I also warn anyone who is sensitive about political or religious ripples that you will be offended by the material presented here, whether it be comments written by me or the works of Chick. For this piece, I’ve abstained from heavy religious debate, because this is not a piece to ridicule Chick (not completely, anyway) or interject my personal views of the Bible.

I just learned about a wonderful message! Jesus loves you and will get you into Heaven, but only if you accept him as your personal lord and saviour! If you don’t believe this, you’re going to Hell, no matter what you believe otherwise. If you’re a Muslim, Wiccan, atheist, Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Mason or anything not Christian, you’re going to Hell. The only truth is in the Old King James version of the Bible and little comic books about Jesus.

Don’t worry, the rest of the world is still intact. Right now, for just a little while, you’ve entered the world of Chick.

The works and life of Jack Thomas Chick form one of the most fantastic tapestries of religious blasphemy in modern history, and yet relatively few people know about him or recognize his material. Chick has been said to be the most published living author in the world, with over 500 million copies of his various works in print in over 142 different languages. And yet only an estimated 20% of Americans have heard of Chick or recognize his works.

Chick’s most defining works are his Bible comic tracts know as Chick tracts; small, pocket-sized cartoons that talk about a variety religious subjects, but always lead to the core message that Jesus saves those who repent for their sins and believe in him. What makes these tracts so famous is not the Jesus messages, but rather their offensive storylines that condemn everything from homosexuality to Harry Potter, all using Biblical interpretations, questionable facts, and more than a little bit of paranoia.

Jack Chick himself is an enigma. He’s a very reclusive man who hasn’t given an interview since 1975. No known pictures of Chick as an adult exist, only a high school photo and an arguable artist rendition reveal what he might look like. Even his birth year is only an estimate. Some believe that he doesn’t even exist, that he’s an urban legend.

Estimates seem to agree that Jack Thomas Chick (whose name, interestingly, shares the acronym as Jesus The Christ) was born in 1924, possibly in the fall, maybe August. He was a “very sick baby” and “the doctor had to lance (make an incision) [his] ears 21 times before [he] was one year old,” most likely an effect of his mother trying to abort him.

Chick had two Christian friends in high school, but they did not witness to him because they thought he “would be the last guy on earth to receive [Christ].” The timid witness character is featured throughout a variety of Chick tracts and their inspiration is attributed to these two tight-lipped Christians.

Before he was saved, Chick was trained in stage work and directing, which is attributed to his tract writing talents. He won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse (now closed), but his education was interrupted by World War II.

Chick served three years in the military during World War II, fighting in New Guinea and Okinawa, where he was nearly killed. An interesting side note is while stationed in Japan, Chick was pressured into going to the red light district, but got out of it by pretending he was married and expressed his desire to remain faithful to his wife. He was not a Christian at the time. After his military tour, he returned to the Pasadena Playhouse, where he met his future wife, Lola Lynn.

Lola was the driving force behind Chick’s salvation. They went to visit his mother-in-law in Canada, and she insisted Chick listen to the Charles E Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hour radio show. He was saved soon after at the age of twenty-four. Four years later, he had a daughter.

Chick went on to work as a technical illustrator for an aerospace company called Astro Science Company. In 1958, Chick was asked to spread the word of Christ to prison inmates, so he created an illustrated flip chart that became the groundwork for his most famous tract of all time, This Was Your Life.

The idea for comic book-like tracts came to Chick after he spoke to a missionary broadcaster named Bob Hammond. He told Chick that Communists in China used propaganda in the form of comic books to influence children and the masses, an idea allegedly concocted when Communist spies noted how popular comic books were with children in the United States. Chick thought that if this method worked for Communism, it would work for Jesus (he admits to this in the tract Who, Me?), so he began his work on a tract titled Why No Revival?

