I hit the evangelical flip comic jackpot last week. On the backs of these comics is a space for the missionary to write their name under ‘compliments of:’
On the backs of most of these I find the following scrawled in both male and female hands [leading me to believe this is a husband and wife team of evangelists]: “Jesus is coming soon for all who love him.” The male hand adds an explanation mark.
JTC comics are targeted at certain demographics, making them appealing arguments for some and entertaining for others.
The Sissy is about a big lamb-chopped redneck trucker who is converted by this Mister Universe looking preacher in a diner. It is pretty pedestrian, although JTC comes through with a close up crucifixion scene. The best thing about this one is the cover art and the title. I would have preferred JTC damn the redneck and send him to hell, so it was a bummer for me.
Last Rites is a classic, in which a catholic priest discovers he is going to hell for being catholic! On page 19 is an excellent midnight crucifixion scene. I would like to see a retrospective of JTCs crucifixion scenes, as well as one of all of his versions of hell, which he always does well. JTC does God very well as a faceless seated being, enthroned in harshly lined stone, permitting each reader to imagine the face according to his own preference. I prefer the faceless God as is, making him a metaphor for prime cause. On page 20 God tells John, the damned priest, “Her [the church] false teachings are why you are going into the lake of fire.”
Why Should I? is targeted at young skeptics. This particular big-eared agnostic twerp is walked through a gallery of false religions—their exponents having 666 tattooed on their foreheads. I love how JTC always makes his pope look like a pissed off mafia don with a plastic cone-hat. The art in this is great, featuring a lot of hell, including the devil as a sexual molester of old dying cancer patients. There are two midnight crucifixions and a really cool superhero as angel ascension piece. My favorite is a sketch accompanying a description of how Jesus left his throne and came down to earth, in which a cloud is shown over the earth with a black arrow pointing the route of Jesus’ descent. In the end I felt good about this big-eared kid being converted.
Room 301 is about this obnoxious, tough womanizing jerk who ends up in the hospital next to a preacher. They are both dying. The preacher slowly wins him over to Jesus, and the tough guy ends up glad that he was dying so that his immortal soul would ultimately be saved thanks to the preacher. The art in this goes from starkly sterile to serene. A bird is used—we can let JTC slide on that bit of pagan imagery. I mean Noah got away with it on utilitarian grounds [the Ark and the Dove]. The standard Halloween quality midnight crucifixion scene is replaced with a more fatalistic crucifixion on a cross that is planted atop a rock pile that reminds one of Mount Surabachi Iwo Jima. Congratulations to the Roman legionnaires who raised that cross and diced on those 75-degree granite slabs. They might have belonged to a crap legion that wouldn’t last a day in Germania or Dacia, but they get an A for judicial engineering. Room 301 is, I think, JTCs most mature argument for conversion to Christianity.
I am now the proud possessor of 16 JTC comics. I have two issues of Last Rites.
Anybody want to trade?
