Until yesterday I thought that the interjection gadzooks! was some sort of onomatopoeia or nonsense word, something from the world of comic books. When some strange impulse prompted me to look it up last night (on the eve of the vernal equinox!), I discovered that it’s derived from the phrase god’s hooks. The hooks refer to the nails used to attach Jesus to the cross. (Talk about abusive fathers!)
So, gadzooks is fundamentally a theological phrase — as are the expressions blimey (a minced oath derived from God blind me) and Zounds! (a truncated form of God’s wounds!). Given the origin, it’s kind of ironical that these exclamations turn up mainly these days in comic books. Or perhaps it points to a related banality; the comic book hero is a type of messiah, and the Bible is essentially a comic book.