Chick was inspired to create this tract after reading Charles Finney’s Power from on High . The tract dealt with wishy-washy Christians who don’t dedicate themselves to the Calling, yet label themselves as Christians. Chick also attacks lazy and apathetical churches that only care about pleasing the crowd with as little effort as possible, using recycled sermons, boasting the holiness of the congregation, holding choir practices in higher regard than prayer meetings, and allowing “Christian” rock bands (who are considered evil) into the churches (this part, as well as several other parts, were added in later printings; this is explained later). This tract also demands empathy for the persecuted “true” Christians.

Needless to say, this tract wasn’t well received. Lutherans said that it was “terrible – not realistic” and bookstores called it “sacrilegious.” Interestingly, some of the characters in this tract were apparently modeled after people in Chick’s church choir. He was given the “cold shoulder,” so he decided to leave the church. Why No Revival? was published by Chick himself, who borrowed $800 from a credit union to cover the cost of printing, and it took him two years to pay off the loan.

Soon after Why No Revival? was printed, Chick decided to create another tract, but was out of money. A Christian named George Otis provided funding for the next tract, named A Demon’s Nightmare. This tract was Chick’s first attempt at a cartoon-style approach, featuring a duo of bungling demons who try to sway a newly-born Christian away from Jesus though a variety of schemes. This tract again addresses “weak” churches and “true” Christians being persecuted for their beliefs.

Chick’s first book came in the form of The Last Call, which was an abridged version of George Finney’s Revival Lectures. It started as a tract, but was so large (64 pages) that it was later converted into a paperback. Interestingly, the original, nearly-complete manuscripts survived a car fire.

In his career, Chick has allied himself with several other Christ seekers who supported his cause. The most famous of which is Alberto Rivera, an ex-Jesuit who left the Vatican supposedly after witnessing its corruption. Privy to this “secret knowledge,” Chick and Rivera created a comic series titled Alberto, which featured the information he had discovered. Rivera’s information can also be found scatted throughout Chick tracts.

Another secret agent type was John Todd, a reported “ex-Grand Druid.” Chick heard him speak in 1973, after which point Todd provided Chick with information about Satanism and shared his view about Satan controlling the world through the Illuminati and Masonic lodges. He was later found out to be a fraud, yet Chick still promoted his work for two years after, eventually quietly erasing references to Todd’s work.

Perhaps the most important person in Chick’s career is artist and minister Fred Carter. Hired in 1972, Carter, oddly enough, is even more reclusive and mysterious than Chick, with very little information known about him. In fact, a picture of Carter in a relatively recent (November 2003) issue of Chick’s newsletter, the Battle Cry, is said to be the first picture of him ever published. Interestingly, he didn’t put his name on any of the Chick tracts, and he was only credited for two paperbacks.

However, Carters doesn’t need a signature on his work, as the differences between his work and Chick’s are unmistakable. Chick confesses that his “art did not improve” over the years. His “cartoony” drawings have been basically the same since he started creating Chick tracts. Carter’s work, however, is incredibly detailed, realistic, and gripping. In fact, many underground comic collectors respect Fred Carter for his talents, even if they don’t agree with the subject matter.

It should go without saying that Chick has made many enemies over the years. His paranoid worldview has led him to believe that Jesuits wish to assassinate him. His anti-Catholic efforts yielded the intervention of the Catholic League of Religious and Civil Rights to ask bookstores to stop selling Rivera’s work in 1981. The CLRCR also tried to get Chick on counts of fraud, but nothing was successful. They did manage to get Canada to ban Chick’s comics briefly, labeling them ironically as “pornography.”

The CLRCR pressured the Christian Booksellers Associations to oust Chick. Rivera and Chick attended the 1981 CBA convention and held their anti-Catholic stand. The CBA eventually caved in to the CLRCR's demands and asked Chick to reconsider his position. He accused the CBA of being infiltrated by Catholics and resigned his membership.

This is without mentioning the parody tracts and in-depth criticism features (like on this website) that have sprung up to take a more light-hearted punch at Chick.

Within the last fifteen years, Chick fell on hard times. He suffered a slight stroke that temporarily cost him the use of his right hand. Rivera died on June 20, 1997, and his wife died on February 10, 1998, possibly in the same dining room they created This Was Your Life together. He later remarried, and “hopes to keep in the battlefield for at least 20 more years,” which, interestingly, is 2018, the next possible rapture date.

