SYNOPSIS: The Green Angels are a Christian (or so they imagine) rock band, somewhat down on their luck. After a particularly unsuccessful gig they meet with a certain Mr Siffer - "Lewis Siffer, but you can call me Lew" - who offers them $500 apiece to play for him up in his luxurious apartment. He then offers them a big contract, the only catch being that they have to sign it in blood!

Anyway, Lew then reveals how his "organization" controls the rock music industry, which is really just a ploy for stealing the souls of the unwary through the medium of Heavy Metal music.

True to his word the boys go on to fame and fortune, (how could they miss, with killer lyrics like: "We’re gonna rock, rock, rock with the rock"), but all this is not without a price. Two of them turn out to be gay and want to get married, but Lew objects to this as it would spoil their image, so he gives one of them a wedding present - AIDS!

Eventually Bobby dies from AIDS, his partner Jim dies of a drug overdose (on stage if you please - they’ll never top that performance), Don is getting into Vampirism (whatever that may be) and poor Tom is left feeling alone and friendless.

Fortunately, a week earlier one of their fans (a sweet blonde lassie of course) managed to slip a Chick Comic into Tom’s coat pocket and he finds it in the nick of time. Lew Siffer catches him reading it but it’s too late. Tom rebukes Lew Siffer, tells him to "get thee hence" (whatever that means) whereupon his disguise instantly vanishes to reveal that Lew Siffer is none other than - gasp - The Devil!!

I bet you weren’t expecting that plot twist, were you, kiddies...?

Tom immediately abandons his sinning ways and becomes a preacher, dedicating his life to spreading the word about the evils of "The Devil’s Music".

ARTWORK: Just OK. Like a lot of other tracts, it’s not as good as some, but a damned sight better than some others! Again, computer typeset lettering doesn’t really cut the mustard.

MEMORABLE POINTS: Not that many really. At least whoever drew this has some idea of what a typical rock band looks and acts like - there were no "factual howlers" as is so often the case with Chick’s tracts.

Bobby, Tom, Jim and Don – that definitely sounds like a Christian band!

In this tract at least Lew Siffer has at last abandoned his trademark turtleneck and sports jacket in favour of a well-cut suit and a white necktie. He actually looks pretty sharp - a personal grooming consultant must have recently died in his/her sins...

WEAK POINTS: You’d think anybody with half a brain and who professed to be a Christian would be wary of signing anything in blood, particularly for a character with a name like Lew Siffer, but there you go!

The last speech balloon in the very last panel is a real groan-inducer: "Thank God Tom read that little tract I gave him." I strongly suspect it’s an "editorial afterthought" since we don’t actually see a picture of the sweet blonde lassie saying it!

Update Nov 23 2007: Well that's odd. Now, we do! In the earlier versions of this tract, the blonde lassie's voice balloon was somewhat crudely drawn as coming from the right hand side of the panel, with her out of sight. Now, she's actually seen on the panel!

Download Angels? from Chick Publications