Who yo’ callin’ a sissy li’l feller?
Chick’s own blurb for this one claims it’s: "Great for truckers and bikers!" Er … yeah … right….

SYNOPSIS: Duke is a trucker as tough as they come. Big, hairy and balding, he wears a cowboy hat and drives a big, no-nonsense rig. His sidekick Billy Joe is a weedy little runt who wears a cap and hangs onto Duke’s every word. Pulling into a truck stop Duke spots another rig with "Jesus Saves" stickers on it and immediately launches into a tirade about how Jesus was a "sissy" and so on. Unfortunately, the truck’s man-mountain owner hears him and invites them to join him for supper, whereupon, with the usual few simple words and untenable analogies, he (yawn), converts Duke and Billy Joe (and the eavesdropping waitress to boot) to Christianity. Just like that!

As usual, Man-mountain is at great pains to point that even if Duke gives up "boozing, swearing and cheating on [his] old woman" he’ll still go to hell unless he repents, once again making me wonder what’s the point of leading a moral existence.

ARTWORK: Excellent, compared to a lot of Chick comics. Admittedly it’s one of those stories that could probably be told almost as well without the illustrations, but you don’t get the feeling that the illustrations were a waste of money (unlike "The Crisis" for example). Again, the lettering is obviously hand-done, which looks so much better than computer typesetting.

MEMORABLE POINTS:

Man-mountain (we never learn his name) is obviously on Steroids and seems to like wearing shirts three sizes too small for him. I can well understand Duke and Billy Joe’s apprehension – he looks a dead-set bum bandit to me! (Perhaps his salvation was entirely accidental - the Devil may have misunderstood when he said: "Get Thee behind me, Satan!")

The artist went a tad overboard trying to make Duke look hairy and tough – he looks more like he’s been tarred and feathered.

When Duke mentions the bit about stopping "boozing, swearing and cheating on my old lady", the eavesdropping waitress thinks: "Gulp…that’s what I’m doing!". What? Boozing, swearing and cheating on her old lady? This comic has depth!

FRENCH VERSION: Once again, a Chick Comic gains something in the translation. There’s something ludicrious about rough-as-guts Duke (delightfully if inexplicably renamed "Frankie") thundering all those fancy French words!

Download The Sissy from Chick Publications