Dark Dungeons
We've all encountered a Chick Tract at sometime or other. My first encounter was in a truck stop bathroom stall, the tract conscientiously left behind as an act of Christian good will by the fucker who used up an entire roll of toilet paper in a futile attempt to clean up after himself. I had wondered why he rushed passed me with a pale face. I said “Hello” but he ignored me, leaving me unprepared for the disaster I was soon to walk into. This proselytizer was no doubt shy on account of the massive bowel movement he had undergone, and identifying me immediately for the gossiping type, did not want to be associated with it. Whatever an ordeal it must have been I can only surmise; its not everyday one runs into expressions of both figural and literal shit. I didn't read that particular tract, and as far as I know its still there.
The incident was not without fruit, as it inspired me to actually read a Chick Tract in its entirety and share my reception of it. It was no easy task. Even as good a writer as I am, dealing with a ludicrousness of this magnitude has been rather more challenging than I expected. For this reason I added the link above, so anyone who wants can read the corresponding tract and decide for themselves whether my review is justified.
I have to make a few comments about the title of this tract first. “Dark Dungeons” is suggestive enough, and believe me sado/masochistic undertones are a staple of this tract to such an extent I don't think its unconscious. Chick tracts display such a wide plethora of paranoia the only analogy of so many neuroses congregated in one place I can think of is Albert Fish. Also- aren't dungeons typically “dark” anyway? I've never heard of a dungeon being described as a sunny and chirpy place to be. Its kinda like the retarded redundancy of “Dark Shadows”. And seeing as there's a man in a white hood with red eyes on the cover, I'm a bit confused here as to what “Dark”refers to. Perhaps Mr. Jack Chick, the artiste behind these comics, went through a stint of civil rights activism parallel to that of Pastor Phelps, and the “dungeons” he's referring to are merely a metaphor for the oppression of African Americans by S&M fixated KKK members confused about their sexuality?
Alas. It's D&D nerds.
Exactly what D&D did to bring down the wrath of Mr. Chick himself in unclear, but whatever sin it committed must have been pretty serious indeed for Chick to devote an entire tract to D&D alone in the early 80's. Since the decline of D&D brought no“Magic the Gathering” follow up, I assume Mr. Chick rests assured he's defeated D&D and is totally ignorant that the game has simply altered media. He only needs to buy an XBOX to throw himself into another righteous tantrum.
Despite being in the throes moral indignation, D&D wasn't such a firebrand topic as to focus Mr. Chick's attention on niceties such as plot and character development, and you'll find this tract as enjoyable as any of his other masterpieces. That being said, lets get to the comic itself, and give in at least half-heartedly to its feeble attempts via parable to persuade us that D&D is (was?) not a harmless waste of time, but in fact a precursor to Mr. Chick's peculiar Satanic(?) umbrella of Witchcraft.
The tract begins with some rather conformist looking nerds gathered round the kitchen table, having forsaken the conformist activities of their peers (rock and roll and premarital sex, as you'll find in other tracts) and instead indulging in some good ole Role Playing. No- not that kind. I said there's no premarital sex in this particular tract, and for all his subtext of all things kinky, Mr. Chick seems blissfully unaware of any reality in which adults might pretend to be wizards and knights for the simple sin of getting it on. Oh no, these kids are pretending on a level of fantasy that far exceeds sexual frivolity, as you'll soon see.
It doesn't take much to notice who the Dungeon Maser is right off. Although Satan is the real antagonist, he works his wickedness in this tract through a minion as sexy as Mr. Chick dares draw her, which ain't no Jessica Rabbit but you can't blame him for trying. Her jet black hair and tendency to speak with constant exclamation should alert you to her Demonic Intentions, but Mr. Chick's not one for dramatic subtlety so he indicates her underlying evil right away by having her kill off one of the kid's characters in the next scene, the unfortunate thief, Black Leaf. Ooooh- assonance, Mr. Chick got classy with this one. This scene bothers me as an ex-D&D player, because that's just a dick move and trust me, Ms Frost won't be a popular DM if she keeps playing petty bullshit like that. This incident will have later implications only a sadistic Satanist/Witch/Obscure Occultist as Ms Frost- yes, that's her Christian name-could have foreseen.
