Man in Black

It's been a while since our last update, we know. The Devil doesn't want us to update, so he gave us conflicting schedules. We managed to get it together today, though, and we have a new tract for you!

Today Bob calls half of the readership of this blog whores, and he's not talking about the ladies (this time). Find out which corner of the street you're standing on by joining us while we read




Lita: Ooo! Man in Black! Is this going to be a biotract of the late, great, Johnny Cash?

wurwolf: I like to think I'm above making the obvious Johnny Cash joke here. It's about secret agents who fight aliens.

wurwolf: The Man In Black is missing the lower half of his torso on the cover there.



wurwolf: Why is the car calling Fang a drunk? He's just walking across the bridge.

Lita: Well, it is pretty bad weather to just be wandering around town.

wurwolf: So are you saying that when you see someone walking in the rain, it means that they're completely hammered? Neil Sedaka and Rupert Holmes, get your asses to rehab!

Lita: If they don't use an umbrella.

Lita: Except me, since I don't even own an umbrella.

wurwolf: You just get wet, huh?

Lita: Soaked.

wurwolf: Well, according to this tract, you're just asking for a lecture from Bob.

Lita: Isn't everybody?

Lita: Dammit! It's been too long since we've done one of these. We lost our rhythm!

wurwolf: Start with an ice breaker. Try jazz hands.

Lita: Uhh.... ok...



wurwolf: I believe in the power of the jazz hands.



wurwolf: Bob, get back in your car. You're only going to make him want to jump more.

Lita: Bob. Just the guy you need to talk to when you're sick of talk, lies, and deception.

wurwolf: And when you're drunk.

Lita: The terrible movie Varsity Blues took on a frightening, surreal quality when I watched it while drunk. I can only imagine what a drunken encounter with Bob would be like.

wurwolf: It would be like being thrown into hell by an angel headfirst while naked.

Lita: Really? Because I assumed lumpy butts would be involved. And nudity.



wurwolf: Is the priest expecting a flood?

Lita: It's raining pretty hard.

wurwolf: I learn so much from these tracts. What a dynamic way to witness to people! "Hey buddy, Jesus totally hates your religion!"

Lita: That priest looks like he should have a chainsaw for a hand...which would make this the coolest tract ever.

wurwolf: Army of Bobness.




Lita: You know, it's really counterproductive to include a drunken hiccup after your demand for respect.

wurwolf: I thought he was calling Bob a hick. Which, with that jacket that Bob's wearing, I'd say the priest is right on the money.

wurwolf: I don't know why the priest would say that Bob thinks he's lost. According to Bob, he's just 100 feet away from hell.

Lita: Oh, I see. They're standing over the [insert name of a river commonly regarded as foul here].



wurwolf: Do I detect a note of disappointment from Bob about the priest not jumping?

Lita: "Good for you." I'm sure the priest appreciates your sarcasm, Bob.

Lita: The priest is going all Bruce Wayne.

wurwolf: Bruce Campbell, Bruce Wayne. He's totally Father Bruce.



Lita: Or Father Damien. Like the Antichrist... Subtle, tract.

Lita: Jesus called the church the "Bride of Christ." Is Bob saying Jesus married a whore?

wurwolf: Jesus did love to hang with the sinners.

wurwolf: By the way, once again Chick Publications is totally taking a verse out of context with Matthew 23:9.

Lita looks it up

wurwolf: Look up the whole passage.

wurwolf: I'm not even going to bother looking up the passages from Revelations, because they definitely do talk about the Whore of Babylon, even if they don't necessarily mean the Catholic church.

Lita: Matthew 23:9 says, "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."

wurwolf: You're also not supposed to call people Rabbi and Master.

Lita: But that verse, looked at in context, isn't even really about not having Catholic priests. It's about not letting Earthly people have all the authority over you in life, because you have a master in Heaven to serve.

wurwolf: Exactly.

wurwolf: That includes Pastors and Reverends, I'm sure.

Lita looks up Revelation just for the hell of it

wurwolf: Knock yourself out, sister.

