This is J.T.C. at his best. And, if you are a fan, he finally gives himself away as a mischievous spirit. In a number of his comics the author places a trouble-making cat, a mangy tabby cat, in the background or foreground. The cat is once again present here, but shows his hand, or rather reveals himself as J.T.C.’s avatar, when he sneaks up to bite the Devil’s pointed tail. The cat enjoys other rough and tumble adventures, like fighting over a block of Swiss cheese with a mouse and blackbird.
One place where J.T.C. tends to be weak is in his graphic depictions of the Devil. His version of God is much more sinister, as are the angels. His Devil comes off as something akin to the version promoted on the obnoxious stoner cartoon South Park. The scene where the cat makes ready to munch on some satanic tail is the key one in this dark conspiratorial indictment of the Catholic Church. In this scene an early pope sits at a Dark Age picnic table with the Devil, discussing their ascent to power. In his mythos the Popes do not just blindly lead people into false belief, but conspire openly with the Devil to steal souls to populate his dark realm.
There is a nice brief on the connection between the Egyptian Cult of Osiris and the Catholic act of communion. He actually uses papal photographs in this screed against the ‘cookie god’! His best illustration is of a baby demon hatching from a communion wafer and grabbing the face of the parishioner who was about to take it on his tongue from the priest.
Actually, for a syncretist like myself this makes Catholicism go down a little easier. As a boy I always found the taking of communion from the pale old hand of the priest to be creepy and demeaning. It did have its uses though. It was a sin to have premarital sex or use birth control. Therefore, I used to point out to my protestant friends—that us Catholic guys know what girls are giving it up, because they sit out the communion!
J.T.C. does a heavy-handed militant job of taking the hatchet to the residual-cannibalistic rite of Catholic communion, which is such a lightning rod issue for evangelistic of many a protestant denomination. I would like to see Rob Zombie makes this into a C-list film.