As stated earlier, Chick’s tracts feature a wide variety of topics designed to appeal to, or rather offend, many different types of people. From bikers to Buddhists, from jocks to nerds, Chick attempts to write stories that make readers identify themselves with the characters and, hopefully, change their ways and get on the goodly path.

I say “attempts,” because Chick is still writing from a mid-twentieth century fundamentalist Christian perspective, so he doesn’t quite create convincing characters. Most of the “saved” Christian witnesses are strong, patient, and knowledgeable in everything, including the Bible, other religions (an as far as proving they are satanic), science (especially evolution), history, and whatever else crosses their path. The “unsaved” are usually ignorant about everything, especially if they have strong convictions about whatever they believe in. They usually come off as arrogant, angry, impatient, and intolerant. Unsaved who don’t have much vested in anything usually just accept whatever the Christians tell them.

On a side note, Chick doesn’t exactly highlight it, but his tracts show he believes in traditional gender roles. Female Chick characters do save souls, but only for a lack of alternatives, because most of the time, this is when there are no men around. If there are, the women are shoved into the background while the men do the soul saving.

It’s been reported in Robert Fowler’s The World of Chick? that when a female character is unsaved, she tends to wear pants. Good, saved girls end up wearing skirts or dresses, enforcing there submissive status in the Path of God. This isn’t always true (many times, one can’t tell, especially when the girl isn’t drawn from the waist down), but for the most part, the message here seems to be that good Christians girls shouldn’t try to delude themselves into thinking God loves them as much as men.

Speaking of God, he tends to be depicted as faceless being who is uncompromising with his rules of salvation. Without getting into the logical debates, God is very intolerant of those who don’t accept Chick’s message. Religion, good works, and constant prayer are meaningless unless you accept Jesus. You could be the worst person in the world, murdering hundreds of people and worshipping golden calves, and you have a ticket into heaven as long as you feel bad at the last minute and get saved (this has been featured in several Chick tracts, like The Gunslinger). The idea is that it doesn’t matter how bad a person is, because they are simply doomed for being bad at all, and there’s only one way out. Many religious liberals have a big problem with this, believing it to be an injustice that “bad” people can get into Heaven while “good” people are sent to Hell.

Besides God, Jesus, Satan, and other Biblical figures, the only recurring central characters in Chick’s tracts are Bob Williams and li’l Susy. Bob is probably supposed to be the personification of Chick himself, despite his Hispanic appearance (he bears a passing resemblance to Rivera, however). Really into his craft and humble yet somehow smug, Bob is basically a modern day Jesus. He never sins, knows everything, and always wins religious arguments. If you read enough Chick tracts, you’ll find that nearly everyone involved in Chick’s world is somehow related to Bob.

Li’l Susy (exactly as she is referred to most of the time, though her real name is Susy Barnes, as revealed in the tract Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn) is essentially Bob Williams in little girl form, right down to the same fanatical love for Jesus. Her main purpose is to appeal to children, and while she doesn’t know everything like Bob, li’l Susy knows entirely more about religion than any real child. She gets most of her knowledge from her grandfather, who was “saved” by Bob Williams, and is a man who, for whatever reason, wears an eye patch.

Chick also is infamous for weaving intricate conspiracies, mostly involving Catholics, designed by sinner for no other reason than to spite God. Most characters in Chick tracts seem motivated into their wrong doing for no other reason than to get on God’s bad side. They know what it takes to get into Heaven, they know what’s “right,” they just don’t want to do it because they’re sinners.

And who are these sinners? Chick tends to repeat themes and target groups more than once in his tracts. Chick’s biggest fight is with the Catholic church, which he claims in many, many tracts has corrupted the word of God and is deceiving billions for their own ends.