Lita: Ok. If you read the whole chapter, even in King James, there's nothing there that screams "CATHOLIC CHURCH" at me. In fact, it's pretty clear that this is the widely famed, Whore of Babylon. And verse 18 says it plainly, "And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." She represents a city, not a church.

Lita: Even if you said she represents the Vatican, how many kings of the earth would you say still worry about what the Pope has to say?

wurwolf: Good point.

Lita: You know, considering this passage:

3 So the angel took me in the Spirit into the wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that had seven heads and ten horns, and blasphemies against God were written all over it. 4 The woman wore purple and scarlet clothing and beautiful jewelry made of gold and precious gems and pearls. In her hand she held a gold goblet full of obscenities and the impurities of her immorality. 5 A mysterious name was written on her forehead: “Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World.” 6 I could see that she was drunk—drunk with the blood of God’s holy people who were witnesses for Jesus. I stared at her in complete amazement.

You could make the argument that the Whore of Babylon represents the Internet. I'm not saying she is. I'm just saying that the argument could be made. Most of the filthiest things I know about I learned from the Internet.

wurwolf: I know I've certainly stared at some things I've seen on the Internet in complete amazement.

wurwolf: I've also gotten drunk on the Internet, so.... you may be right.

wurwolf: On the other hand, the Whore has a bitchin' ride. I think I could rule the world if I rode around on something like that.



wurwolf: I am so not surprised that Bob drives around in a boring black sedan.

Lita: Bob, Father Bruce asked if you could prove this. "Yeah. Jesus saw it." isn't proof.

Lita: Not unless you are able to get Jesus to physically manifest in that car and tell everybody there what went down.

wurwolf: He could claim that Jesus said any number of things.

Lita: And regularly does.

Lita: Besides. Even if you take what Bob's saying as absolutely true, seeing some bitch get born and die is not proof that the leaders of the world fear the Catholic Church, which is what I believe Father Bruce was asking about.



wurwolf is laughing at Nimrod's horn.

wurwolf: You know, it's bad enough that your name is Nimrod. Do you have to dress up like a rhinoceros, too?

Lita: Maybe Nimrod is wearing a Viking helmet sideways.

wurwolf: Nimrod's wife may be Semiramis, but this guy is full-on Ramis.

Lita: Is Bob really saying that Semiramis is actually The Virgin Mary?

wurwolf runs up to Nimrod and honks his horn.

wurwolf: Sorry, still laughing about Nimrod.

Lita: Because I don't know if Bob noticed this, but the Bible does mention Jesus being born to a virgin named Mary.

wurwolf: Where?! I demand you provide verses!

Lita: I'll do you one better and link you to another tract.

wurwolf: I love how Chick Publications actually tosses in a real Catholic prayer there where people are praying to Semiramis.

Lita: From what I understand, and realize that I'm coming from a non-Catholic background here, the cult of Mary sprang up because representations of Jesus in the early church were pretty scary.

Lita: (I wish you could see the closeup of the damned being sent to Hell, by the way; it's super badass)

Lita: Jesus was the big guy who helped his dad decide whether or not to send you to Hell. But Mary is a nice lady, right? And she's Jesus's mom. So it's a lot easier to pray to Mary and ask her to put a good word in for you with her angry son.



wurwolf: Bob's claim that Satan pushed the worship of Semiramis through all other female deities really smacks of misogyny to me.

Lita: I have heard the theory before that Mary became popular partly because Goddess worship had been so popular in the religions that Christianity was pushing out. Similar to how Christian holidays are often on the same days as pagan holidays. But that's not the same as what Bob's saying.

Lita: I think Father Bruce knows about Jesus dying and stuff. We can probably safely skip those frames.



Lita: Oh, gross!! The Christians are feeding the poor clothing made from your widows? No wonder you guys are pissed!!

wurwolf: It's the early AD version of Soylent Green.



wurwolf: Are you kidding me? "The fear of death was gone. Love was their weapon." Bob, you jackass, your weapon is the fear of death! Have you listened to yourself?

Lita: I can't think of a single moment where Bob's ever shown any love to anybody. Even his own wife. Mostly he ignores her while she putters around with the cooking.

wurwolf: This is the kind of stuff that makes me angry. People like Bob have no concept of a "weapon" as anything other than something with which to bludgeon someone.



