It’s in my butt.

Actually, I have to take a quick break from the strip for real life.  I’ll be back in a week or two. Thanks for your patience, you crazy mugs! I love you guys.

The internet seems to have eaten Thursday’s comic.  That’s unusual.

Oh, well, it wasn’t a very good one anyway.  Let’s try this again on Tuesday, shall we?

Recently, a friend introduced us to an amazing movie called “Saturday’s Warrior.” It’s a religious propaganda movie for kids, the sort you’d see in Sunday School, but, and here’s the twist, it’s MORMON. Since I grew up Catholic, I’ve never seen a Mormon production before but I can say that it is 1000000 times better than anything the Catholic church has ever produced. I mean, this blows away McGee and Me and Superbook and all that other shit they used to show us.

The movie is the sort of terrible schlock that kids eat up. You know how you love certain movies when you’re a kid even though they suck because you’re an idiot? Well, this is like that. Compared to most religious programming aimed at kids, this flick seems fairly innocuous, although that’s mostly because Mormonism seems to be so alien to me that I can’t make heads or tails of half of this thing. The important thing to take away from this movie is that you should have babies, lots and lots of babies.

Part of what makes it good is the low budget. The actors are all obviously recruited straight from the Salt Lake City community theater and there’s no attempt to make any sets look realistic at all. It’s like they just filmed a play. This is especially amusing later on when we see the main family’s home, which is nothing but a few pieces of furniture, a disembodied floating door and half a stairway to nowhere, all set against a purple backdrop of nothingness

Let’s get this party started in here

It all starts out in heaven, which looks like a sound stage covered in dry ice. All the souls of people yet to be born are hanging out in heaven, going on about how awesome it will be when they get down to earth. (Apparently, and I was unaware of this, Mormon faith differs from other Christian faiths in that it holds that souls are eternal rather than newly created with every body. That means that your soul was hanging out in heaven for an eternity before you were born, conveniently gets all memories of heaven wiped out when your body comes into being, and then gets all those memories back when you die and it returns to heaven.) Harold and Wally are two dudes who look almost exactly like Drew Carey and Alan Thicke, respectively. They are really jazzed about going to earth so that they can be missionaries and preach the good word. Julie and Todd, meanwhile, are two swoony lovers who love each other and are worried that they won’t recognize each other when they get sent to earth. Todd looks like Uncle Joey from “Full House” had a chinless baby with McGuyver. Julie is part of a family of seven siblings, who include big brother Jimmy, sister Pam (who insists that she will be happy no matter what as long as she can “dance my way through life”), some younger brothers whose names I forget but who are all sass-talkin’ Danny Bonaducci-style jackasses, some other unremarkable sister, and youngest sister Emily.

Emily is upset because, as the youngest, she is afraid that their parents will be sick of having babies by the time it’s her turn to be born. Jimmy promises that he will make sure that she gets born. Jimmy, incidentally, looks like Uncle Jesse from “Full House”

TIME PASSES! MANY YEARS LATER, ON EARTH…

After having been born and aging for several years, every character we met in heaven is now the same age on earth that their souls were when we met them in heaven (Except for Emily who has not been born yet). Wally is engaged to Julie, but he’s just about to leave for his two year mission to preach the Book of Mormon in some other city or something. Julie promises to be faithful. But, because she’s a woman, she dumps him for Peter as soon as he’s gone. LOL INFIDELITY

More important, though, is that Jimmy has fallen in with a (gasp) bad crowd, headed by a no-goodnik who looks like an older, more leathery Haley Joel Osmond. You can tell that this is a bad crowd because they dress in what constituted bad crowd clothes in the 80s - namely lots of denim and spandex. The fashions in this movie are really what make it, because every single person is an EXPLOSION OF 80S KITSCH. My favorite is Jimmy who wears a style that I remember being really popular back then, namely the Multi-colored shorts that look like swim trunks with a sweatshirt that appears to be parts of three different sweatshirts sewn together.

Anyway, the bad kids convince Jimmy that the world is overpopulated and that pumping out kids until your vagina implodes is irresponsible. They are really vocal about this and really pushy about inducting Jimmy into their scandalous safe sex and/or abstinence lifestyle. Why, they’re like drug pushers, if drug pushers were socially conscious preppies who drove around in a sand buggy. Seriously, these guys are so into this that you almost expect them to be peddling black market contraceptives (”The first condom is free, buddy…”)

So Jimmy’s parents, meanwhile, have decide that six kids is not enough to fill the gaping void in their souls. Not enough..not ever enough. Kids, they’re like an addiction, man. Always gotta have just one more. Jimmy learns of this and flips a shit, causing the rest of his family to get all up in his grill about what a selfish jerk he is. Pam, the girl who in heaven just wanted to dance but whom has been crippled and wheelchair bound since birth (Oh, the irony!) tries to calm Jimmy down by giving him some sage words of wisdom as is her wont as the film’s magical gimp. Jimmy repeats his objections to the family’s rodent-like breeding cycle, going on and on about how the world is so shitty and overpopulated. Pam reacts much the same way that most of the other characters react to Jimmy’s justifiable worries - but totally blowing him off. “Oh Jimmy,” she says ,”You’re so passionate! You could be an actor! A famous actor!”

While this is going on, Wally is still on his mission. He’s been paired with Harold and they totally suck at conversions. After two years, they have failed to convert a single person. Mostly because Wally’s understandably depressed at losing his fiancee. But then, one day, they run across Tod, who is now a non-Mormon artist-type guy who hangs out in the park doing shitty pencil sketches of random people he sees hanging out there and lamenting the fact that he’s not a courageous warrior with a chin like the people he draws. Harold and Wally convert him to Mormonism. Hooray!