The conspiracy doesn’t end there, not by a long shot. Chick claims that the Catholic Church was behind the Holocaust during World War II. He thinks the Constantine was only pretending to be Christian and formed the Catholic Church to trick the world, because Satan told him to. Chick states that the Catholic Church’s inquisition against heretics was meant to hunt down “true, Bible-believing” Christians, not pagans or witches. He stresses over the fact that “the name of every Protestant church member in the world is being recorded in the big computer in the Vatican” (this is featured in Kiss the Protestants Goodbye). He believes that Islam was a creation of the Catholic Church to gain more power, though he also seems to believe, as evidenced in another tract, that Muhammad acted on his own because he wanted power, proving no one should pay Chick’s theories any mind.

However, these don’t compare to his greatest conspiracy creation. According to Chick, the “Beast” of the book of Revelations who will lead the world to destruction is the Pope, and the Vatican will unite the entire world into a one-world government, where they will bestow the “mark of the Beast” (666) on every man, woman, and child, who will not be able to buy or sell goods without it. The Vatican’s power will be destroyed in Armageddon, and Jesus will come and rule for one thousand years. Chick’s tract The Last Generation is about the Rapture, depicting the “near future,” seems like something out of a George Orwell novel.

According to Chick, Catholicism is a blending of pagan religions with Christianity, complete with its own Bible, mixed together by Satan to fool the entire world. He claims that the Mother Mary and the Catholic Jesus is based on a Babylonian religion wherein the queen of Babylon, Semiramis, had a child with her son, Nimrod, who later died. She claimed the baby was Nimrod reborn as the Sun God, making her the Son Goddess. This is laid out in What’s Wrong with This?

Refer to the tracts Man in Black, The Death Cookie, What’s Wrong with This?, Is There Another Christ?, The Last Generation, The Poor Pope, Kiss the Protestants Goodbye, and entirely too many others for Catholic bashing.

Chick has label Islam a “very dangerous religion” and has put some of their beliefs up to ridicule, such as that Adam, the first man, was “90 feet tall.” He believes Allah is nothing more than the moon god of Arabian Sabeans (hence Islam’s crescent moon symbol, which is not universally accepted by Muslims) and Mohammad is nothing but a pedophile and a slave owner who wanted power (or was being controlled by the Vatican, whichever tract you believe). He stereotypes Islamic culture as being uncaring, cruel, and single-minded in their goals, which is to obtain paradise so they can have great pleasures that are similar to pleasures of the flesh (which are evil), much like the pleasures of mansion and crowns awaiting good Christians (though Chick never draws this parallel). Obviously, Muslims are not opposed to blowing people up to please Allah.

Refer to the tracts Allah Had No Son, The Sky Lighter, Who Cares?, The Pilgrimage, The Deceived, and The Little Bride for most of Chick’s anti-Islam works.

Witchcraft is considered purely satanic, despite what actual Wiccans say otherwise. They believe “God is dead” (despite the fact Wiccans don’t believe in God) and knowingly serve Satan and call him “master” (same logic). In Chick’s world, witches are coaxed into the craft by tarot cards, Ouija boards, Harry Potter books, and the Dungeons and Dragons game (Chick devotes the entire tract, Dark Dungeons to this game, stating that it’s nothing more than training for witches). Witches sacrifice live babies to Satan and can perform levitation and curse spells, but are powerless against Christians, who are protected by Jesus.

Refer to the tracts Dark Dungeons, The Nervous Witch, Poor Little Witch, and Satan’s Master for Chick’s view on witches.

Oddly, Chick has it out for the Jewish people, even though he has a tract entitled Love the Jewish People, where he claims that anyone going against Israel will be destroyed in Armageddon. And yet he created a tract entitled Where’s Rabbi Waxman?, where a rabbi is sent to Hell because he didn’t accept Jesus (rabbis are also depicted as sinister for not believing that Jesus is the Messiah in various other tracts). And yet these are still God’s chosen people. This is known, despite the oxymoron, as “Chick logic.”

