Once again my favorite Christian evangelist strikes at my callous heart.
I will narrate this by the panel.
The cover has a dark-haired Dennis the Menace type brat taking a gold fish from its bowl and feeding it to J.T.C’s. mischievous cat avatar, which I’m glad finally got its own cover.
#1 Dexter is watching TV from Archie Bunker’s chair when his skank mother, a wine glass in hand, tells him to ‘turn off that awful program’. Dexter says, ‘Shut up, Connie’ and she complains about him disrespecting her.
#2 Dexter says, ‘When you earn my respect, I might just start calling you Mama!’ Mom threatens to slap him and Dexter threatens her with jail time.
#3 The argument devolves into her calling him a monster and him calling her an old drunk, then the phone rings.
#4 Connie gets a call that her little brother has died and she melts down.
#5 Dad hears Connie fall from his office.
#6 Dad inspects the Connie body as Dexter informs him that someone died.
#7 Connie is revived and says her ‘baby brother’ Jerry is dead. Dexter is beginning to see the sorrows of the adult world.
#8 We switch venues to a darkened mob bar with a thug speaking to a weasel-faced assassin about ‘Jerry the Rat’.
#9 Jerry is crossing the street with a coffee in hand, calculating his profit from ripping off the [small-g] godfather.
#10 Jerry and his cup of jo are airborne as a word bubble comes from the speeding car beneath him, ‘Bingo!’
#11 Connie’s brother Henry, in Hawaiian shirt, is yelling into the phone from beneath a palm tree that he is not paying for the funeral.
#12 Henry, male pattern baldness on display, is screaming about what a ‘rotten cheapskate’ Jerry was.
Panels 13-20 involve the family drama of shipping Dexter off to his ‘crazy’ Christian Grandpa.
#21-36 depicts the standard conversion to Christianity scenes and arguments at the heart of each JTC comic. He does not disappoint as a midnight crucifixion scene is part of this version of the template. The Grandpa is pretty cool in a creepy way.
#37 Connie is complaining to her friend on the phone about Dexter ‘going crazy’ which is how Connie defines Christianity. She claims that she hates him and should have aborted him.
#38 Connie slips and breaks her neck while walking up the stairs with a glass of wine.
#39 I can’t let the ending go. This is a review not a transcript! Dexter has three panels to save his mother’s soul before she dies.
To find out how it ends go to www.chick.com and tell them this old apostate sent you.
