COVER STORY THE TERRIFYING WORLD OF JACK CHICK
PETER LAWS explores the work of the shy cartoonist who flooded the world with visions of Hell and theories of demonic conspiracy in an attempt to scare sinners into seeing the light
PETER LAWS explores the work of the shy cartoonist who flooded the world with visions of Hell and theories of demonic conspiracy in an attempt to scare sinners into seeing the light.
When I mentioned on social media that I was writing an article about the late cartoonist Jack Chick, the response was immediate. Posts and messages pinged all day from people saying they’d been traumatised by his work. Some felt anger, some disgust. Some called him cruel and said they’d hated him since childhood. One even told me that she and her friends threw an online party when they heard he’d died in 2016. Others guiltily admitted that while they despised the man, they loved his art and even collected it, sometimes in secret (my own collection stacks up at about 120 Chick works, so far).
Everyone who’d seen his work seemed to have been ‘affected’ by it, and perhaps that’s no surprise. Chick’s art is an unforgettable parade of the grotesque, featuring teenagers hanging themselves, fathers raping their daughters and men eating severed fingers in the rain. Yet it wasn’t the grisly themes that really shook people, it was the messages behind them – coupled with a level of political incorrectness that would make the entire Twittersphere explode.
You see, Chick was a devoted Christian, and his Chick Tracts (small religious comic books) weren’t only anti-gay, anti-evolution, and pretty much anti-everything, they were primarily designed to save us all from Hell.
One commentator called him “the most widely read theologian of all time”, and with over 900 million Chick Tracts printed so far, you can see why. His most popular is called This Was Your Life. It’s been translated into 120 languages (I own one in Zulu), spreading a terrifying vision of evangelical conspiracy theory across the globe. The world, according to Jack Chick, is infected with demonic corruption at all levels of society, politics and (especially) religion.
What made his work even more unsettling, was how it came to most people. Folks
didn’t find his art in galleries, read his strips in a newspaper or find his tracts in the local comic book store. Rather, Chick’s work seemed to find them, magically appearing in the public places where they happened to be. People told me they’d found Chick Tracts tucked in the magazines at the doctor’s office or waiting for them in a public toilet cubicle, perched on the paper dispenser. One man opened up a brand-new heavy metal record to find that, unbeknownst to the store, a Chick Tract had been hidden inside the sleeve. Many others were simply handed tracts directly by strangers in the street – like the hiker who told me about the time he asked a friendly old couple for directions on a poorly marked trail. They slipped a Chick Tract into his hand. For what better direction can there be than one which will help you escape the fires of Hell, as depicted vividly, and repeatedly, in Chick’s work? If you haven’t found a Tract waiting for you yet, the Chick faithful might say the reason is a cosmic one – the Devil has been actively keeping them from you. Until now, of course. This article might be your own chance to see ‘the light’.
Such is the mystique that surrounds a Chick Tract’s journey from pencil, to eye, to soul. It’s seen as part of a divine publishing vision that hopes Chick’s work will find everybody in the end.
GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS
You can spot a Chick Tract instantly. At about 13x7cm, and roughly 20 pages long, the iconic little booklets are just a tad smaller than a bank note. That’s a perfect size for believers to carry in a wallet or tuck into a breast pocket, ready for quick deployment. The covers have stark white text on a sombre, black background on one side, and a twotone illustration on the other. The pictures
Chick Tracts are the perfect size for believers to tuck into a pocket
are usually the stuff of nightmares. Take the tract ‘The Beast’, for example, which shows two weeping parents and their obedient child. They’re being touched by a beringed and robe-shrouded hand reaching from out of the frame. The family have 666 scrawled onto their foreheads: the Mark of the Beast. Imagine finding that on your doorstep. Many didn’t have to imagine. They just did.
Of course, many people who stumble upon Chick Tracts will throw them straight in the bin, disgusted by comics decrying “Satan’s shadowy world of homosexuality” (see The Gay Blade). Others hold on to them, fascinated by their bizarre, kitsch sensibility. Yet for decades, considerable numbers have picked up these little black shockers and ‘found the Lord’; and they are eager to thank Chick Tracts for opening their eyes to “the truth”.
