So, how do you know about Jack Chick?

[Dung Beetle]

I must be more out of the loop than I thought. I have never heard of this guy anywhere except on this message board, and to tell you the truth, I still don't really know about him. Just from reading the comments of others, I can see that this is a person I'll be happier remaining ignorant of. The one thing I wonder about is how the heck did y'all get exposed to him?

[don't ask]

Well he always hosts New Years Rockin' Eve and did all those old movies...

[slortar]

The first I heard of him was when one of my bible thumper coworkers anonymously left a tract on my desk when I first started working my current job. Yeah, that was cool. :dubious:

[ivylass]

I remember seeing one when I was a child, and it scared the hell out of me, but I didn't know it was a Chick tract.

Every so often someone will post a link to the most current one in the Pit, for critique and review and grammar correction.

[lno]

About 15 years ago during my sysop days, there was a bbs called Death Cookie on the local Citadel-86 network. The sysop there had a few copies of the tract and thought they were so completely hilarious that he named his bbs after them.

I didn't see any tracks or hear any mention of Chick until 2000 or so when I saw a thread on this board.

[betenoir]

When I was, oh...6? 7? I found One Way while rumaging around in the attic. I have no idea how it got their. We are a singularly irreligious family. I was kind of transfixed by it. Although I don't recall it converting me.

[delphica]

I saw them now and again as a child, I remember getting them while trick-or-treating for Halloween a few times. The funny thing is that I know I got at least some of them from Catholic people (for those unfamiliar with the Chick oeuvre, he's very anti-Catholic) -- the tracts I saw were of the more mild (yet still goofy) encouragement to love Jesus variety. I'm not really sure if Chick became more vitriolic as the years went on, or if it was just careful selection of the tracts on the part of the givers.

I probably wouldn't have thought of them again if it weren't for the SDMB. I feel vaguely guilty about the enjoyment I get from the threads about the latest Chick tracts. It's hilarious to see the dopers rip them to shreds, but at the same time, I feel like I should have the dignity to ignore Jack Chick entirely. But those HAW HAW HAWs sucker me back in every time.

[Celyn]

I only heard of them through the SDMB, perhaps he hasn't expanded operations to my part of the world yet, for which may the Invisible Pink Unicorn make me truly thankful.

They are hilarious, though, but very scary.

[DeadlyAccurate]

The deliberate mistruths (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1054/1054_01.asp) make them hilarious in a sad, pathetic way. Nothing beats the hilarity of Dark Dungeon, though. That one is as classic as Death Cookie.

[Dung Beetle]

You think Chick tracts are something I'd be more likely to encounter in the northern US?

[ivylass]

The deliberate mistruths (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1054/1054_01.asp) make them hilarious in a sad, pathetic way. Nothing beats the hilarity of Dark Dungeon, though. That one is as classic as Death Cookie.

I love the "Becky, Tashana, NO! Don't ever say those words!" like repeating a bit of Arabic is going to turn you into a Muslim. No other study or faith needed. A little Abracadabra and you're done!

[35340]

Heard about him in college, along the time I learned about Bob. Hung out with some ... interesting types into computers and Band.

[Jayn_Newell]

I first saw one of his tracts a few years back, when someone somewhere posted a link to his tract about evolution. It is one of only two tracts I've ever finished reading (I believe Dark Dungeon is the other, and I had to go back and force myself to finish that one). The other one was posted one another site I frequent a while back, and it was the first time I actually put the term 'Chick Tract' to them.

[Katriona]

We used to get them on our cars in college - parking anywhere near a sorority or fraternity made you a target. Somehow cars parked in campus lots didn't seem to get them; I don't know if there was a rule about it, or if they just figured those in the Greek system were Godless hedonists who needed them more than anyone else.

I didn't think too much about them at the time; didn't really know much about them except as a minor annoyance until I started posting here.

[Colophon]

Wow. I've heard of this guy, but I've never sat through a whole "tract". That was incredible. Pure comic genius. Actually, there's some similar satire in Viz comic in the UK - young xenophobic crimefighters railing against immigrants and "funny goings-on" in true Enid Blyton style.

It's all there - the stuffy old guy with the eye patch.... the Muslim with the evil staring eyes.... the selective quotations... the innocent children (oh, the children!)


