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?
Well he always hosts New Years Rockin’ Eve and did all those old movies…
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The deliberate mistruths make them hilarious in a sad, pathetic way. Nothing beats the hilarity of Dark Dungeon, though. That one is as classic as Death Cookie.
You think Chick tracts are something I’d be more likely to encounter in the northern US?
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!
Heard about him in college, along the time I learned about Bob. Hung out with some … interesting types into computers and Band.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And one to the current Pit Thread.
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.
You’re in luck, Jack Chick sells his work on DVD.
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.
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.
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.