I spoke to David Daniels who took over the running of the company after Chick died. He told me they have cabinets full of testimonies from people who state not only that they were saved by Chick’s work, but which particular tract did the trick. Their website features many conversion stories, such as that of the pastor who says: “I was saved in jail in 1984 after reading a Chick tract!” Or the 15-year-old Hispanic reader: “A lot of people have joined our church and been born again by the tracts.” Or the soldier: “One constant throughout my life is those pesky little Chick tracts that I seemed to find no matter where in the world I went. Even when I was stationed in Japan, there they were. By His grace I am found at last. Thank you for being there all my life.” Daniels even told me of a pastors’ conference where the audience were asked how many people were saved by the tract This Was Your Life. A third of hands went up. According to Chick Publications: “These people were spared a Christless, agonising eternity, because of a given, or well-placed
Chick Tract.”
Perhaps so many convert because it’s too scary not to. After all, Chick eagerly reminds his readers they could die “this very night” (probably in a horrible car crash or due to a demonic STD). Such grim deaths are, however, only the start. The tracts’ true horror comes post-mortem, with hand-drawn panels of foolish unbelievers plunging headlong into the lake of everlasting fire. If only they’d taken their Chick Tracts seriously! Such urgency (coupled with a sense of divine guidance produced by the way these tracts somehow ‘found them’) have shocked and inspired what Daniels calls “thousands upon thousands” of people into repentance. And if they don’t know how to become born again, then Chick Tracts make it easy. A printed sinner’s prayer sits on every back page, along with a blank space for the address of a local church.
Chick Tracts don’t just resonate with ‘sinners’, either. Christians love them too, since they’re the ideal method of evangelism for many modern churchgoers. Chick started his ministry in a post-war America which was increasingly willing to challenge the authority of the Church. If you shared your faith, people might no longer nod in quiet agreement, as they had in the past; and they might try and tear your argument apart, instead. With Chick Tracts, the faithful didn’t have to preach on street corners, or even get into a conversation with a fellow bus passenger. They could just slip a stranger a comic and get the heck out of there, unnoticed and unchallenged. Chick was open about being a shy person himself, so this hit-and-run method was very appealing,
Catholics had created both Communism and the Ku Klux Klan
because even the most timid of Christians could (and indeed should) become an evangelist. Theological training was not required, since Chick had researched ‘the facts’ for them. Yet what he taught (and this is absolutely key to understanding his impact) wasn’t just that he was spreading the Gospel – literally, ‘the good news’. There was also some very bad news he wanted to share – like the fact that our world is wracked with demonic evil and mind-blowing levels of conspiracy; much of it could be traced back to one source: Rome.
EXPOSING THE WHORE
Chick’s world is filled with corrupt and evil groups, but almost all seem to thread back to the Vatican and the Jesuits in particular. He believed Catholics were the ‘whore of Babylon’ as revealed in the book of Revelation, and so he produced a wealth of tracts and comics filled with a dizzying array of anti-Catholic accusations. In a tract called The Poor Pope, for example, he claimed that the Jesuits had helped engineer the American Civil War and arranged to have Lincoln assassinated. In the The Four Horseman he argued that the Vatican masterminded the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the New Age movement and the Mafia. In The Storyteller he claimed the Jesuits organised an assassination attempt on the Pope, and “carefully chose a Muslim to shoot Pope John Paul II. This was to guilt-induce the Muslim world, bringing them still closer to the Roman Catholic Faith!” In Allah Had No Son he said that the Catholic Church invented Islam and that Muhammad was, in fact, a Vatican agent who simply picked “the Moon god” Allah from a list of 360 idols.