Has this guy got his own TV show? If not, he should have. Hell, I'd buy the DVD.



Which brings me onto another thing... are there really so many people in the USA that impose their religion on others to the extent that they would dump this kind of stuff on someone's desk?? I can't imagine any situation where any work colleague -- hell, anyone at all -- would even mention their religion to others, unless they were specifically asked.

[The Devil's Grandmother]

Back when I went to a fairly mainstream protestant church regularly in southern California (1980-1985), people had them and I read quite a number of them. Some of the older ones (while still quite disturbing) are screeds against things like child abuse. My brother, IIRC, collected them and had a shoebox full. I can’t recall that anyone at church took them seriously or used them as an evangelical tool.
Here’s a link to the current GQ thread on Jack Chick. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=294198)
And one to the current Pit Thread. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=294235)

[stpauler]

You think Chick tracts are something I'd be more likely to encounter in the northern US?
I don't know about more likely, but I used to get them in my suburban Minnesota neighborhood growing up trick-or-treating. I didn't grow up with religion so the stories all seemed like really lame comic books than anything trying to espouse a message or proselytize me.

[gobear]

Has this guy got his own TV show? If not, he should have. Hell, I'd buy the DVD.

You're in luck, Jack Chick sells his work on DVD (http://www.chick.com/catalog/videos/LOTW.asp).

Which brings me onto another thing... are there really so many people in the USA that impose their religion on others to the extent that they would dump this kind of stuff on someone's desk?? I can't imagine any situation where any work colleague -- hell, anyone at all -- would even mention their religion to others, unless they were specifically asked.

Yes, my country is sadly chock full of religious whackos who have an unfortunate influence on the political and cultural life here.

And just FYI, Jack will have a new booklet out on Monday, 1/3, for all you Chicklets who need your New Year's fix of godly insanity.

[lno]

gobear, have you watched the excerpts from that video that are available at that link?

The opening shot of the first clip features "Satan" with one hand on the United Nations and the other on the Vatican. It goes downhill from there.

[Nobody]

I first noticed them when I was in grade school. I walked to school, and occasionally, on the way there, or on the way home, I would see one lying on the sidewalk, or even on the school grounds. I would pick it up, read it, and then throw it away. I didn't pay attention to who did them, but about a year or so ago, when I saw a lot of threads about Jack Chick and his tracts it registered that those are what I saw laying on the ground.

[ivylass]

And just FYI, Jack will have a new booklet out on Monday, 1/3, for all you Chicklets who need your New Year's fix of godly insanity.


Oh, goodie! I can't wait!! It's like driving past a car wreck...you know you shouldn't look, but you can't help yourself.

[Ephemera]

I worked retail in the South from 1999 to 2002 and would occasionally get tracts from customers but never read them. I'm assuming some of them were Chick ones but I don't know.

It wasn't until I came here and saw the threads devoted to him in the Pit that I ever realized how inflammatory and bigoted they were and am glad I always ignored them. Even now, I generally don't read threads about him because I just don't want to have to put up with that bile and venom.

[vinniepaz]

People used to stand just outside of my (public) middle school and pass these out in the morning, along with those little orange biblical excerpts or whatever those were. Everyone wanted them, we'd make fun of them until about second period and then youd find them in the toilets and whatnot.

[vinniepaz]

I should add that until now I had no idea who Jack Chick was, or that he was behind these. I remember the biggest one was about the rapture. It had comparisons of like a Godly child and an Ungodly child and then Jesus came back...

[betenoir]

Heard about him in college, along the time I learned about Bob.



:dubious: Do you mean "Bob"? It doesn't sound like you truly "know" "Bob" :dubious:

[FriarTed]

Grade school- late 60's, a friend (normal Presbyterian non-fundist) had HOLY JOE, CREATOR OR LIAR, THIS WAS YOUR LIFE, THE BEAST and a couple of the other originals. I was Christian but essentially unchurched (the family was Christmas-Easter Catholic) & kinda disturbed by them. I was totally freaked out by BEWITCHED? in which a hippy chick into drugs & occultism has a bad trip & sees her face melt (the hallucinations being caused by demons who are trying to get her to kill herself)- finally her praying Christian Grandma gets to the hospital in time to lead Hippy Chick to Christ before she dies.

