If you grew up in the Bible Belt during the 70s, 80s and even well into the 90s, there is a very good chance that you have more than a passing familiarity with the hateful, frightening and just plain bizarre “Christian” comics produced by one Jack T. Chick.

Chick’s twisted message, infused with his peculiar style of fervent, the-end-is-near Fundamentalist Christian insanity, by virtue of appearing in what most parents considered to be innocuous “religious” comic books, enjoyed a long period of widespread cultural popularity. Chick tracts were distributed in Sunday schools, summer camps, motel lobbies and bus stations all across America. There have been over 750 million of them sold!

There can only be one reason such deranged literature was allowed in so many places: Adults never read them. If they had, they’d have been utterly horrified. (My own mother gave me dozens of these comics when I was a kid. I’m sure in her mind they were better for me than the Marvel of DC comics I was reading. LIttle did she know that she was actually providing me with!)

Chick’s scary, angry Fundie diatribes have given many a kid terrible nightmares. His favorite topics tend towards subject matter like “You’re going to Hell,” Halloween is evil, eternal damnation, abortion, the Vatican is evil and created Islam, demons walk amongst us, child molesters, the Antichrist will rise soon, New Age beliefs, Judaism, Mormonism and Islam are Satanic, witches are everywhere, homosexuality is an abomination (Chick’s solution? Fire-n-brimstone, baby!), Darwin’s theories are Satanic, Harry Potter is Satanic, feminists are Satanic, the Satanic plot behind rock music (The Beatles were Druids!), “You’re going to Hell,” the Commies are everywhere (Catholics are to blame for this, of course) and just about any other crazy, fucked up conspiracy theory you can think of. He’s kind of the Glenn Beck (or maybe better still Alex Jones) of paranoiac Christian comic books. Did I mention that a lot of his comics were about how YOU (that’s right you, the person reading this) are going to Hell? Chick’s God is a VENGEFUL God. The Old Testament Jehovah has got nothin’ on Chick’s version.
 

 
Not much beyond the basics are known about Chick, who is now 86-years-old. He’s an extremely private man and few photographs have been taken of him. So it’s not like anyone knows about the reclusive Jack T. Chick himself, but show almost anyone in America one of his Chick tracts and they’ll respond with an immediate recognition of the distinctively shaped and wildly deranged mini-comics. For Jack T. Chick, it’s all about saving YOUR soul from eternal damnation, not about being popular.

It wasn’t until 1998 that the first serious examination of the world’s best-read theologian (think about it) appeared and that was in the pages of The Imp a self-published journal of comics criticism from Daniel Raeburn, fashioned via the shape, design and a Daniel Clowes illustration to resemble a Chick tract. I’ve had a copy of this issue of The Imp since it came out, sitting in pride of place on my bookshelf, but it’s now long out of print. Happily Raeburn has put all four issues of his much admired publication online, also including his erudite takes on Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Mexican historietas.

Says Raeburn:

“People who dismiss hate literature offhand are going to miss the point of this tribute to Chick, which is that hate literature reveals not only its own corruption but the sick society that hatched it. Examine the historical and theological forebears of little Chick and you’ll find an awful, and I do mean awful, lot of mainstream beliefs. Like the Protestant zealots who colonized and raped this country, Chick tracts and the violence in them are as American as apple pie.”

 
Above, an episode of Boing Boing TV featuring Syd Garon and Rodney Ascher’s animated take on the Chick “classic” You Goofed.. This is Jack T. Chick in a nutshell. (Reportedly he’s seen this and liked it!)
 
This might be a recent photograph of Jack T. Chick

Huge online compendium of Chick racts

Thank you Taylor Jessen of Burbank, California!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Van_Impe

“Like the Protestant zealots who colonized and raped this country,...”

WTF?

Thank you. Clowes also designed a track that is almost a perfect likeness to the chick tracks, albeit with much more shapely women and tongue firmly planted in cheek. beautiful.