In the full-colour comic book The Godfathers he told the story of how Catholics had created both Communism and the Ku Klux Klan; presumably, the Klan’s well-documented hatred of Catholics was a cover story to keep people off the scent. In Holocaust Chick even accused Rome of backing Adolf Hitler (along with Mussolini and Franco) and claimed they were the true architects of the Holocaust itself, because they despised the Jews (who Chick wholeheartedly supported). In The Beast the Pope was revealed as “Satan’s masterpiece”, nothing less than the Antichrist, and Rome’s mission as turning the world away from the true Messiah, Jesus. According to Chick, one of the primary tactics employed by Catholics was to spread theological confusion. They did this by dismissing the King James Version of the Bible – the only true translation according to Chick. It’s a principle that’s still strongly defended by Chick Publications today. For Chick, and his many followers, alternative Biblical translations didn’t reflect developments in linguistics and history or new cultural understandings, they were obvious works of Satanic deception (see the tract The Attack for more).
In The Death Cookie and Man in Black Chick exposed the use of Communion wafers and the doctrine of transubstantiation (which states that the Communion elements mysteriously become the body and blood of Christ). He said this idea came from ancient Egyptian
priests controlled by Satan himself. The Christogram ‘IHS’ wasn’t a contraction derived from the Greek for Jesus, as most Christians believed: it was a blatant homage to the Egyptian Gods, Isis, Horus and Seb.
When he wasn’t calling Catholic tradition plain evil, Chick labelled it useless, as in
The Last Rites, in which John, a supposedly Godly man, is dying after being hit by a car. He’s given his last rites, which he assumes is his ticket to Heaven… until page 21, where a straight-talking God tells him he’s heading straight for Hell! The implication is that Catholic rituals are a waste of time. Crucially, John had foolishly torn up the Chick Tract given to him on page 18 and called it “baloney”. Bad move.
Considering the scale of Chick’s output, such divisive views had a significant impact. Protestants already had sometimes uneasy relations with their Catholic neighbours, and yet, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, Chick was now telling them that they should be terrified of the Church of Rome. Not least because the Vatican held a supercomputer that listed the name of every single Protestant in the world. These files would be used for an organised persecution in the coming days, which might even include murder. In My Name… in the Vatican? Chick claimed that the Catholic Church had already murdered 68 million people between 1200 and 1800.
Unsurprisingly, Catholics weren’t impressed, especially when they kept finding these inflammatory booklets left on the steps of their churches or tucked into new books by the Pope at Catholic stores. Yet just as controversial as the claims themselves was the source of all this information.
Alberto Magno Romero Rivera (1935-1997) insisted he was a former Jesuit priest and bishop who, by the time he met Chick, was weary of all the corruption. He became a whistleblower and, along with Chick, tried to expose what he believed was the most evil organisation on the planet. Entire tracts were designed around Rivera’s claims, and most notably a comic-book sized spin off series called The Crusaders was created by Chick Publications and showed Rome at its most depraved.
Rivera said his insider knowledge was legit and that he’d been given access to the
secret underground libraries at the Vatican. Critics (Catholic and Protestant alike) asked for proof of his hysterical accusations. Chick responded by publishing Rivera’s 1967 ID card, along with letters of certification and other supposed proofs, insisting they weren’t forgeries. Yet few outside the Chick worldview were convinced. In 1980, the widely-read Catholic newspaper Our Sunday Visitor even offered a $10,000 reward to any reader who could produce solid evidence to back up such anti-Catholic accusations. Nobody claimed it – not even Chick himself. Other evidence surfaced instead, suggesting that Rivera had faced various fraud charges and had even fathered two children during his supposed period of celibacy. No official record of Rivera’s ordination was ever found. No certificates. No underground library tickets. This was enough to turn even Chick fans away, but Jack himself (and many of his followers) remained loyal to Rivera. After all, any evidence that painted Rivera in a bad light was just a Catholic plot to silence him!
Today, Chick Publications continue to scatter public spaces with its warnings about the Whore of Babylon, based on Rivera’s claims. This same reliance on controversial ‘advisors’ would help shape Chick’s approach to another of his favourite targets: the organised legions of demonic cults.