When our family got into church, tho our church didn't use Chick tracts, I did understand the message more. We were Christian & Missionary Alliance, which is moderate fund'ist. I myself did start collecting them & used them as witnessing tools to my classmates, but stopped when the anti-Catholic "Alberto" materials came out in the late 1970's.

[Mehitabel]

I found one when I was about 20 or so, being sold by a sweet-looking Mennonite woman at a charming craft stand at the Green Dragon Market in Ephrata, PA. My Mom tried to berate her for selling them but the woman smiled at her and said she (Mom) was being deluded by Satan. Changed my view of the Plain People forever, I must say.

Only time I've seen them since in the wild was at a Korean deli in midtown Manhattan. As soon as I saw them I put the sandwich I'd had made on the counter, turned on my hell, and walked out.

Otherwise, I only talk about them here.

[Mehitabel]

Wow, what a slip! My heel!! Heel!

BTW, I'm Catholic and showed the one my Mom got to a priest friend of ours. He was amazed to see that crap was still around.

[The Asbestos Mango]

I went to a Fund'ist Baptist school for a couple of years, so I had the occasional encounter. I remember finding one of the nastier anti-Catholic ones on my desk once. I had been baptized as a child and considered myself nominally Catholic even though I had never been to a Catholic church except to attend the odd wedding, but a guest speaker in the daily chapel service had gone off on an anti-Catholic rant. I bit my tongue, but I guess someone noticed the look on my face. I was extremely impressionalble and gullible as a teenager, so the tract was enough to cause me to renounce Catholicism for a good long while... (I'm actively practicing now).

I have a love-hate relationship with the things. On one hand, to a non-religious person, they have tremendous comedic entertainment value, and I must admit there is a part of me that finds them quite amusing. OTOH, if you are a person of faith of the non Fund'ist Chrixtian variety, the hate and the deliberate lies and misinformation can make you feel alternately sad and very, very angry.

[look!ninjas]

I got my start with Dark Dungeons (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp); I think I found it online somehow during my gaming days. My first paper track was given to me when I was hanging out with friends in Royal Oak as we were leaving a sex toy shop - I don't know who they thought they were going to save, but at least they weren't going for the easy targets. They're awful, ignorant, hateful screeds, but I love 'em anyway. They're just so funny.

Haw Haw Haw!

[Can Handle the Truth]

I read all of them back in the 1970's when I was a kid in an extremely religious home. He also had a full-size comic book series called "The Crusaders" with a former Green Beret and a former Black Panther-type dude going around the world kickin' ass for Jesus! How I ate that shit up! I was amazed that he's still around, which I found out after lurking around the SDMB.

[Adoptamom_II]

I didn't know what they were until I saw them mentioned here and googled them.

I've got to get out more often ...

[Guinastasia]

Some internet message board, but not the SDMB. Maybe Customers Suck? I don't know. I've never seen one in the wild-the only tracts were vague poetry type things that just talked about how good Jesus was. THOSE I always seemed to find in the lady's restroom at Kmart.

I sometimes wonder if the majority of his sales come from people like us, who find them hysterical, rather than actually taking them seriously.

[Zebra]

Very late '70s early '80s, standing in line for Rocky Horror, Jesus Freaks handed them to me.

[pope_hentai]

i heard of him first at an anime convention. a guy named dave merril was showing a chick flick based on the tract with the "christian" rock band and some old dude came up at the end of it to tell us ALL rock music was satans tool.... never laughed so hard

[astorian]

I'm with the OP- outside of the SDMB, I've never seen or heard Jack Chick's name mentioned anywhere.

[HMS Irruncible]

When I was growing up, our church had a rack of Chick tracts free for the taking. I read all of them that were out at that time. I was 10 years old... not proud to say that I formed a lot of beliefs about the world from those "scholarly" works. I didn't know Chick by name until a couple of years ago I stumbled across the Chick tracts online last year.

For years I thought the peace sign was really a satanic symbol, that ecumenical churches were an atheist plot, etc. Fucked me up for a while.

I think the stuff is poison and I think it has influenced attitudes and beliefs in the US more than many people know. I don't wish death on anyone, but it will be a good day when the Chick factory is out of business.