Marcie, a.k.a. Black Leaf, is not happy with this development. Yet, maybe she's a little too unhappy. She makes a pathetic plea to the DM, to which another player responds with an assurance that she is in fact dead and can't play anymore. What a spaz. If she reacted this way after every pitfall in the game, maybe it wasn't such a dick move after all. Perhaps they only invited her over because she was the only kid in town with a copy of the Labyrinth soundtrack, and had previously decided to get rid of her ASAP- these are treacherous Satanists, after all.
After the game, Ms Frost has a private meeting with the Wizard, a.k.a. Debbie. She informs her that her cleric has now leveled up enough to “REALLY” cast spells, a clear enough indication for any sane person that Ms. Frost is either batshit crazy or a child molester, and in either case Debbie should cut and run. But no, Marcie is apparently either batshit crazy herself or is desperate enough to get in Ms Frost's panties she'll go along with any type of flirting she throws at her, no matter how pathetic and sad. This subtext is encouraged when Ms Frost assures Marcie that she has “the right personality”. It's such a joy to find one perversion Chick railed against in one tract implicating itself in the language of another, as if he's falling victim to his own demons and actually a little curious about seeing Lesbianism play itself out, just to see if its really all that bad. Perhaps he has a private stash of tracts he keeps to himself dealing explicitly with this subject.
But no. One shouldn't doubt the adamantine moral armor of Mr. Jack Chick. He regains control of the girl-child within and pulls off a tour de force- at least by Chick Tract standards. The next scene is nothing less than 13 Anikin Skywalker-esque Witches circling a pentagram drawn so meticulously its a wonder it only took 13 of them to do it. Why 13? I think it has something to do with Chick's superstitious nature, maybe, but I'm not sure on that one. There's a narrative insertion that says Debbie's “intense occult training” has prepared her to enter the coven, that “intense training” being of course whatever happened between Ms Frost and Debbie in the lesbian scene Mr. Chick cut out. Debbie, now called Elfstar, must have performed so well with that training that she's now given the double duties of a priestess AND witch. Damn, I wish I knew the distinction,but then I'd probably give even less of a shit.
The rest of her initiation ceremony is left to the reader's imagination, and since Mr. Chick has demonstrated by now that he's kind of lacking in that area, I'll fill in for him as a special treat. I assume the coven Debbie joined has a “blood in, blood out” policy similar to the one's you find in prison gangs without ostentations Jedi-get up. But seeing as these Witches are, according to Chick, solely composed of D&D nerds indulging their fantasies under guises of elves and Hobbits, it's safe to assume the “blood” that goes in an out is the kind you'd find at the same Halloween store Mr. Chick visits to stay current on the fashions and paraphernalia of the Occult gone commercial. I'll look for a Hot Topic tract, hell, I might even pass that one around.
Instead of all the richness such a scene could have been, we're given instead Ms Frost and Debbie discussing Debbie's newfound “power”. Ms Frost was on to Debbie's potential from the beginning, and the language here gets so implicated not even Pat Robertson could take this scene seriously. But just when we get relaxed and comfy, thinking its only Lesbianism Mr. Chick is really afraid of, the next scene goes into some truly dark territory, and I'm talking Oedipal.
Ms. Frost asks Debbie what spell she cast- and this is actually hard to satirize, because Debbie used a “mind bondage spell” on her father. Whoa Mr. Chick- handle one mortal sin at a time, please. Debbie says the reason she used this spell was that he wanted to stop her from playing D&D, and understandably, considering she probably now insists on being referred to as Priestess Elfstar and refuses to eat with utensils. The look on Debbie's face here is indescribable, but I liken it to Samantha on Bewitched with a bad case of constipation.