A GIGANTIC WITCHES’ COVEN
Satan and his minions leer from the pages of many Chick Tracts, but they aren’t some wild gang of unruly renegades. For Chick, the demonic world was a meticulously strategic movement, focused on the destruction of all that’s good. In The Assignment, Chick shows highly organised demons, assigned
Demons are assigned to corrupt people on a bespoke basis
to corrupt people on a bespoke, individual basis. They like nothing better than encouraging sin, and they work with the Catholics to create and sustain all the cults and new religions of the world. In The Curse of Baphomet (updated as That’s Baphomet?) a Christian tells his Freemason friend Alex that he’s not part of a friendly order of brothers after all – he’s actually worshipping the goat-headed demon, Baphomet! (See FT365:28-35 for more on Baphomet.) Alex just isn’t high enough in the order to be privy to this knowledge. In Good Old Boys Chick has a South American Masonic clan machine-gun a church full of Christians, and in The Visitors he reveals that the Mormons serve the demonic god of Baal, while their founder Joseph Smith is shown to have worshipped Jupiter. In the Crusaders comic Exorcists we learn that there are 300 million Hindu deities and, naturally, “all of them are Satanic!”
As well as the undercover demons hiding behind the mask of ‘religion’, Chick took particular delight in depicting the more overt works of Satan. His cartoons are filled with horror-film sketches of robed figures stabbing victims on altars and undressing for grim, orgiastic rituals. Chick lay much of the blame for Satanism at the door of pop culture, which he saw as a prime tool for ushering in an age in which demons were acceptable and even desirable. A key figure in the hellish propaganda machine was the 1960s show Bewitched, which Chick saw as a gateway drug into Devil worship. Subseqently, his tracts both reflected, and helped fuel, much of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s. In an open letter dated 23 December 1996, he singled out Saturday morning cartoons as a recruiting tool for Satan’s army. Dungeons and Dragons was another particularly insidious threat. His infamous 1984 tract Dark Dungeons showed how D&D could only ever lead to despair and suicide and helped turn the tide of public opinion against roleplaying games in the 1980s.
He kept this up for decades, claiming that our culture is now littered with such doorways to evil. In The Nervous Witch, Samantha (a potential nod to – or sneer at – Elizabeth Mongomery’s character in Bewitched) supports her witch friend – who shouts things like “God is dead!” and “Witches rule!” – until a Christian confronts Samantha, explaining that her mind has been warped… by Harry Potter.
Most dangerous of all, however, was Hallowe’en, which became the target of much of Chick’s ire. In The Devil’s Night , he claimed Hallowe’en was invented by ancient pagan priests in England; the tradition of trick or treating is a reminder of how they used to go from door to door demanding sacrifices for their false god. If the families had nothing to give, the priests took a child and slaughtered it instead. This, he claimed, was the ‘true’ origin of the ‘sick’ custom. Kids in the modern world were still at risk. In The Trick, Druids give out Hallowe’en candy laced with pins, razor blades, crushed glass and poison.
Hallowe’en remains a regular target for Chick Publications, and not just because it’s supposedly the principal night for demonic hi-jinks; it also provides a perfect opportunity for the Chick model of evangelism. Believers are encouraged to stock up on tracts, particularly the ones with Hallowe’en themes, because a ready audience of potential believers is going to come knocking at your door. What could be better than to give them a real treat – a bag of candy with a little comic tucked inside. After all, according to the latest issue of their newsletter, The Battle Cry, “Kids Love Chick Tracts!”
Hallowe’en wasn’t the only time Satan came out to play. He and his cronies were working all year round and, according to Chick, had infiltrated every walk of life. Even the Christian music industry wasn’t safe. In his comic ‘Spellbound’ Chick warns that the growing popularity of Christian rock bands was hardly a wholesome alternative to secular acts like ACDC. For
Chick, even a Christian version of metal could only ever be Satanic. For a start, the music itself (or more specifically, the drums) possessed inherent demonic power. The comic claims that “the same beat the Druids used is in the rock music of today… in both hard and soft rock, the beat is still there!”