Of course, other religions are attacked. Hinduism is attacked in The Traitor, where the goddess Kali is depicted as nothing more than a demon serving Satan. In The Tycoon, Buddhists are depicted as being intolerant (and rich, despite the fact this goes against Buddhist teachings).

Chick isn’t just against other religions, he’s against anything that God might not like. The big one is homosexuality, which Chick has devoted several tracts to. He frequently cites the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah as proof that God really hates homosexuality. Chick usually depicts homosexuals as ugly men who look very uncomfortable being gay, or they act completely fruity. And almost all the time, gay sex results in AIDS, presumably created the moment anyone turns gay. Interestingly, in 1983, Chick created a tract called Wounded Children that was somewhat realistic and believable, but it’s no longer even mentioned on the Chick Publications website. Perhaps it wasn’t absurd enough?

Refer to the tracts The Gay Blade, Sin City, Doom Town The Birds and the Bees, and Wounded Children for Chick’s perception of homosexuality.

Sex in general is also something Chick doesn’t tolerate. In Chick’s world, sex is only allowed between a married heterosexual couple, and only for reproduction (the Bible doesn’t really say this, but that’s Chick’s interpretation). The penalty for sex outside of marriage is usually sexually transmitted diseases, mostly AIDS, and eventual death. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in That Crazy Guy! Also, the current, “Christ-hating” society encourages high school students to have sex by handing out free condoms, anytime, at a student’s request.

The other result of pre-martial sex is unwanted pregnancy, which is usually dealt with via abortion. Of course, this is evil too, and Chick created two tracts devoted exclusively to abortion: Baby Talk and Who Murdered Clarice?

Evolution is another topic that gets under Chick’s skin, because it contradicts the Bible, or so he believes. His main anti-evolution tract is Big Daddy?, which almost entirely consists of facts that have been proven wrong (a parody tract with documented evidence, found here), yet he still markets this tract, which was created in 1972 and has only made minor changes. He created another anti-evolution tract called Apes, Lies, and Ms Henn, but it was nothing more than a “that’s a lie because the Bible said so!” argument with no (incorrect) facts to back it up.

Chick concedes to the existence of dinosaurs, because he couldn’t explain away the fossil evidence (not even a Catholic plot would do the trick). He claims that dinosaurs came with Noah on the ark in It’s Coming!, but it’s never explained what happened to them afterwards (not even a simple blurb about them simply dying out). The Bible doesn’t mention them, either, which one would think it would, especially when the pagans could have fed Jews and Christians to dinosaurs instead of lions.

This was later rectified with the tract There Goes the Dinosaurs, a rather unfocused tract that had no evidence to back it up, although some of Chick's ideas were based on scientific theory. Still, this tract leaves some things unexplained.

There are many other things that Chick doesn’t approve of. Drug use is a definite bug for Chick, as seen in Bewitched? and Trust Me! Alcoholism is also featured, with tracts like Tiny Shoes and Happy Hour showing us just what God thinks of getting tipsy. Rock music, especially Christian rock, is considered a tool of Satan, regardless of the subject matter, it seems, as seen in Angels? There are many other subject matters covered in Chick’s collection that are too numerous to count, but they all deal with doing things that take our eyes off of God.

It should be noted that Chick tracts are, for the most part, a living document. Many of them are altered to appeal to foreign markets, changing races of people to match to target audience. Others are designed to change with the times, as much as Chick can adapt to this, of course (as seen in Why No Revival? wherein he added mention of Christian rock bands). Some are altered to appeal to different audiences (The Slugger and The Superstar are basically the same tract with changes to the artwork to target baseball fans and soccer fans, respectively). And sometimes the tracts are changed when Chick finds new information that discredits old information (he used to use the satanic Revised Standard Version of the Bible instead of the Old King James, for example) or if a person or organization falls from his grace. By no means does this suggest he’s always self-correcting. Big Daddy? is proof of this.

Given how ridiculous Chick tracts are, why are they still being used to convert people? For as offensive, moronic, paranoid, short-sighted, intolerant, and one-sided as they are, Chick tracts are very assessable and convincing, especially if read in large doses. Chick and Carter do a masterful job at creating religious propaganda that convinces people that they are going to Hell. Like most propaganda, facts and logic are non-factors. These things work.