Lita: I thought Satan was supposed to be the most attractive of God's angels.

Lita: I guess Bob has some funny ideas about what's attractive.

wurwolf: Bob has a lot of funny ideas.

wurwolf: I love the arrow. "This way to see how Satan pulled it off!"



wurwolf: It sounds like Bob is blaming the Catholic church for the persecution of the early church, but wasn't the early church Catholic? If I remember my religious history right, the Catholic church single-handedly carried the cause of Christ for centuries until the Protestants splintered off.

Lita: That's how I always heard it. Even the name "Protestant" comes from it being a protest of the Catholic church.

wurwolf: So it wasn't like the Protestants were the first church, and Satan was sitting around trying to think of a way to counter them and suddenly came up with the Catholic church.

wurwolf: I'm not saying I agree with Catholic theology, but give credit where credit is due, Bob.

wurwolf: Where on earth is he getting this history from? I grew up in one of the most fundy churches around and I've never heard that the "real" Christians fled to the mountains while the "phonies" stayed in Rome.



Lita: I've never read the Catholic bible. Is it really incredibly different than the Protestant versions? I know the 10 Commandments are different, and I can see how people could get cranky about that.

wurwolf: I've never read it either, and I didn't know there were different versions of the Ten Commandments.

Lita: I don't know what the difference is. It's just what I heard. I guess it would be easy to look up.

Time passes.

Lita: It is different. They took out the one about not having false idols and divided the one about coveting up into two separate commandments to cover the difference.

Lita: Wiki has an incredibly huge article that we need not bother with reading the entirety of, but there is a handy little chart here.

wurwolf: Except that the Catholics totally took out the graven images part. It's not like they incorporated it into another commandment. They just totally removed it.

Lita: True. And I'm sure the anti-Catholic conspiracists out there are happy to say that the Catholics did this on purpose so that they could happily worship the Pope, Mary, and assorted saints. I wonder why Bob didn't point this out? I'd think he'd be all over that.

wurwolf: You do have to wonder, though, why they did take it out.

Lita: Any Catholics in our reading audience care to enlighten us?

wurwolf: Knock yourselves out.

wurwolf: Okay, we're totally off on a tangent here. We should get back to the tract.

Lita: Ok.

wurwolf: I like how Bob isn't calling Damien "Father". Firstly, because any self-respecting Fundy would never call a priest "Father", and secondly, because for Bob it's a forgone conclusion that Damien won't be a priest after today.

Lita: I would probably call a priest "Father." Not so much for any deeply spiritual reason, but just because it's polite to call people by their title. The same way I might say "Pastor Bill," or "Doctor Smith," or "Asshole Bob."



Lita: Bob is totally getting off on calling Catholics whores. He's throwing out the big W every chance he gets.

wurwolf: I just counted eleven mentions of the word "Whore" in this tract.

Lita: Why were they the Dark Ages? Because a Catholic whore was in control. Thank you for that enlightenment, Bob.

wurwolf: "Vandals plundered, raped and destroyed Europe." Yeah, probably your ancestors, Bob. Since like half the people in the US are of Germanic descent: "There are over 60 million Americans of German ancestry in the United States."

Lita: Were the Vandals Catholic?

Lita: According to wiki: Most Vandal kings, except Hilderic, persecuted Catholics to a greater or lesser extent. Members of the clergy were exiled, monasteries were dissolved, and general pressure was used on non-conforming Catholics. Although Catholicism was rarely officially forbidden (the last months of Huneric's reign being an exception), they were forbidden from making converts among the Vandals, and life was generally difficult for the Catholic clergy, who were denied bishoprics.

Lita: So I guess you can't really blame Catholics for the Vandals terrorizing everybody, Bob.

Lita: Well... I guess he can...

wurwolf: Just like he can come up with all sorts of things that Jesus said and claim that it's proof.



Lita: Wow. Father Bruce ate too many cheese curds in the shadowrama a couple of panels ago. He's really packing on the weight.

wurwolf: He looks so beaten down. He looked more chipper when he was drunk and getting ready to jump off a bridge.

wurwolf: That's what a couple hours with Bob will do to you, I guess.



