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Underground > Comic Books >

Jack Chick

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

10:06 / 28.09.01

There's been a couple of reference to this guy and his disturbingly funky fundamentalist christian comics in the past coupla days round these parts, and I thought the dude deserved his own thread.
So to start off: here's his website, containing many of his tracts: http://www.chick.com/

And here's disinfo's dossier full of links on the guy: http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id61/pg1/
So, anybody got any strong opinions on the dude? weak ones? Favorite tracts?
Is Jack Chick Grant Morrisson's evil twin from another universe? If they were to meet, would they cancel each other out in a cloud of gamma rays?

10:42 / 28.09.01

religious zealot he may be but I find chick's use of comics form quite fascinating.

14:35 / 28.09.01

@$#%*!!

Jack Chick’s mind is pure poison. Which makes it hard to explain why I get such a kick out of his Chick Tracts. My personal favorites are “Where’s Rabbi Waxman?” (he’s burning in hell, it turns out, ‘cause he died a Jew), and “Doom Town” (Don’t live too close to gay people, or you might get caught in God’s fiery wrath).

Anyway, I collect his tracts, but since I can’t in good conscience send him money for them, I have to find them or get them from others who find them. Anyone have any Chick Tracts laying around that they don’t want? I’m particularly hoping for a copy of “Dark Dungeons”, wherein children are seduced into satanism and suicide by D&D.

To anyone else who has a like-a-bunny-to-snake fascination for Chick, I recommend The Imp, Issue #1 (or maybe #2, I forget), a brilliant analysis of Chick’s bizzare oeuvre, featuring interviews with various collaborators and a complete Chick glossary and cross-reference.

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

17:22 / 28.09.01

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
...I find chick's use of comics form quite fascinating.

sounds interesting, care to expand on that?

Chuckling Duck: Yeah, I love Dark Dungeons. Other personal favourites include "The last Generation" - 1984-esque depiction of the NWO and the end days, "Angels"- the christian rock band who sign to a guy called Lew Siffer, and "Big Daddy" the anti-evolution tract that has, apparrently evolved through five different versions...

09:52 / 29.09.01

well, i suppose its comics as propaganda tool - on the one side you have stuff like the 'cause comics' that kind of sprung out of the underground movement in 70's (gey comics etc) and Sue Coe's 'how to commit suicide in south africa and on the other you have jack chick. all of them have decided that the clearest simplist , most effective means of disseminating their message is in the sequential art we call comics.

i also think chick's tracts have a lot in common with willeisner's careers pamphlets he did for 'job scene' (see Eisner's Comics & Sequential art for examples)

14:54 / 01.10.01

Apparently Chick got the idea for Christian comix in the Army, where they had similar instruction booklets for weapons & procedures, so even the semi-literate soldier could follow 'em.

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

23:30 / 01.10.01

Yeah, I recently read the US army's comic explaining its 'gays in the military' policy, it's pretty cool, in a JC kinda way. It's online somewhere, but I forget where.
Another addition to 'My favourite Chick tracts': "Lisa", in which it's revealed that it's perfectly okay to sexually abuse your kids as long as you become a christian afterwards, your whole family can live happily ever after...
Do you think we could somehow introduce Jack Chick to Chaos Magick and Discordianism? Oh, the possibilities of such a tract...

07:16 / 02.10.01

hey if you want to see chick tackle chaos magic send him some printouts web links and a 'concerned mothers of america' style letter saying that you think kids out to be told of the dangers of this stuff and he's more than likely to do one...

18:14 / 02.10.01

Did anyon notice the breakdowns on Other Gods...
quote:
This is obviously "God-to-the-lowest-common-denominator." The Masonic authority, Albert Mackey put it this way:
"Be assured, that God is equally present with the pious Hindu in the temple, the Jew in the synagogue, the Mohammedan in the mosque, and the Christian in the church."

One could just as logically add to Mackey's thought by saying that this "god" is equally present to the satanist in his coven as he cuts the heart out of a child.

Would just LOOOOOOOve to see the comic version of THAT!!!

null

[ 02-10-2001: Message edited by: PATricky ]

19:28 / 02.10.01

Yeah Mr Jack Chick, what an ultramaroon. I've got a small bundle of his comics I picked up while wandering around town one day. Someone had left them in all the phoneboxs so I thought I know some people who'd like that :-).

The best one of that bunch was 'why is mary crying', the basic answer is she is an evil pagan mother goddess. That and the classic 'Why Catholics aren't Christians' where the argument is that they worship Baal not Christ.

I know the classic 'Dark Dungeons' has been MST3K'd a few times around on the net. And why hasn't someone done a discordian version of that kind of comic? I'd volunteer to stick it in phoneboxes :-)

Mordant Carnival

20:24 / 02.10.01

Oh, these things are a laugh riot . "Dark Dungeons" is hysterical and so's "the Angels", but my all time number-one most favourite tract has to be the version of "One Way".... for Native Americans.

(Understand that I live in Britain, and therefore don't find these things lying around in bus shelters. Oh, no- I have the web page bookmarked and regularly log on for a chuckle. That's how warped I am.)

15:58 / 03.10.01

I seem to remember that the Church of the Subgenius puts out a Chick-looking book condemning the evils of Bob and Slack, with an address that concerned Christians can write to for more information. (The address is Subgenius Headquarters, I believe.)

Ganesh

13:29 / 04.10.01

Y'know, it wouldn't surprise me if the stuff my auntie's 'promised' to send me turns out to be Jack Chick...