Well, whatever “mind bondage” Marcie put on him it must have been one hell of a mindfuck, because he bought her 200.00($) worth of D&D figurines and manuals. I'm beginning to think D&D here doesn't mean “Dark and Dungeons”- that's what the DM board said anyway- but something far more sinister. Damn, when was all this going on? I grew up in the 80s, and I don't remember any kids I knew using “mind bondage” spells to get their parents to buy them a Nintendo. It seems as if, in Mr. Chick's World, Witchcraft actually works- imagine that. How unfortunate that the power of an entire seaboard of witches was unable to overcome the more sophisticated wizardry of Pokemon, which has apparently slipped past the Chick radar on account of it's being Japanese and thus unimportant.
In the next scene Marcie calls, but Debbie is too busy to talk- she's fighting a zombie. When the zombie is vanquished, she goes to visit Marcie and has a chat with Marcie's mom. Marcie has apparently launched a massive pouting campaign and refuses to leave her room, thus indicating how she handles sexual rivalry and being thwarted by an upstart. Mrs. Anderson wants Debbie to speak with Marcie, completely oblivious for the surprise Chick has in store in the next scene.
Now, this next scene is a bit much, and I advise all readers under 25 to skip it. Although anyone over 4 could have guessed what became of Marcie the Spaz and her alter-ego Black Leaf. She didn't get a life, as per normal everyday reality, or write a poem entitled “Black Leaf, How I Miss Thee”, detailing the heartbreak she felt as her spaz nature might have led you to believe. No, Marcie had no other option but suicide. That's a wonderful worldview Mr. Chick. As if there aren't real life teenagers killing themselves over actual problems, some of which created by the bigotry your tracts encourage, you have to give us a whinny little spaz that offs herself over nothing more than the death of a D&D character. What's really disturbing here is Debbie's reaction. “No, Marcie! You didn't HAVE to do that!” What the fuck. “Oh Marcie no, you didn't HAVE to fucking kill yourself! All you had to do was move to another state in disgrace and give us all your D&D figurines, that's all we asked! Suicide is such an overreaction.” I wonder how long Marcie had been hanging in her room too, and whether or not she considered resurrecting Black Leaf and playing by herself, or, damn, finding some new friends that aren't psychotic repressed witches.
Marcie has left us a note, of course, Chick wouldn't let us down there. She couldn't live without Black Leaf, and was sorry for having gotten him or her killed. Obviously Marcie belonged in a mental institution, along with Ms Frost and this whole Debbie does Daddie (D&D?) scenario, or maybe they all belong in jail with this Mrs. Anderson who lets her teenage daughter lock herself up for days and doesn't even notice the stench coming from her room.
Debbie has enough of a conscience to feel bad, and thinks if she left the game she could have saved Marcie. No Debbie, nothing but a good dose of Thorazine could have saved Marcie. And Ms Frost understands this, but man is she a bitch about it. She tells Debbie her “spiritual growth” is more important than some “lousy loser's life”. This oddly seems to be the same message Mr. Chick himself is expounding, as he seems only to care about Debbie's salvation- to hell with Marcie. And you gotta applaud that alliteration.
In the next scene she assures Debbie it would have happened sooner or later, which is probably true, because none of you had actually noticed Marcie was seriously ill and needed extensive therapy, and then killed the one thing that mattered to her deranged priorities. Actually, Marcie is the only interesting character in this comic. The emotional struggle she went through must have been epic, and I'd much rather have seen that then this silly domestic prattle. Shouldn't Marcie's suicide have been more important morally than a girl's going over to Witchcraft? But I guess Mr. Chick was as bored and indifferent with Marcie as his other characters, throwing her off-screen and only bringing her back later when he needed a cathartic moment to shock his readers into paying attention. Debbie begins to doubt things and, finally, starts to think things aren't quite right with Ms Frost.
Ms Frost, however, ain't having none of Debbie's insubordination. She appeals to Elfstar, thus verifying that these characters do go by their D&D names outside gametime, and incidentally showcases their insanity. But this ultimate confrontation is cut short, and we never see Ms Frost again. Damn. And I don't even care enough to fill in what might have happened to her.
