Chick Tracts

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

Ah, Jack Chick. The legend. In life and in death, a failure throughout.

Chick Tracts are a huge group of blatant moralfagging comics/stories done by Jack Chick Ministries, attempting to convince younger readers that: evolution is a lie; rock and roll is the tool of the Devil; the Catholic Church created Islam, Communism, Nazism and the Freemasons, (only two one of whom didn't turn on them all who did turn on them); the Catholic Church is a vile conspiracy created by pagans; and that celebrating Halloween makes you a satanist. They are in essence the Satanic Panic in comic form.

As the person responsible for Chick Tracts and the fact that they're steaming piles of ignorance and batshit-lunacy even by the standards of religious fundamentalists, Jack Chick only avoided being a parody of American Christianity by the unfortunate fact that he was a real guy and the aformentioned fundamentalists denouncing him. He was a savage anti-Catholic, an Islamaphobe, a homophobe, an anti-Semite, an anti-Indian... anti-almost-everything. (Of note is that his longtime collaborator Fred Carter was black. And Chick's second marriage was interracial, and lasted until his death.) The only reason that Chick Tracts are notable on /tg/ are two very specific reasons:

1. They have a lengthy segment explaining how Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway towards Satanism and Witchcraft.
2. They are so egregiously stupid that they've spawned dozens of instant memes, including this.

History

Jack Thomas Chick (April 13, 1924 - October 23, 2016) was an American publisher, writer and comic book artist of evangelical Christian tracts and comic books. He has been called the most published comic book author in the world. Yes, even beyond DC with its rodeo clown characters and prostitutes.

Chick was born deep in Los Angeles, California. The son of a commercial artist and his eldest at that, his family moved to Alabama, wherein Whacky Jacky joined the high school drama club and was most un-Christian - so much so, that the true Christians who abode there avoided him. In his own words, he claimed to be "the last man on Earth who would accept Christ." Some believe that he went from being a complete dickhead who hates everyone who then "converted" to Christianity just so he could be a complete dickhead to everyone else while using his selected religion as an excuse to insult everything around him; this is most likely true, as only a total fucktard like Jack would engage in such levels of base contrarianism. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

After his graduation, Chick continued his drama education at the Pasadena Playhouse School of Theater on a two-year scholarship. In February 1943, and still irreligious, our man was drafted as a private in the U.S. Army. He served for three years in the Pacific theater, doing cryptography, in New Guinea, Australia, the Philippines and Japan; he was honorably discharged as a Sergeant. Chick credits his time overseas with inspiring him to translate his tracts into many different languages and says he has "a special burden for missions and missionaries". Afterwards, he returned to 'Murka.

It was here Jack Chick converted to Christianity... by listening to a radio show. John Todd's show, at that: drug-addicted-former-occultist-conspiracy-theorist-sexual-predator, John Todd. Yes, Jack Chick did not convert by reading the Bible, or searching his soul, longing for spiritual sustenance, nor did he do so for the lulz. He listened to John Todd's fucking radio show.

If you're wondering why Chick's beliefs are so far out there that even many fundamentalists go "wait... what?", it may be because he spent a little too much time listening to Todd's show. Truly a credible source on the evils of D&D, Christian Rock and Catholicism.

In 2005, a fine thing called a heart attack struck at Chick, but failed to kill him. But it is no less a hero for trying. Shortly thereafter, he had a triple coronary artery bypass. He then returned to seclusion and awaits death finally kicked the bucket on October 23, 2016. One less total paranoid incompetent loony now roams the earth. However, his legacy has been so entrenched that his work will surely outlive him as his ghost-artists and writers continue to carry up his absurd views for the foreseeable future. Now, we don't claim to know what God does with folks who try to serve them but fail so spectacularly at it, but we like to imagine that Jack stood before God, cowering as the big G yells at him: "How dare you presume to speak for me! I have a mind to create a hell just to throw YOU in, Jack. You made me look like some deranged, psychopathic, egomaniacal, self centered, vain bastard... GUARDS!!! GUARDS get in here, NOW!!!!!"

So, why is this guy so hated?