We made a second Jack Chick movie where we took the picture from James Cameron’s Titanic, cut it down to 9 minutes, removed Leonard DiCaprio, then dubbed in the dialogue from Jack Chick’s Titanic tract. Youtube pulled it a while ago and its such a copyright minefield we’ll probably leave it pulled.

There is also a feature length doc on Jack Chick that came out last year called “Gods Cartoonist” and a collection of Jack Chick shorts called “Hot Chicks” if you are looking for more Chick.

captcha is truth47

I spent a summer working in a town in the interior of my province that happened to be square in the middle of what passed for our Bible Belt. There was a pizza place downtown whose food was so loathsome they offered three-for-one pizzas! But I went there all the time, not for the food but because they had a big carousel full of Chick tracts, many of which I had never seen before. I must have had fifty different ones. Unfortunately I threw them away in a moove soon after, and it’s not worth the effort to rebuild the collection….

bruce, what part of that do you find objectionable?

i have this comic.
and it created a desire in me to have The Complete Jack Chick.
so i bought ALL of the tracts, the Crusaders comix and The Next Step.
i recommend against reading it all at once.

As a kid, these comics scared the Hell out of me. Literally. Eventually, I outgrew the fear of a Devil bogeyman and his fiery domain. Luckily, I outgrew the xenophobia, racism, and Hobbseian ideal too. Actually, “outgrew” doesn’t do it justice. It took me many years to undo the destructive influence of my parents and their “protective” nature. Have I got a tale or two to tell…

That’s very odd.  I pulled some J.T.C.s out last night because I couldn’t sleep (why that choice of reading material, I have no idea.)

“ONE WAY!”  (A really cool issue w/ filth covered sinners roaming in a huge mob)
“THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!”
“HERE HE COMES!”

If you live in NYC, there’s a guy who has a huge selection
(for free!) down in the 42nd Street/Times Square stop.  I saw
him there as recently as 2009.  He’s got 2 table stands worth of
‘em.

Chick tracts exerted an enormous influence on my religious life. After reading them as a kid, and seeing them as an adult, I walked away from Christianity and am now a Pagan. I would personally like to thank Jack Chick for making God so repellent and hateful that the tracts caused me to question all the answers.

This is fantastic!  We have been collecting these tracts for years and used to have them in a bowl on the kitchen table in our apartment as reading material for friends who would stop by.  I wonder how many people were actually introduced to “subversive” materials through these little tracts, in the same manner that the Fundamentalist “Hells Bells” video series actually introduced me to PTV during my teens.

If you think any of this is false, go be a muslim. Babies, This is all fact. Believe in Jesus Christ and be saved. Sorry if you got scared when you were a kid. Burning for eternity is alot worse. Protestants built this country’ if you don’t like it, move to Iraq. If you think this is false doctrine, read your bible. Prove to yourself what is fact,ask God to reveal it to you, he will.

Excerpts from the Koran: Be not fainthearted then; and invite not the infidels to peace when ye have the upper hand: for God is with you, and will not defraud you of the recompense of your works…...you will find the most violent of people in enmity for those who believe (to be) the Jews ...make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
You will find the chapter and verse references at http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Themes/jihad_passages.html

Are false religions evil? Where are the true ‘dangerous minds?’ Read on:

According to the Hindu Religion, Manu, has laid down that the life of a Brahmin (educative class caste) is many times more precious than the life of a kshatriya (warrior class caste), a vaisya (farmer class caste) or a sudra (lower caste) and the reason for the same is, that a really true Brahmin has really nothing personal and everything he has and every action he does are for the benefits for humanity at large. So it goes without saying that he should be preserved even at the cost of the sacrifice of many a selfish people, self-centred and living on the labours of others like so many parasites on other trees and plants (see http://www.mikeadkins.com/article/sacred-animals-in-hindu-religion/)

Because of the Hindu belief that monkeys are sacred, the animals are allowed to proliferate and overrun cities in India, wreaking havoc and attacking many people, especially children. For video footage see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBrZ4szWvow&NR=1

Since 1954 the USA has shipped millions of tonnes of food aid to India - to the Indian government (not private businesses or agencies). Rats have consumed more than half of this food at the docks and storage facilities! Because of Hinduism’s belief in reincarnation, rats and sacred cows may not be killed! It would take a train 3000 miles long to haul the grain eaten by Indian rats in a single year! Also, the sacred cows in India eat enough food to feed most of Asia! And the Hindu temples contain a vast fortune of gold, rubies, sapphires and other precious stones in their statues - which are worshipped as idols.

