffy the “history” of this holiday.
The pagan priests taught that Saman (the Lord of Death) called back all the souls of the dead who had entered into animals.
Okay, I googled “Saman” and my top results are Saman the guardian deity of Sri Lanka, a common Persian first name, and Albizia saman, a flowering tree native to Central and South America.
I’ll give this comic the benefit of the doubt and believe that it meant “Samhain” or its Old Irish variation “Samain”, but it’s still wrong either way. Samhain refers to the festival marking the end of harvest and the preparing for winter in ancient England.
They lit huge fires, put on masks and animal costumes and danced around the fires to drive those evil spirits away.
I’ll give points for the purposes of costumes, but it’s simplifying the role of the bonfire in the celebrations. Fire is and will always be essential to humanity’s existence. It keeps us warm, lights the way when you’re far from home, cooks your food and even cleanse and heal wounds. On Samhain, all the home hearths are extinguished and are later relit with flames from the communal bonfire. It is done as a way to bring a community together.
Oh, but wait! You haven’t heard her spin on “trick or treating”!
Pagan priests would go house to house demanding an offering of food for their gods. The trick was to take their kid for human sacrifice.
Yes, according to Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. It’s great bit of 80’s cheese and it makes for a great drinking game as Brad Jones and Company have shown us.
Anyway, trick or treating has roots in two medieval traditions associated with Samhain and, later, All Saints Day- guising and souling.
“Guisers” would impersonate the recently departed and play tricks on people under the cover of darkness or, more likely, sing songs and perform tricks door to door for sweets or money, much like some carolers at Christmas. “Souling” is when children would go door to door to say prayers and sing songs for the departed souls and would be rewarded with a small cake with a cross drawn it.
Neither one resulted in human sacrifices.
Then Lil’ Susy goes on about how even today cats, dogs, and children go missing around Halloween, usually at hands of strangers who want to sacrifice them to Satan.
While Halloween does propose a safety challenge and most parents wouldn’t dare let their kids out without some sort of a plan, the biggest danger to most trick-or-treaters is getting hit by a car. According to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children FAQ, out of the 797,500 annually reported as of October 2002, only 115 were perpetrated by strangers. Compare that with the 203,900 being abducted by family members and the 58,200 by acquaintances. Given that in order to successfully abduct a child is by targeting more isolated children, Halloween is a really bad time. As an experienced candy-giver, the size of the trick-or-treating groups that show up at my door is usually no less than three kids.
Not really conducive to snatching a kid off the street without getting notice.
Teens everywhere are going into both white and black witchcraft and both really serve the devil.
Oh, I remember when I used to do white witchcraft. I did a lot dancing starkers under the full moon or was that just last week? Either way it resulted in a whole lot of mosquito bites.
Then comes the recurring lesson about Jesus and how accepting him into your life will save you from damnation and, like the other weak-willed individuals Lil’ Susy browbeats, Buffy gets “saved”.
Buffy: I feel wonderful! Any semblance of personality has been scrubbed away!
Later that week, Buffy would receive an email from a Nigerian prince and reply back with her mother’s credit card number.
Then Lil’ Susy closes the comic with saying that she’s gonna hand out Chick Tracts (uh, totally meta?) along with candy to trick-or-treaters Halloween night. November 1 would be spent hosing eggs off her house and extinguishing the flaming bags of dog poop left on the porch.
Final thoughts?
It’s a bad comic. Apart from the obvious Did Not Do Research vibe and the obvious author’s mouthpiece, the art is passable, but the characters are just uncomfortable to look at. In one panel, they would look all right, but the next their faces would look too small for their heads and Lil’ Suzy and Buffy look like they went a little heavy on the mascara.
Still, the sheer incompetence of the final product is worth checking out on its own.
So, from yours truly, 167 days ‘til Hallo-ween, Hallo-ween! 167 days ‘til Hall-oween, Silver Shamrock!
Okay, but first, a statement about my principles.
I’m Catholic, baptized and confirmed. I go to church every Sunday and I try to do the same for holy days. I also believe in being a kind and decent person and that goes beyond your personal faiths (or lack thereof). The works of Jack T. Chick also delve into more sensitive topics like abortion, but I will not spork them for the simple fact that 1) I am not the right person to discuss such a topic and 2) it is incredibly difficult to make it funny. So I guess my focus will be mostly on the extreme lapses of logic and misinformation common in these little comic books.
In this pilot installment, we are going to take a look at The Devil’s Night, originally published in 2004.
We open on a mother and daughter, doing some Halloween shopping.
Mom: I just loveHalloween, Buffy. It’s my favorite holiday.
As is mine, lady, though you might want to pull over. Buffy looks like she has to go.
And the following day at school, Buffy’s classmates are all excited about the Halloween party. I would be too if Margaret Hamilton was my teacher. However, not all the students are excited.
I’d like you to meet Lil’ Susy. In every class, you have that one kid who’s a perpetual killjoy, the one who feels that by abstaining from “childish” things like having fun and learning about different cultures s/he would seem more grown-up. You know, Bella Swan.
