Fun and Exciting Times With Jesus' Favorite Artist, Jack Chick

Jack Chick is, without question, my favorite crazy Christian fundamentalist.  Oh sure, Pat Robertson is just getting funnier the older and crazier he gets.  And Ken Hamm’s massively expensive Flintstones Recreational Park (or whatever) is absolutely precious.  But deep down, I’ll always be on Team Chick Tract.  I just can’t help myself.

See that?  That is just inherently funny!

You’ve probably seen a Chick Tract before, even if you didn’t know what it was.  There a sort of miniature comic book, about some varying form of Christianity, and almost exclusively found in public restrooms.  That’s not a joke, I’ve only seen a real one three times, and never have they been anywhere other than a toilet stall.  It’s kind of bizarre, but it works as a metaphor if you squint at it just right.

I don't have a whole lot of commentary to add here, but I found out I had a friend who didn't know about these comics, and decided that needed to be fixed.  You can find basically all of them on Chick's website chickDOTcom, although I warn that the website is a.) poorly laid out (especially when looking for the REALLY good ones) and b.) guaranteed to make you go "what da fug?" with all the ultra-crazy right wing Christo-fascism.  But in Jack Chick's defense?  His work can be oddly endearing (in a racist, homophobic, really dumb sort of way).  So I've done some looking, and I just want to share some of his work with you!

In case you're wondering, Jack Chick is worried that we may all be doomed because we've forgotten the true meaning of American Thanksgiving, an annual holiday that was established in 1863.  Who knows what kept the world safe from destruction before that point?

Here's a cheerful comic called "Camels in the Tent" that uses a racist caricature of a Middle Eastern man and a camel to explain how Muslims worship a false god, wish to take over all of Christendom, and are all terrorists:

And seriously, a 2012 revamp of an earlier strip “Hi There!”, aimed at black audiances is called “Wassup?”  I don’t even know what to say about that.

Because this is a perfectly normal way to start a conversation, I'm sure.

In “Uninvited”, the kindly old nurse at a hospice explains how all the dying AIDS patients are there because they were cursed by literal demons of homosexuality:

It's basically  revealed at the end that she was right, of course.
“Sin City” is yet another “the gays are evil” tale, which opens with what’s later called a “loving” warning that homosexuals face God’s judgment:

“Abomination” is such a loving word, after all; but seriously, that guy getting beaten down by the Villaige People?  Hilarious.

“Titanic” is, surprisingly enough, just a fairly straight forward retelling of the sinking of the Titanic, except for one thing.  Main character Chester apparently has an overbearing Aunt who just doesn’t think he goes to church enough.  When he finds a (rather annoying) note in his suitcase about the matter, he striahgt up loses his shit:

So, obviously things do not end well for him once the boat sinks:

Here’s the opening to “Satan Comes to Salem”.

 

Of course he did.  After all, everyone knows that two years is precisely the amount of time Satan needed to destroy the early European Pilgrims.

Umm…. No they didn’t.

No, Jack, come on.  There are no spirits to commune with.  You’re being silly-

I think it’s safe to say that Jack Chick is not very good at history, and he’s being more than a little pejorative.  I won’t repost the rest of the tract, but suffice it to say a mid-story flashback to both the birth AND death of Jesus are involved.  (Those happen in most of his strips.)

Hey!  Speaking of bullshit witchcraft, did you know Dungeons and Dragons is secret occult devil worship?  Because Jack Chick knows it!

Okay, okay, now it's starting to sound like I'm just picking on a senile old racist idiot by using his own work to point out his silliness.  Which, okay, sure.  But lets talk about my absolute favorite part of Jack Chick's Personal Theology™: What killed the dinosaurs.

Okay, straight up, you know when THAT'S how a comic starts up, it's gonna be golden.  This is the opening scene in 2007's "There Go the Dinosaurs".  The next few pages follow some medieval (or something?) peasants trying to hunt down a "dragon" that appears to be an anthropomorphic sauropod of some sort, who rushes to hide from them in a cloud.

This dinosaur is pretty dumb, because that is a shitty hiding spot, which is why it's killed and butchered off camera.  This is how Jack Chick, Friend of Jesus® chooses to introduce what I'm sure was supposed to be a very serious discussion on Young Earth Creationism.

Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification, Jack, I mean it's not as if it happened in just one day.  But yeah, basically, the generally accepted view is that-

 WELL, he certainly put me in my place, didn't he?  So, after the normal trifling matters of Adam and Eve, Snakey, Cain killing Abel, et cetera, we get to Noah's ark.  Now, you get to this point, and a lot of Young Earth apologists are all "well, maybe extinct animals just didn't get on the ark?" Which is obvious nonsense, but at least it sort of would make sense- its a good place for an out, is what I'm saying.  But oh no.  Not Jack Chick.  The Bible says two of EVERY animal, so dagblastit!, two of EVERY ANIMAL.

So, now what?  Dinosaurs-- oh, excuse me, "dragons" are on the boat.  They survived the flood.  But they still need to die out to explain why they're gone in Jack Chick crazy world.  Well, guess what?

THE THINNER AIR MADE IT HARDER FOR THEM TO BREATHE. 

I am delighted by this.  After all, there were only giant dinosaurs.  It's not like they ever had small dinosaurs, or horse size dinosaurs, or even people size dinosaurs.  Only gigantic dinosaurs!  So of course when the ecosystem changed because there were no more plants after the great flood, they all died from lack of oxygen!  (Wait, if there were no plants after the great flood, wouldn't every single animal species be wiped out as well?  Oh well....) (Also, what's with all the dinosaurs in this comic having eyelashes?  That is so weird to me.)

Naturally, after this amazing biology lesson, Chick starts to go off on sin and suffering and all that, plus we have yet more birth AND death of Jesus scenes in this comic strip, because as I said, he likes to draw them A LOT.  Then he finishes with the Standard Chick Track "You will be judged" and "The Bible says there's only one way to get in to heaven" pages....

... And we're done here.  He always ends on a variation on those two.  ANYWAY!  I'm just scratching the surface of the crazy here.  I haven't even talked about his hatred of Catholics, his thoughts on drinking, his irritation for disobedient children, his fear of a One World Government.  And don't even get me started on the existential dread brought up by Chick's most evil creation, Li'l Suzzy:

Nothing quite like her precocious judgmental statements and her terrifying terror eyes.

Anyway, he sure is a treat.  So if you ever see a little cartoon just kind of lying there while you use a public restroom, now you know!

 Seriously, this is the picture of a tract on his Wikipedia page.  I swear.