It is actually Hinduism’s re-incarnation beliefs, its’ sacred cows, protected rats, idols made of gold and jewels, wasted resources and superstition that are causing the poverty and starvation in India.

exerpt from http://www.christianaction.org.za/newsletter_uca/uca-artic_poverty.htm

Large segments of the population of India have risen out of poverty because of IT jobs made available to them due to the widespread knowledge of English, a by product of English colonialism. Perhaps this has led to secularization of India to some degree because the government is now waging war on the overpopulation of rats despite the belief in strict Hinduism that animals are sacred and should not be killed for any reason.

As the Bible says: Hosea 4:6A
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Strict Hinduism also teaches that it is the highest expression of spirituality to be completely without desire, to be passive and apathetic in the face of suffering. The amount of death and destruction that this belief has caused is beyond calculation. The ‘Protestant work ethic’ is much maligned, but it has produced the greatest wealth and well being in the world. Where would you rather live? The many benefits of living in a society which was originally based on Christian beliefs and morality are often taken for granted today.

Is there any objective evidence for the existence of heaven and hell? There is a book called ‘Beyond Death’s Door’ by Maurice Rawlings MD in which he documents the many unsolicited near death accounts that he has heard from people that he has resuscited in his career as a respected expert in emergency medicine. It is hard to explain away the similarity in these accounts which cut across barriers of culture and belief systems. Almost all documented cases of experiences that took place while a person was clinically dead include at least one of six common elements, none of which is in conflict with the Christian ideas of the afterlife. Yet these details are not written in the Bible or taught in churches, so they cannot be the result of prior suggestion. Most telling is that a considerable percentage of those resuscitated reported with terror and hysteria that they had been in hell and begged the doctor to save their lives at any cost to prevent them returning there. Dr. Rawlings was also amazed to discover that many of those resuscitated returned with knowledge that they could not have gained by any natural means regarding dead relatives they had met in the other world, for instance. Dr. Rawlings was also discouraged to discover that many near death researchers refused to listen to any negative accounts of near death experiences because they violated the researchers’ preconceived notions of the afterlife. To be fair, Dr. Rawlings also noted that most patients who reported hellish near death experiences when revived in the emergency room had no recollection of this just a few days later. Victims of car crashes and other serious injuries also develop amnesia regarding the trauma, often remembering nothing about the event or anything that happened for days afterwards, though they were fully conscious for much of that time. Dr. Rawlings thinks this may be the reason why accounts of hell are absent from most near death accounts.

Something about the phrase “false religions” really amuses me.  It’s almost like saying “Real Santa.”

I agree with you on Hosea 4:6A
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

I’m glad to hear that I wasn’t the only traumatized children by his comics. Well actually there was one time that I heard an interview of an horror director (I don’t recall his name, unfortunately)who also explained that he was inspired by his tracts. Chick would have been a great horror author, easily outselling Stephen King.

This Susan Khaury seems to be an advocate of satan with all this talk of everything but Jesus and the Bible…beware of MANY words that lead to no where.  study for yourself and be approved as a good workman unto the Lord.

Since my comment in 2010,I have left the Christian faith to pursue my hobby of homosexuality.Praise penis!

So it’s 2012.And I’m still single.Even after joining a skinhead organization in the hopes that I would finally find a man,who would share my hatred of non-white culture,I am still alone.GOD DAMN IT LORD,WHY WILL NO ONE BANG ME??