[FairyChatMom]

THOSE I always seemed to find in the lady's restroom at Kmart. I've seen all kinds of tracts left in public bathrooms - I guess the distributors figure when you're just sitting in a stall, you'll read anything. I flipped through a couple and found myself more offended than amused. Someone at the last place I worked used to leave them on the shelves above the sinks. I just tossed them into the trash, figuring I was doing a service to my coworkers.

Anyway, based on that exposure and reading the threads here, I made the connection. I still find them sickening, if hilarious in an out-of-touch-with-reality sort of way.

One of my husband's aunts always slips a few tracts into our Christmas card - the only time we hear from them - but they're all single-sheet, tiny print tracts rather than comic books. Mostly harmless, and always discarded unread.

[Guinastasia]

I think the stuff is poison and I think it has influenced attitudes and beliefs in the US more than many people know. I don't wish death on anyone, but it will be a good day when the Chick factory is out of business.

*snort* Do you honestly believe that they'll stop publishing tracts when Jack dies?

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Wow. I've heard of this guy, but I've never sat through a whole "tract". That was incredible. Pure comic genius. Actually, there's some similar satire in Viz comic in the UK - young xenophobic crimefighters railing against immigrants and "funny goings-on" in true Enid Blyton style.

It's all there - the stuffy old guy with the eye patch.... the Muslim with the evil staring eyes.... the selective quotations... the innocent children (oh, the children!)


Has this guy got his own TV show? If not, he should have. Hell, I'd buy the DVD.



Which brings me onto another thing... are there really so many people in the USA that impose their religion on others to the extent that they would dump this kind of stuff on someone's desk?? I can't imagine any situation where any work colleague -- hell, anyone at all -- would even mention their religion to others, unless they were specifically asked.

Heaven help us all, yes, there are such...fellows.
:rolleyes:

And no, he isn't a comic genius. He believes every word of the insanity he babbles in print. :smack:

[UntouchedTakeaway]

I must be more out of the loop than I thought. I have never heard of this guy anywhere except on this message board, and to tell you the truth, I still don't really know about him. Just from reading the comments of others, I can see that this is a person I'll be happier remaining ignorant of. The one thing I wonder about is how the heck did y'all get exposed to him?

I was raised a Southern Baptist (we don't have sex standing up because people might think we're *dancing*! (I kill me)).

Anyway, it didn't "take", except I can make killer Jell-o salads :)

I was about 12 or 14 when I saw my first Chick tract. Had no idea who he was until I stumbled on his website a few years ago. I even now know the NAME of the tract I saw - "Somebody Goofed". It freaked me out for years.

VCNJ~

[Ludovic]

I don't know Jack Chick.

(Heheh. Been waiting awhile to say that one.)

[FilmGeek]

I was doing research into the "dark past" of D&D after I started playing and ran across his Dark Dungeon one. I can't read too many or I start to foam at the mouth.

[Laughing Lagomorph]

You think Chick tracts are something I'd be more likely to encounter in the northern US?


Errr, not up here you wouldn't. I was born in New York City, grew up mostly north of there in upstate New York, and went to college in Buffalo. I've lived in the greater Boston area for 17 years now and never saw or heard of Jack Chick until I started frequenting this board.


I'd always assumed it was a Bible Belt thing (never been there so can't say), but from the posts in this thread distribution seems to be more...complex.

[kambuckta]

The mother of one of my kids mates surreptiously left two tracts for my perusal one day when she came to pick her kid up (about 5 years ago).

It's interesting that her darling son is now an unemployed drug-addicted, gambling-addicted petty crim..............I don't think her hard-line, fundy, parenting technique did much good in this instance. ;)

[Q.N. Jones]

I'd never seen one before the SDMB, but when I started asking my churchgoing friends about him, many told me that they'd seen them frequently while growing up.

Most of them went to evangelical churches in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin while growing up.

Some people I know have reported finding them shoved on the shelves at Wal-Mart, but I never have.

[Hey, It's That Guy!]

I had never heard of Chick tracts until I went to the University of Florida, where I'd sometimes find them laying around campus, often in bathrooms or on buses. As a comic book collector, I couldn't help picking them up, since the ridiculous tone and generally mean worldview was unintentionally funny. Haw haw haw!