Well, Lil’ Susy whines to her Grandpa, formerly the president of Sebben & Sebben back in the day.
Lil’ Susy: Grandpa, Ms. Henn wants all of us to wear costumes tomorrow…and I WON’T dress up like a witch!
Grandpa: Ms. Henn is in authority and you MUST obey her. But Susy, there’s all kinds of costumes. Like this Birdgirl costume! Come on, make an old man happy!
Anyway, the next day, Lil’ Susy shows up in a Santa costume, much to the ire of Ms. Henn.
Ms. Henn: That’s not a Halloween costume, Susy!
Lil’ Susy: I know. But it is a costume!
Ms. Henn: I hate this little brat!
I do too, but don’t you have like twenty other students to pay attention to? The following panel has Lil’ Susy, who is suddenly out of her costume, chatting with Buffy from the opening panels and is it just me or does it look like Buffy’s wearing a dress made out of a tablecloth?
Anyway, Lil’ Susy explains that she hates Halloween and shares with Buffy the “history” of this holiday.
The pagan priests taught that Saman (the Lord of Death) called back all the souls of the dead who had entered into animals.
Okay, I googled “Saman” and my top results are Saman the guardian deity of Sri Lanka, a common Persian first name, and Albizia saman, a flowering tree native to Central and South America.
I’ll give this comic the benefit of the doubt and believe that it meant “Samhain” or its Old Irish variation “Samain”, but it’s still wrong either way. Samhain refers to the festival marking the end of harvest and the preparing for winter in ancient England.
They lit huge fires, put on masks and animal costumes and danced around the fires to drive those evil spirits away.
I’ll give points for the purposes of costumes, but it’s simplifying the role of the bonfire in the celebrations. Fire is and will always be essential to humanity’s existence. It keeps us warm, lights the way when you’re far from home, cooks your food and even cleanse and heal wounds. On Samhain, all the home hearths are extinguished and are later relit with flames from the communal bonfire. It is done as a way to bring a community together.
Oh, but wait! You haven’t heard her spin on “trick or treating”!
Pagan priests would go house to house demanding an offering of food for their gods. The trick was to take their kid for human sacrifice.
Yes, according to Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. It’s great bit of 80’s cheese and it makes for a great drinking game as Brad Jones and Company have shown us.
Anyway, trick or treating has roots in two medieval traditions associated with Samhain and, later, All Saints Day- guising and souling.
“Guisers” would impersonate the recently departed and play tricks on people under the cover of darkness or, more likely, sing songs and perform tricks door to door for sweets or money, much like some carolers at Christmas. “Souling” is when children would go door to door to say prayers and sing songs for the departed souls and would be rewarded with a small cake with a cross drawn it.
Neither one resulted in human sacrifices.
Then Lil’ Susy goes on about how even today cats, dogs, and children go missing around Halloween, usually at hands of strangers who want to sacrifice them to Satan.
While Halloween does propose a safety challenge and most parents wouldn’t dare let their kids out without some sort of a plan, the biggest danger to most trick-or-treaters is getting hit by a car. According to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children FAQ, out of the 797,500 annually reported as of October 2002, only 115 were perpetrated by strangers. Compare that with the 203,900 being abducted by family members and the 58,200 by acquaintances. Given that in order to successfully abduct a child is by targeting more isolated children, Halloween is a really bad time. As an experienced candy-giver, the size of the trick-or-treating groups that show up at my door is usually no less than three kids.
Not really conducive to snatching a kid off the street without getting notice.
Teens everywhere are going into both white and black witchcraft and both really serve the devil.
Oh, I remember when I used to do white witchcraft. I did a lot dancing starkers under the full moon or was that just last week? Either way it resulted in a whole lot of mosquito bites.
Then comes the recurring lesson about Jesus and how accepting him into your life will save you from damnation and, like the other weak-willed individuals Lil’ Susy browbeats, Buffy gets “saved”.
Buffy: I feel wonderful! Any semblance of personality has been scrubbed away!
Later that week, Buffy would receive an email from a Nigerian prince and reply back with her mother’s credit card number.
Then Lil’ Susy closes the comic with saying that she’s gonna hand out Chick Tracts (uh, totally meta?) along with candy to trick-or-treaters Halloween night. November 1 would be spent hosing eggs off her house and extinguishing the flaming bags of dog poop left on the porch.
Final thoughts?
It’s a bad comic. Apart from the obvious Did Not Do Research vibe and the obvious author’s mouthpiece, the art is passable, but the characters are just uncomfortable to look at. In one panel, they would look all right, but the next their faces would look too small for their heads and Lil’ Suzy and Buffy look like they went a little heavy on the mascara.
Still, the sheer incompetence of the final product is worth checking out on its own.
So, from yours truly, 167 days ‘til Hallo-ween, Hallo-ween! 167 days ‘til Hall-oween, Silver Shamrock!