13:50 / 04.10.01

quote:Originally posted by sleazenation:
religious zealot he may be but I find chick's use of comics form quite fascinating.

I feel the same way. Chick tracts, along with Bazooka Joe comics, are possibly the most widespread comics literature in North America, but they are consistently ignored by the comics community. I was going to do a zine article on Bazooka Joe, but (surprise surprise) no one has found them relevant enough to merit any sort of attention. What little I found just wasn't enough.

My roommates and I were going to do a Tract Comic. Maybe I should pursue that.

00:20 / 05.10.01

Anyway, I collect his tracts, but since I can’t in good conscience send him money for them, I have to find them or get them from others who find them. Anyone have any Chick Tracts laying around that they don’t want?

Man, you live in Chi-town and you don't know about Quimby's? Don't worry, they'll get you hooked up.

13:58 / 05.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Margin Walker:
Man, you live in Chi-town and you don't know about Quimby's? Don't worry, they'll get you hooked up.

Quimby’s rocks. I go to its sister store, Chicago Comics. But my point is, I don’t want to line Chick’s pockets, so I can’t buy the comics from Quimby’s, since they buy them from Chick.

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

17:14 / 05.10.01

All you need to do to get tracts is befriend a fundamentalist. Just wander round the streets of your home city til you see the dude with the long beard and the malfocussed eyes and the big sign saying "REPENT!: FOR THOU ART A SINNER IN THE EYES OF THE LORD, SODOMITE!". There must be at least ONE in Chicago, shurely??? Plus you can get into all sortsa fun conversations about whether or not the Bhudda is more compassionate than jesus, the logical contradictions of omnipotence, gnosticism, and all sorts of other fun subjects.

gentleman loser

17:41 / 05.10.01

I have to admit that I've always found Jack Chick's stuff amusing in it's earnest zealotry.

The one question that I have is who makes up the secret underground that distributes his material?

When I was a child, they were easy to find, almost always in bathroom toilet stalls, rest areas, restaurant bathrooms, etc.

Why toilet stalls? There's something a tad weird about that if you ask me. The last one I came across was in 1995 in a hospital bathroom, of all places. I think some of the people distributing this material must be "sleeper" agents, to use the paranoid parlance of our day.

17:51 / 05.10.01

quote:Originally posted by Johnny Haiku Headed Racoon-Dog:
Just wander round the streets of your home city til you see the dude with the long beard and the malfocussed eyes and the big sign saying "REPENT!: FOR THOU ART A SINNER IN THE EYES OF THE LORD, SODOMITE!". There must be at least ONE in Chicago, shurely???

Yep, that’s more or less how I get them. Except that my main source is an immaculately dressed black man with a flower in his lapel and a speaker mike, and generally seems like a nice guy. Unfortunately, his selection is quite limited. MAIL ME YOUR CHICK TRACTS!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:05 / 03.12.05

If you're in London Gosh! comics are selling bags of the tracts. Why not get some for that special person in your life, to explain how they are going to Hell.

19:40 / 03.12.05

My favorite Jack Chick comic is one that I found blowing about on the ground during a good ol' American county fair years ago. I love it for its logic.

There are two truck drivers, both fat and slovenly, sitting at a truck stop and eating their hash and grits or whatever. Anyway, they're having a conversation about what a "sissy" Jesus was. "Turn the other cheek?" Hell, that's just fancy-talk for bein' too 'fraidy to fight, or so say these wayward sons.

But then a tall, toned, handsome trucker comes up to the pair of them and sticks up for Jesus. Now, he doesn't argue for the virtues of peace, or explain the concept of sacrifice or any of that. No, this trucker says the reason Jesus didn't fight back is because, as the son of the almighty God, Jesus was be so powerful that IT WOULDN'T BE A FAIR FIGHT, and Jesus was way too classy to pick a fight in which his opponent would have no chance.

The two truckers are immediately swayed by this argument. If I'm recalling correctly, one says something to the effect of "Shoot! That'd be like fighting the Six Million Dollar Man with one arm behind your back!" And then they, I don't know, get Jesus fishes and stick them on the backs of their trucks. I also seem to remember the handsome trucker inviting the other two to dinner at his place, but that may just be my brain taking the comic in some other place entirely.

So Jesus weren't no sissy pacifist, kids, he was just man enough not to pick unfair fights.

20:10 / 03.12.05

Also, is it just me, or does the art on "Dark Dungeons" remind anyone else of Phil Jimenez?

20:17 / 03.12.05

No, I can see it.

That righteous book-burn for Jesus at the end has always been one of my favorite Chick-lets.

The one about Rock N' Roll, where the industry's head A & R mogul is named Lew Siffer is another solid one.

A

04:14 / 04.12.05

Yeah, that artwork is extremely Jimenez-ish. Gasp. Could he be working for the other side?

04:36 / 04.12.05

from "Sin City"

Reverend Ray (gay priest): "But what about all the different religions of the world?"
Hero Priest: "I'm sorry, but there is only one way to heaven, and it's Jesus!"

Thanks, Chick, for making all of that other "junk" so simple. Who needs enlightenment? I got Chick and Jesus on my side.

*vomits onto keyboard*

05:02 / 04.12.05

That is some highly Jimenezian artwork there, ignoring the blah composition and lack of trademark acting-details. The linework, basically.
And if it is, I wholeheartedly approve. If I were Phil Jimenez, I'd be doing Chick Tracts all the time. For obvious reasons.
Just think of the world where Phil Jimenez and Phil Hine do 'Phil Tracts' as straight-faced as possible.