The comic book format is actually a work of (stolen) genius. With pictures and words, the reader is bombarded with frightening imagery that is quickly digested, faster than with simply words, and more precise than with just pictures. It doesn’t matter if none of Chick’s character are real enough to relate to. Most people don’t believe what Chick believes, and this fact makes readers feel almost guilty about it. To this end, he is brilliant.

And it’s this sort of brilliance that circulates these tracts. These tracts were designed to aid shy Christians in there quest to save souls by allowing them to simply “plant” tracts in various places for them to be found. Chick is frequently described as being shy (as his reclusive nature would indicate), so he felt that tracts would help others with the same problem.

How it works is a concerned Christian orders tracts from Chick Publications (currently at fifteen cents per tract, plus shipping). From that point he or she simply leaves the tract lying around or hands it off to someone without saying anything (both of these have happened to me, as I’ll explain later). In fact, Chick devotes an entire tract to the topic of spreading tracts in Who, Me? Chick tracts probably count towards the ten percent of one’s income God requires us to give for his work.

To testify how gripping and accessible these tracts are, and how effective their covert nature is in finding a reader, I’ll relate my first experiences with them. I was at a county fair with a friend, and we were walking around, generally minding our own business. I casually checked out a vendor cart when I noticed a strange religious booklet on the counter. A grabbed it and started to read. It was a Chick tract entitled Sin Busters.

I was not into religion at that time. I had just given up on Lutheranism and was floating around without a belief, so I wasn’t looking for trouble or expecting I would know what to do if I found it.

I immediately started laughing at the melodrama and idiotic theories and statements posed by the tract. I remembered for the longest time the message being the Ten Commandments aren’t allowed in schools because this is an evil society that hates Jesus (this is basically it). My friend demanded that I throw it away, but I insisted on holding onto the tract because it was so hilarious.

I ended up losing the tract and never gave it any more thought for years. Then one day when I was at college, a skittish Christian wearing a too-large backpack pushed something into my hand and scurried off without any elaboration. I looked down at it and noticed it was a comic book, and my face lit up: this was like the little comic book from the fair!

This tract was entitled No Fear? and was about suicide. It was ridiculous, of course, but after I read it, I became depressed at how insane it was and how things turned out for the characters. I followed the link to Chick’s website and started reading the tracts on there and became more horrified at the levels of idiocy one man was capable of fabricating.

Later, I started Pocky Box, and my Chick-defaming began. In addition to several anti-Chick articles, I also started a section dedicated to scrutinizing Chick tracts, which as of this writing has an active fan base of two confirmed people.

In the end, we have to wonder what will become of Chick tracts in the future. He has clearly stated his intentions of continuing the fight, but he’s getting on in years, and it seems his health isn’t the best, considering his stroke. I suspect he will produce Chick tracts until he physically can’t any longer. After his death, I believe Chick tracts may continue, but not for long, as the drive and focus of the Chick’s organization will fall apart without his leadership, much like most cults, which is really what Chick and his organization is.

No matter how you personally feel about Chick and his message, I hope we can agree that his works have a certain virtuosity about them, maybe not because of their correctness of facts, but simply the dedication and guts it takes to put these out. Their effectiveness cannot be denied either, and one can’t help but respect Chick for his efforts. That’s not to say that his action are right, but Chick will forever remain as a legend many circles, whether he wishes to be or not. God bless.

To see most of the Chick tract collection (and to order Chick products), visit Chick Publications’ website, www.chick.com. Special thanks to Robert Fowler for his book The World of Chick?, which was used for a majority of this work and is thoroughly researched well past the brink of lunacy, making it a must for Chick enthusiasts (if it weren’t for the God-awful font and the lack of purdy pic’ures). Also thanks to Wikipedia.org and Robert Ito for his article “To Hell with You” (archived here) for additional reference material.