And now comes a typical move in a Chick Tract, the entrance of THE MAN. THE MAN in this case is Mike, whose been simultaneously worried about Debbie and fasting. Fasting? Well, apparently not enough to deflate that ass-chin to a degree less blasé. And why the hell didn't Mike worry/fast for Marcie? You know, the girl that hung herself from imaginary grief? We're nearing the end of the tract though, and lets not waste too much time on Mike and his selective moral sense. He invites her to a meeting, of which Debbie should be wary by now, but isn't. The plot must move on and Chick won't have her character develop anywhere beyond “stupid” and then “stupid redeemed”
At the meeting is a preacher who looks suspiciously like Burt Reynolds. He tells Debbie she's been trapped “in a dungeon of bondage.” I thought she put her father in bondage? Marcie certainly ended up in a form of bondage. The definition of bondage here overlaps several unpleasant things and I'd rather not enumerate them.
Anyway, Pastor Reynolds launches on a spiel against all manifestations of the Occult, the grand antagonist this wandering tale has been meandering to for some time. And thank God he pointed that out too, because I was beginning to think the whole “coven” was nothing but a front for something much darker and worthier of worry- like the casting couch of a B 80's porno parody. The Occult is enough for this Pastor though, and he declares they will shortly burn all Debbie's occult paraphernalia- rock music, charms, etc.. you know, all the shit Debbie's father got “mind bondaged” into buying.
He calls for Debbie to come forth, which I think she's done a bit too much of lately, and she confesses that her life's in shambles. I agree Debbie. Your only option now is porn, or Jesus. Guess which one she picks. (If you look closely at her breakdown scene, the guy to her left has a look on his face that, well, seems a bit too interested in her breasts at this emotional time in her life. I doubt the motives of this new group as well Debbie. Better just hang out with Mrs. Anderson, at least she's got such fun stuff to do she can't be bothered to save her daughter from killing herself.)
Pastor Reynolds gives Debbie the most impromptu exorcism I've ever seen (if only The Exorcism of Emily Rose had been this short... and by the way, how the hell did possesion become an issue?) and Debbie renounces that awful D&D manual which led to all her problems. You know, not Ms Frost or her own stupid decision to join a fucking coven composed of Star Wars nerds casting vague incest spells to get their parents to buy them ninja turtle toys. Nope, it was that damn D&D manual, and thank God it's gonna get burned.
Before I get to that burning, I'd like to mention that Pastor Reynolds says something a bit odd in his parting words with Satan. How Chick differentiates Satan from the Occult is a hard question, so just consider the two manifestations of a unified phenomena, Chick's unholy trinity of paranoia, prejudice and ignorance concerning whatever the hell he's talking about. He holds his hand out Binny Hinn style over the D&D toys, and says “We take authority in the name of Jesus... and bind the demonic forces in this filth of Satan.” Forget the fact that he said “bind” and there's been WAY too much binding in this story already, he's basically condemning D&D with the very sin he's pissed at it for committing. Is D&D outright witchcraft, or a ploy used by ambiguous child-molesters to get children to join their covens? Remember Debbie successfully cast a spell on her father, so there must be some power involved in the witchcraft peculiar to the Chick World. So why don't the child-molesters skip with the silly board games and bondage the minds of unsuspecting teenagers right off the bat? Why invent an entire game, mass produce and market it, come up with all kinds of complicated rules and invest hours creating characters which are so important kids are dying over them, when you can just say “abracadabra” and have an instant sex-slave? Ugh.
The games and rock music are set ablaze. (don't know how ROCK MUSIC came into the picture, but when there's gonna be a burning Chick wants to connect as much bullshit with it as he can, because burning a board and some figurines isn't much of a fire). And you know what? I'm happy to see them go too, because that finally ends this headache of a story. I join Debbie in thanking the Lord, because I'll never have to see Debbie again now that her life's back to the straight and narrow.
I don't know if this tract actually kept a kid from playing D&D- it would have made me play it more, shit with all the power they talk about- but I like to think at some point D&D turned Christine O'Donnell on to Witchcraft. How else could such a stand up girl be led astray than by a deceitful role-playing game? She's just too ashamed to admit she was once an elf or maybe- more likely- a cleric/wizard with an overeager mentor who taught her how to cast those “real” spells. Ms Frost had to find someone after Debbie...