A twin-pence analysis of "Jack"

[Angel]

Good GOD you have a lot to say. But at least it was worth reading. Welcome to the world that is Jack.<P>Jen

[DavidHopkins]

So what your saying is that I'm real good at making a cruel comic <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/wink.gif"><P>I don't want to give to much away, but I would like to note that though Jack is devided into arcs each story has a place in the development of the whole shabang.<P>Many of you have noted Dante's Inferno as insperation for this comic. It's true and without trying to say too much thats only the first part of Dante's Devine Comedy.

[Fin]

In short essense, yes. My suspicions are that this isn't simply because you're good at playing out such scenes believably, but that you're good at making nearly any scene believable. It's just that the current environment of the world requires such savagery to be shown to give a strong basis of what sort of world it is starting as -- that being a place where the anthropomorphic residents are little more than helpless animals, seeking fairly basic wishes of love and happiness, struggling with and against supernatural forces who may not have the best interests of the mortal creatures at hand.<P>I shouldn't make any assumptions that the world of Jack is going to evolve past such darkness, but the display of writer's art here does imply that we're not being treated to people as fearful creatures to the slaughter simply for your own amusement.<P>(I moved the story to its own message... this one was getting too large.)<p>[This message has been edited by Fin (edited 11-26-2001).]

[Fin]

I started reading this comic today. Finished it all in one sitting, unable to look away as if it were a really bad accident -- mind you, that's not saying "Jack" is bad. On the contrary, it's a great success -- though exactly for /what/ it is successful at doing seems to be a subject of much debate here. So here's my analysis for you rather analytical forum dwellers.<P>You know you're in for a "treat" when an abortion from the foetus's point of view is the first thing that greets you in "Jack"... Since the title character's principle job is to escort the souls of the slain to Heaven or Hell, it shouldn't come as any surprise to me that there's alot of death involved in this strip. The current gross estimate of deaths in "Jack" (as of November) is just under 500 and growing, with the biggest net being a positively sadistically drawn-out depiction of an airline accident -- and the innocent far, far outnumber the wicked in the body bags. Evil seems to win much more often than good does, the concept of justice totally alien in a metaphysical system that is all too familiar.<P>So what exactly is "Jack" trying to accomplish here? Is it simply a sadistic experiment? "Jack" is superbly written and reasonably well-crafted artistically with characters developed just enough so that when they die horrifically and unjustly the reader is impacted with the loss of a person and not a face in the crowd. Add to that the use of cartoon characters to bypass the jaded insensitivity to human suffering -- if mere cruelty is the goal, it is one that is masterfully pursued. <P>I have strong doubts that despite the levels of shock and sadism involved in the story telling, the implications of the craft put into this suggest that much more may be at work here; clearly this work intended to provoke thought, since it cannot be sanely approached on any emotional level. <P>Comparisons to "On a Pale Horse" by Piers Anthony are inevitable, and it heavily implies the greater goal of the artist's comic may be similar: Is it a brutal deconstruction of Christian mythology by diagraming how, by its own absolutist rules, such a system becomes a cruel cosmic joke, like animal-torturing games of a twisted child's? The cartoonist is merely enacting the role of God here, leaving responsibility on his creations. We cannot blame him for his 'inactions' to stop the madness of his world anymore than we can our own God. ...Or can we?<P>It was said once that a universe where one cannot prove that God exists is no different than one where God actually does not exist. But there is a difference: the prescence of such a god-like entity, inactive, is more horrifying than a universe that never had one in the first place, because such a being who is incapable of taking care of that which it crafted suggests a terrible crime of negligence, like the father that leaves his duty of raising a child he had the hand in pro-creating. It is amazing what crimes we excuse a Supreme Being of that we shiver to forgive a mere human of. If justice exists, it must exist equally for all, immortal and mortal.<P>But in the case of "Jack", all the credit for the horrors (and the brief moments of beauty) witnessed rests upon the cartoonist's shoulders. Admittedly, he's merely mirroring elements of our own world's terrible face (nothing in "Jack" has matched the madness of 9-11 yet), pieced together into the warped and dark image of popular faith's acceptance that obedience to the powers that be are more important than justice or good. It doesn't have to be this way any more than our own world has to be the way it is. There are no cosmic rules in operation except those that we make ourselves. Perhaps someday the world depicted in "Jack" will be as unfathomably alien as we look upon ones where people are not the playthings of supernatural forces, but for now we watch hypnotically in morbid death-worshipping fascination of a system which /many/ people believe exists unrefutably -- and just as surely as each character we see within this comic dies, so shall we -- a meaningless and cruel cosmic joke.<P>But perhaps this joke will ultimately end, as all dictatorships fall. After all, "Jack" is showing signs of being a dynamic story. Is it possible that the system depicted within -- of the painfully short mortal lives, who are mere play-things to supernatural beings, destined to be shelved in heaven or wasted in hell -- will it come to a crashing halt under the weight of its own injustices? Will the endless dark parade of death itself die? <P>One would hope so. For the sake of our future and the comic's.<P>Keep up the mesmerizing work, David. Do not disappoint us by shortchanging the possibilities.

[Seppel]

Wow... an excellent analysis, true at nearly every angle. Though this does bring up the question of cloning into the world of "Jack."<P>Strange... Fin has two posts, both saying he has two posts.

[RiotGear]

Fnar is a perfectly normal fox who had his nose eaten by crows. It was easy to miss - It's in the fifth comic or so, I think. Go look for it.<P>BTW, Fin, great analysis.

[AtmanRyu]

I thought Fnar's a cat...?<P>------------------
"Hoj'sh n

[DarkBlood_Warwing]

what is FNAR suppose to be? is he a noseless fox?