New Chick Tract.

OH BOY. The art's ugly as sin and It's pretty crazy in general, but also kind of instructive. You might note that--as far as I can remember--this is the only tract in which nobody involved seems to be thinking about Jesus at all--all there is is the awkward segue into the usual proselytizing at the end. But instead, we get ALLEGORY! OH BOY. Too bad it had to be such incredibly LAME allegory, but whaddaya want?

It breaks down pretty fast. It may have come pre-broken, actually. Firstly, if the son is Jesus, he's a pretty peripheral Jesus: oh boy; he's driving you to the hospital. You could've taken a cab, and you would have gotten there faster, too, what with not having the crash and all. It's a pretty big stretch to say that he died for the patient. Secondly, if the seedy-looking janitor's meant to be Satan, he once again does a pretty poor job of it. Who's going to throw his life away based on the vague implications of a guy who looks like an evil hobo? Sure, Chick's demons always seem like they'd be pretty ineffectual, but this forges new trails of half-assedness. Finally, I'm kind of hung up on this "euphoria" business. I suppose this was considered necessary because otherwise, there's NO way he'd refuse the medicine and also because it represents the human pride of jerks like me and you (most likely) who refuse to be converted, but really--does this tract wish to say that salvation is contingent on having first behaved in this manner? I kinda doubt it.

The real question that comes out of this, though, kind of gets to the heart of the matter: does ChickCo genuinely believe that "I should accept Jesus so I don't go to hell" is as similarly self-evident a proposition as "I should take this medicine so I don't die of ebola?" Really? 'Cause in that case, they would seem to believe that the great majority of people in the world are either insane or too stupid to dress themselves, and they might as well just close up shop, since converting such people is clearly a lost cause.

Also, I'm pretty sure ebola doesn't come from spider bites. But that's the least of the problems here.