Perhaps because, besides being the Satanic Panic reincarnated into a single man, he was woefully misinformed on several issues. Allow us to list his more general offenses against religion, rationality, good taste and tabletop.

• He was violently intolerant of all religions except his own. That includes but is not limited to: Islam, Judaism and ALL FORMS OF CHRISTIANITY THAT DO NOT FIT HIS PERSONAL VIEW. He had a special hatred of Roman Catholics, who he was sure were Satan's agents on Earth, and one of his tracts was (I kid you not) THE DEATH COOKIE. We concede that, in one of his last comics, he portrayed Eastern Orthodox Christians in a positive light. But. First, many would argue it is much more creepy and threatening when a batshit insane person likes you rather than hates you (especially when they involve you in one of their stupid and illogical conspiracy theories, which he, of course, did). Second, most likely he was simply too uneducated about Orthodoxy, because if he would realize that Orthodox are quite similar to Catholics in absolute majority of things, he might've had... a different opinion...
  • He has this insane obsession with the King James version of the Bible, an edition that's been considered inaccurate and outdated in translation *for centuries* when there have been better versions available. There's a sizable group of rather nutty Christians who live and die by the KJV translation, but none are anywhere near so delusional as Jack, who considered the newer translations a satanic plot to mislead Christians into hell.
  • Non-Christians were invariably portrayed as either completely off their meds or pants-on-head retarded (usually leading to one of them asking "durr wuts a jesus" at some point); while Christians are invariably portrayed as smug, self-righteous twats. Thus Mr Chick managed to piss off all sides.
• He claimed that Dungeons and Dragons is a gateway to Satan, just like everyone else on that bandwagon. Nevermind the fact that Gygax himself was a Christian... sort of. Gygax was a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and covering whether it's a Christian denomination or its own religion is beyond this wiki's specific call of duty (he later left JW and his later interviews implied that he became mainline Christian, so there's that). Safe to say, there's a reason D&D angels were the good guys and demons/devils/dameons/etc. were evil - a far cry from outright Satanism (not that it would likely have made a difference to Jack, of course). He had a similar view about Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (probably due to Tolkien being a Catholic). And *that* is why he drew /tg/'s ire, attacking fantasy fiction that was often based on Christianity itself; it 'helped' that said works were produced by some of their favorite authors. Sadly, we have no knowledge on his opinions about Narnia, written by one of the most charismatic and unambiguously Christian authors, C. S. Lewis. We speculate that Chick only had frothing hatred for it however, owing to his inability to read into anything that isn't the KJV Bible.
• He outlived Gary Gygax on both sides, the dingleberry on this steaming sundae.
• His artwork is shitty. Probably why he let Fred Carter do a lot of the work; his style was more realistic.

For /tg/, Jack Chick earns his Immortality in the Sphere of Derp for his Dark Dungeons comic strip, which is a vicious smorgasboard of unrivaled lulz that happens to be a metaphor for how Dungeons and Dragons is gateway to the Unholy. Due to the sheer audacity of this man daring to heap shame upon the favorite pastime of neckbeards, they have banded together unleash their copious rage and DERP upon him. Though they are justified in this, srsly, did you read the above?

However, any parodies of his comics espousing what is considered to be a more 'enlightened' point of view are often loaded with just as much FAIL and hypocrisy as the original tracts.

Quotes

• Ms. Frost: "Okay, Wizard, cast your spell!"
• Debbie: "Okay, Dungeon Master. My spell of light blinds the monster."
• Frost: "The thief, Black Leaf, did not find the poison trap, and I declare her dead."
• Marcie: "NO, NOT BLACK LEAF! NO, NO! I'M GOING TO DIE! Please don't make me quit the game! Somebody save me! You can't do this!"
• Frost: "Marcie, get out of here. YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist any more."
• Mrs Baxter: "Don't make the mistake of believing that good people go to heaven and bad people got to hell. That's a lie straight from the Devil." (The Tract this comes from concerns a little kid getting hit by a car on Halloween night after he went to a Haunted House. Guess where he went? Go on, guess.)

See Also

• Dark Dungeons
• The righteous Mystery Science Theater 3000 parody of Dark Dungeons!
• The response if you're an atheist and/or annoyed.
• A "measured" review of the film.