Lita: Is it only Catholics who take any notice of the Baby Jesus, or Christ Crucified, or who call themselves "little Christs," take communion, or who spread the notion that Christ is angry?

wurwolf: Yup. That's what separates them from us.

Lita: Take note, Bob. If you're trying to convince somebody that their religion sucks, do not include, on your list of douchbagerry that the other guys are committing, things that your own faith does as well.

wurwolf: "Hey Damien, Jesus hates your religion! What with you believing that He was born human and died on the cross and following His commands! You dummy!"



Lita: How many times has Bob told us that Jesus is pissed about one thing or another? Why is this such a terrible thing now that the Catholics are doing it?

Lita: Oh, wait. I just answered my own question, didn't I?

Lita: I like how the platform Mary is standing on has all the other goddess's names crossed out and hers stuck in on the bottom. The Catholics were just too damn lazy to to make her a new pedestal.

wurwolf: When I first saw that I thought maybe the artist was crossing out certain letters to spell something else, but then I realized that they were supposed to be crossing out the previous names.

Lita: Because if there's one thing we know about Catholics, it's that they don't like to put a lot of effort into the stuff they build for their faith.



wurwolf: Such sloppy work. I'll bet that only took them a few centuries.

Lita: I much prefer the various elementary school gymnasiums and cafeterias that my churches have been held in over the years. Such exquisite craftsmanship on the lines on the floor for the basketball courts.

wurwolf: You could consider them markings for liturgical dance, if your church went in for such fruity festivities.



wurwolf: Revelation 17 doesn't specifically say that Rome is the city on the seven hills. It doesn't even say that the seven hills are a city. I don't think.

Lita: Apparently the KKK are Catholic. Just so you know. Somebody should probably go tell them that. Let's send Bob.

wurwolf: Oh right. The KKK hate Catholics just as much as Bob does. I've been trying to figure out if that guy is KKK or the Knights Templar or something. I'd do some research but I feel like we've spent too much time on this tract as it is.



Lita: Hey, wait... is Bob saying that some of the Popes were corrupt and did nasty things under the cover of Popedom??? I HAVE NEVER HEARD THAT BEFORE!!111 WHY ALL THE LIES, CATHOLIC CHURCH???? WHY?????

wurwolf: Because it's been totally swept under the rug!

Lita: I love how Bob doesn't specifically say that Popes are gay, but then right in front of the picture of debauchery are two Popes kissing.

wurwolf: And we all know that Protestant churches have never had that sort of problem.

Lita: I'm sure this tract must have been made before Pope Benedict came to power, because I don't see how Bob would be able to resist calling him a Nazi.

wurwolf: You're right, it was.



wurwolf: As for the files in the Vatican, the worldwide Great Catholic Conspiracy is a fact, according to our friend Tork.

Lita: The Vatican has flies and flies on everybody.

wurwolf: I know the Catholic Conspiracy to be a fact as well. When we requested my husband's baptism certificate from the Philippines, it also mentioned the church in Queens NY where he was confirmed. We have no idea how they found that out.

wurwolf: Other than a worldwide Catholic Conspiracy, that is.



wurwolf: We don't get to see the priest's lumpy butt, thank goodness.

Lita: We know it's there, though. Just out of the frame.



wurwolf: Father Bruce is all too willing to begin calling his former religion The Whore.

Lita: Look, even now he's still trying to get other people to do his praying for him. You're a Protestant now, dude! You're allowed to pray your own self!

wurwolf: Old habits die hard, I guess.

wurwolf: Bob looks like he's wearing a Hugh Hefner smoking jacket in the panel where he's giving his final pitch.

Lita: Yes. And note that he's hunched over and his hands are suspiciously out of the frame.

Lita: Speaking of old habits.

wurwolf: And hard.

Lita: The look on his face just kind of caps it all off, doesn't it?

wurwolf: I hope Bob has a handkerchief to wipe the drool.

Lita: Yeah. Drool. Welcome to your new religion, Father Bruce!