I've come to share a little something. Something that, in spite of its every effort to make me hate it, I like anyway. A little excerpt from an old webcomic of bad webcomic legend. It's called Jack. You might have heard of it. Every bad thing that has been said about that comic is, for the most part, right. But if you're willing to look past the UNBEARABLE amounts of edge and the crap art, I've found it has plenty of redeeming qualities. One of which I am going to share with you now.
Tonight, I present to you my favorite arc from Jack's archives: The Case of the Traveling Corpse, a murder mystery with more than a few twists and turns. I will provide additional context when necessary so you don't have to dig through this dumpster fire to find it yourself. But if your morbid curiosity gets the best of you, you can find the rest of the archives here
All videos confiscated as evidence must be watched, in full, by an agent of whichever agency confiscated them. If you want a moment of levity in the middle of this story, that included everything that was hosted on Megaupload when it was shut down. So if this story gets too edgy for you, just imagine some poor schmuck FBI agent having to watch Boku no Piko several dozen times to get past all the joke uploads.
Should go without saying, but his name isn't Harvey. This is the titular Jack, who is the most common connecting thread between the different arcs, most of which have their own characters. He has... a backstory. It's... interesting?
Jack is the embodiment of the sin of Wrath. Each of the sins has an embodiment (although Gluttony, due to their origin story, has two), and Wrath serves double-duty as the Grim Reaper.
Jack is also Furry Hitler. Don't ask, it's even dumber than whatever you think it is. He is incredibly remorseful, which is why he's generally more a positive force than a negative one.
In this world, people have a destined time to die. But when something supernatural interferes, such as Jack leading Richek out of the desert, their time stops. This means two things: they stop aging and they can see spirits. It's been implied that there's a reason for these people to be given this extra time, but that Chekov's Gun has yet to go off.
I have to say though, its kinda a stroke of brilliance to have The Devil be the one who's REALLY behind every problem that every character in the story must face. Still, it says something about the man's psyche that he self-inserts in such a way.
Oh right, this part. This part... well... OK, at this point in the story, one of the main antagonists, Drip the Rat, Embodiment of Lust, is being contained in Jack's body. Looks like he ain't contained well enough though.
Oh and did I mention that Drip is the second author self-insert? His origin story heavily involves The Devil. That's a fucked up tale for another time though.
Oh right, and Jack has been avoiding doing this exact thing that he's doing right now because, as a spirit, Drip will just respawn and be free to do whatever he wants in Hell. Again, another story for another time.
I like this. I like the wordiness and I like Richek. It’s no more “edgy” and talky than a basic hard boiled mystery. The gore isn’t that bad and the rape is portrayed as being horrible. If it were a prose novel, it wouldn’t be genius, but it’d still be serviceable pulp.
Firstly, a page featuring self-insert number 3, who is a semi-normal person and doesn't show up very often. I consider this one of the most important pages of Jack, because it is extremely, bluntly self-aware in a way that Hopkins' work occasionally is.