UF had several on-campus preachers, usually of the "wack-a-loon" variety, who verbally lambasted passers-by, spewing fire and brimstone and calling innocent college girls "whores." Occasionally the loud preachers would be flanked by older gentlemen who wore suits, carried giant signs with fundamentalist messages, and generally comported themselves better, and those guys often carried boxes of different Chick tracts. After a while, I'd go up to them and asked which different ones they had. I never led them on and said I was interested in their messages, but I said I enjoyed reading the comics (which wasn't far from the truth).

I now have a meager collection of 17 Chick tracts (I had more a few moves back), and I'd happily mail them to any Doper who was interested in reading or collecting them. Seriously, anyone who is curious, just say the word and I'll send them your way. Preferably in the U.S., so I can pick up the postage.

[Sternvogel]

I got my first Chick tract when I was a kid attending the Cuyahoga County Fair in Ohio. There was a tent with little peep show displays out front, such as "The Headline You Will Never See" (which turned out to be "Your Own Death", with the article "illustrated" by your reflection in a mirror) and "Billions of Protozoa in this Bowl" (the message was that like souls, the microscopic organisms definitely exist -- even if you can't see them, God can!) As I was checking out the exhibit, a woman approached me and asked if I had studied protozoa in school.

Before I really knew what was happening, she had lured me into the tent and begun doing her damnedest, so to speak, to convert me. Since I just wanted to get out of there and get back to the fun parts of the fair (rides, animals, freak shows, etc.), I played along and asked Jesus to save my soul (though I also remember, in response to the woman's saying that I should pray out loud instead of silently, asking such smart-alecky questions as "What if you're mute? Do your silent prayers count then?").

When I had "converted" to her satisfaction, she presented me with what I now know to be a Chick tract. I forget which one it was, but do remember that the standard THE BIBLE SAYS THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO HEAVEN! box appeared on the last page. I learned the name of Jack Chick when my brother Mark began following the (in his words) "wonderful world of Christians and Christian television just to see what those born-agains are up to". He would occasionally rant about the latest Chick tract he'd found on the bus or picked up off the street.

[UntouchedTakeaway]

I had never heard of Chick tracts until I went to the University of Florida, where I'd sometimes find them laying around campus, often in bathrooms or on buses. As a comic book collector, I couldn't help picking them up, since the ridiculous tone and generally mean worldview was unintentionally funny. Haw haw haw!

UF had several on-campus preachers, usually of the "wack-a-loon" variety, who verbally lambasted passers-by, spewing fire and brimstone and calling innocent college girls "whores." Occasionally the loud preachers would be flanked by older gentlemen who wore suits, carried giant signs with fundamentalist messages, and generally comported themselves better, and those guys often carried boxes of different Chick tracts. After a while, I'd go up to them and asked which different ones they had. I never led them on and said I was interested in their messages, but I said I enjoyed reading the comics (which wasn't far from the truth).

I now have a meager collection of 17 Chick tracts (I had more a few moves back), and I'd happily mail them to any Doper who was interested in reading or collecting them. Seriously, anyone who is curious, just say the word and I'll send them your way. Preferably in the U.S., so I can pick up the postage.


Hahaha! You must mean the Reverend Jed Smock & his righteous wife, the former disco queen Cindy! Those two were around in 1979-1983 when I attended. I wonder if they're still banging those bibles around Gainesville?

VCNJ~

[Hey, It's That Guy!]

Hahaha! You must mean the Reverend Jed Smock & his righteous wife, the former disco queen Cindy! Those two were around in 1979-1983 when I attended. I wonder if they're still banging those bibles around Gainesville?

VCNJ~

BROTHER JED! Yeah, he and his crazy wife were still around, at least in the late '90s. I attended UF on and off between 1996 and 2003 (college and law school), but at least for the first few years, we knew we'd be in for some surreal, scary comedy when Brother Jed showed up in the Plaza of the Americas.

[Fretful Porpentine]

I was introduced by a (gay, atheist) friend in college, about seven years ago. Jack Chick had a bit of an ironic following on my old campus, inspiring a few T-shirts and such, but it was news to me that anybody took him seriously until I discovered the SDMB.