Meanwhile, Jimmy’s birthday rolls around, so his family give him shitty Mormon presents. These are great because, okay, think of the most stereotypically Mormon birthday present you can. That’s what they give him. One sister gives him her favorite toy, a stuffed monkey. Another made him a shirt - or rather gave him a regular shirt that she sewed a big sequiny “J” on to. And another promises him a week of breakfasts. Pam gives him a sword covered in tinfoil and a Burger King crown also covered in tinfoil, and declares that now he’s a knight n shining armor.

Haha okay sure

Uh oh, then one of the kids lets the truth slip! Their mom is preggers again and the whole birthday bonanza was nothing more than an attempt to buy his compliance! Jimmy is ENRAGED, more so than any kid ever has been at this sort of news. He angrily barks at his mom, “What, are you gonna start dropping litters?” And his dad - a bald dude who looks like Mr. Belding from “Saved by the Bell” - backhands the shit outta him. THIS SCENE IS MAGIC. I could watch a skinny bald guy commit child abuse all day. Jimmy runs away to hang with his no-goodnik friends, who, as you remember, include Haley Joel Osmond and a black guy who makes Lamar from “Revenge of teh Nerds” look manly. Seriously, this is the femmiest black man in cinematic history. I think he’s my second favorite effeminate black man after Hollywood Montrose.

Jimmy runs into Tod in the park, despite the fact that Tod is supposed to be in a different city getting converted by Wally and Harold. Tod draws some pencil sketches of Jimmy, telling him how lucky he is to come from a big family. See, all his life, Tod’s just wanted to have oodles of siblings. Gotta reach for that rainbow, man.

Uh oh! Pam is writing Jimmy a letter from the hospital now, where she has gone to get the “usual tests.” She says that she “feels closer to God now.” Oh no! This can only mean one thing - she’s caught the Victorian wasting disease! And yes, she dies in the next scene, prompting Jimmy to enter the long dark night of the soul. Apparently, it’s really dangerous to be a faithful Mormon who is related to and/or acquainted with a lapsed Mormon, because God will kill you to make a point. Kaiven said this happens a lot in Mormon literature. I guess as soon as anyone you know leaves the church, you’d better do so as well - FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. You don’t wanna be made an example of, my friend, because God lays for keeps.

Jimmy’s internal struggle is symbolically depicted by an EPIC call-and-response style song sequence, where his evil friends stand to Jimmy’s left, where they dance around in their spandex and try to entice him to get in their jeep, and his family stands to his right and sings about how all they have to offer him is their love. Oh, behind him, Pam and Emily hang out in heaven and sing , too, trying to prompt him to make the right choice.

And Jimmy chooses family in the end, coming home to see his sister’s funeral.

Meanwhile, Julie decides she doesn’t love Peter, but really does love Wally instead, so she goes to the airport to meet him. Wally is overjoyed to have his girl back, but, uh oh, look slike he brought Tod home with him. And as soon as Julie sees Tod, they are SMITTEN. Wally shrieks to the high heavens as he sees the two spell-bound lover embrace. Harold drags him offstage, trying to comfort him. Haha, PWNED. Man, Wally just cannot win. Dumped TWICE in one movie! And he only made one conversion in two years - and that conversion ended up stealing his woman! Wow, that’s some bad bad karma right there.

THE END

Finally, uh, this movie doesn’t really have anything to do with Saturdays at all.

Man, do I love this blog thing!  Now that I can effectively communicate, I can be a better sycophant to the hoi polloi.  Yes, this strip has been mired in the middle of this standard issue Oh-look-the-protagonist-has-become-trapped-in-the-bowels-of-hell storyline for some time. And when that sort of thing happens, there’s nothing to be done except to extend it! In a bid to buy some time to avoid having to actually figure out where the plot is headed, I’m going to have a few upcoming strips of said Ilemauzer galavanting around the nether regions.

And that sort of thing is always a good excuse for some cameos. So if you have any characters that you’d like to see consigned to the depths of hell, then, hey, I’m your man. Drop me a line here and let me know if I can use any of your crew. Tell me the name of your character, and give me a link to your comic or character refs or whatev. And please have some sense of humor about this, because anything I draw is probably going to be pretty duuuuuumb.

Er, human or human-like characters only please, though. Or it just wouldn’t make sense in the context of the comic and we all know that when you stop making sense in a comic it’s all DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER MASS HYSTERIA.

Or you can just ignore this perfect opportunity to get free crap that you can claim as fanart, you nutsy attention whores, you.  And that would break my mighty heart.  Oh, I kid because I love!

Two more days until my birthday. I’m getting too old for this shit.  Now I’m going to chase those damn kids off my lawn!

Look, I have joined, “By Night”  (http://www.bynightcomics.com/home/), a consortium of monster and undead themed webcomics.  I think Witchprickers counts, what with the prevalence of demons and stuff, right?  There are some quality strips there, not the least of Which is “Daisy is Dead” - which is already one of my faves.  So I feel like I’m in good company.

And while you’re here, why don’t you check out my other strips, available by clicking that icon up in the upper right corner labeled “Fantasmaquarium?” I’ve got plenty there, including a strip about a teenage girl living in a fascist theocracy, a dark and twisted steampunk mystery set in colonial Africa, a tale of cannibalism at sea, and Church Cat: The Cat who goes to Church.  All there, all quair!  I just made that  word up now.

Hey, look at me! I’ve got a blog! How exciting is that? Finally, I’ll be able to communicate exciting news concerning the comic above - which is called Witchprickers if you haven’t noticed - as well as other fascinating facets of stuff.  I am part of the web 2.0 revolution now DUR HUR HUR.