If I might offer a few thoughts:
Suppose the comic were produced as two graphics files for 8.5x11 printer paper. People could host the files for various comics on their websites or post them to the appropriate usenet groups. Since it would be more or less a samizdat operation, there would be no central group for Chick to sue (not that he would really be able to, unless we made the mistake of violating his copyright by using his artwork.)
Someone who wanted to distribute a tract could print 10-20 or so copies, put them back in the printer upside-down, and print the backs. In about 10 minutes he could fold them. I did a little experimentation, and a sheet of notebook paper can be folded into a roughly 2 1/4 x 4 1/4 inch tract very easily, folding accordion style down the long axis and then folding the accordion in half. This is only a little smaller than the official Chick dimensions of 2 3/4 x 5. The folding divides the paper into twenty “panels,” front and back, leaving you one for the front cover, one for a back cover with urls for support groups and further information, and 18 pages of story. A Chick comic has 21 pages of story.
I skimmed over Beeblebrox’s links, and I have two points to make in regard to them. Firstly, those seem to mostly be full-size comics, which are much harder to distribute. Secondly, those comics are square as postage stamps! Like I said, if you have a little talent and a sense of humor, that can go a long way. Nobody wants to read a comic about the evils of racism which depicts a bunch of students just sitting in a class. But people paid money to read the comic of the Twilight Zone movie, with the Vic Morrow segment on racism.
You can draw the same sorts of conclusions from PSA’s. There’s one on currently with Jennifer Anniston saying, “Don’t hate. Hate is bad. Just don’t do it.” I mean, it’s moronic. PSA’s have always been in danger of being square. Meanwhile, although truth.com tends to slide over into shrill self-righteousness, they score some hits, like with the “Project SCUM” commercial. If you tell teenagers, “Don’t smoke because your friends think it’s uncool, and it makes you stinky,” nobody listens, because they know their friends think it’s cool. If you tell teenagers about all the ways in which the tobacco executives are leprous weasels, people start to perk up their ears.
The potential subject matter for the tracts being discussed in this thread lends itself well to comics that can grab people. For example, you could make a comic about Pat Robertson, detailing the ways he diverted charity money from the 700 Club into his blood-diamond operation, and his plans to televise the Second Coming, and so forth.
Or take a direct anti-Chick comic. Jack Chick is lying in bed, with friends and family talking about what a great crusader for the faith he is. He dies, meets Jesus, and says, “Hey- that was a great job I did with those comics, right?” Jesus then tells Chick about all the ways he lied for the faith. You get a sweaty closeup of Chick swallowing hard and tugging his collar- ULP!- with one of those Chick sidebars quoting the verses about how many will say, “Lord, Lord,” but Jesus will respond, “I never knew you.” Then, depending on your inclination, Chick goes to hell or is forgiven by a loving Jesus, and is introduced to a group of Muslims, Catholics, and homosexuals in heaven. (My personal opinion? Leave it up in the air as a cliffhanger, and ask the reader to decide how forgiving Jesus is.)
Or take the exorcism idea. Right off the bat, the cover of the comic has some demonic child with glowing eyes on it, and a title like “THE TRUTH ABOUT EXORCISM.” Inside, Bob meets Frank for some coffee:
Frank: “You look a little peaked, Bob.”
Bob: “I just don’t know what to do. I think my daughter is possessed!”
Frank: “Possessed? But people don’t get demon possessed. People used to think…”
(capsule history of exorcism follies, plus some real-life exorcisms gone bad. Make sure the pictures are spooky. Remember, fundamentalists love the occult.)
Bob: “But… if that’s true, we’ve got to stop the exorcism! My minister is coming to the house this afternoon!”
Frank: “I’ll help you! Let’s take my car!”
meanwhile, back at the house, the minister is starting his exorcism. Bob and Frank bust through the door and stop him. The last frame shows the daughter, now on prozac, feeling much better now.
Or, as I said, take the SOCAS idea and the SF possibilities. If you want to make it be a (possibly preachy) morality play, have a senator vote for prayer in schools or against gay marriage or some such, on the grounds that this should be a Christian country. Then he’s hit by a car, and knocked out. He then has a vision of a future in which America is ruled by Christians- but somehow he’s not counted as one of the real Christians. (The Real Christians can be identified by their cross armbands, and their extreme intolerance towards Catholics, Methodists, etc. Oh, yes, and their cartoonishly evil demeanor.) He finds that he has no religious freedom, because according to the government he follows a false religion with no rights. For that matter, you could even make the Real Christians be JW’s who forbid him to get a blood transfusion after the accident. Then he wakes up, a unit of blood dripping into his arm, and resolves to become a changed man. Hey, it doesn’t have to win a Hugo. It just has to avoid being completely lame.
For that matter, it would be interesting to make a tract about the WAVE. (It was a high-school civics experiment in which a teacher created a student organization modeled on the Hitler Youth, minus its racist aspects, without telling the students that that was what it was modeled on. It went way, way out of control.)