Chick was keen to show how comprehensively this ‘Druid music’ could corrupt. In his infamous tract Angels a Christian rock band called Green Angels signs with an agent called Lew Siffer (Geddit? Chick’s strips are filled with names like this). After they sign a contract in blood, their career descends into chaos and tragedy. Band member Bobby turns gay and wants to marry a man. So Siffer thinks: “I’ll give you a little wedding present… some AIDS!” Bobby soon dies from it, while Jim overdoses and Don somehow gets sucked into ‘vampirism’. Tom is the only band member to get out alive, because he finds Christ through a Chick tract and promptly starts telling everyone to burn their rock albums.
Claims of such widespread demonic conspiracy were bolstered by Chick’s growing bank of controversial advisors, such as Rebecca Brown. She was a medical doctor whose books were published by Chick in 1986 (He Came to Set the Captives Free )and 1987 (Prepare for War). Brown shared the story of Elaine, who claimed to have been a senior member of Satanic group ‘The Brotherhood’. So senior, in fact, that she was formally married to Satan himself. Elaine warned of a world that chimed with Chick’s fears. She’d witnessed baby sacrifices and the summoning of eight-foot tall demons. She’d even met the Pope in the Vatican, so they might strategise together for Satan. She met ‘rock music stars’ who had sold their souls to the Devil, and on two occasions she even met a werewolf. Zombies and vampires also exist, she says, but this is a “very closely guarded secret by Satan”. Chick was fascinated by Brown’s claims and, as well as publishing her books, he used her story as an inspiration for tracts like The Poor Little Witch, where a young girl called Mandy is lured into witchcraft on the promise it will improve her netball skills. She’s put off when her new Satanist friends slaughter an infant in front of her and force her to drink the child’s blood from a chalice, and she turns to Christ instead.
Like Alberto Rivera before her, Rebecca Brown was quickly denounced as a fraud by critics. Some accused her of being a paranoid schizophrenic, and she lost her medical licence. She
claimed this was all part of the conspiracy, and that the hospital where she worked had been overrun by witches. David Daniels admitted to me that her books made “a lot of money” but I noticed they no longer sell them on the site. When I asked him why, he simply said that “One day Jack was praying, and the Lord told him to give Rebecca all her stuff back.” So, he obeyed. “He gave her the plates, the rights, all the work, everything.” Brown went on to find another publisher. Her books may be gone from the Chick site, but her influence is still felt through the tracts today.
Another key Chick advisor was John Todd, who claimed to be a former Grand Druid on a mission to expose the secrets of the Illuminati. Todd was convinced that JFK had faked his own death, and that the actress Cindy Williams (Shirley, from Laverne and Shirley) had started a witch cult which became one of the largest homosexual covens in California. In the 1970s, several of Chick’s full-colour comics were based on Todd’s claims.
As we’ve seen, the world of Jack Chick is a nightmarish one. Despite his mission to get us all to Heaven, it’s ironic that he seemed to find that destination uninspiring, artistically speaking. His depictions of a Christian paradise are weirdly banal, with a faceless God – looking more like a giant anthropomorphic alien – sitting on a mysterious throne. Yet, in Chick’s comics, the sicko witches, the fanged demons, the slobbering, obese Catholic priests are all vivid, detailed and full of life. Chick may
have claimed to be a bastion of light, but he seemed far more creatively inspired when depicting evil. Perhaps, that’s because he’d seen the powers of darkness close at hand…
A HEAVENLY WAR
Since Chick saw the world as a clash between cosmic good and evil, it’s no surprise to find that he viewed his own work as a battle. He called his office ‘The War Room’ because, as David Daniels told me, “spiritual warfare takes place there.” Subsequently, Chick was keen to present Christianity as a muscular, battle-ready solution to the world’s ills. It’s seen most clearly in The Sissy?, in which a gruff trucker called Duke is convinced that any turn-theother-cheek Christian must be “a gutless idiot”. Until, that is, a hunky Christian man describes how truly hardcore the crucifixion was (“It cut his muscles and blood vessels to shreds!”). A totally ripped Jesus is shown on the cross, and Duke converts right there in the Truck Stop – because “Jesus had more guts than any man that ever lived… and I love him for that!”
Chick didn’t see believers as weaklings: they were warriors, heading into spiritual battle, and naturally the war brought personal danger too. He wrote The Last Call (one of his earlier tracts) in his lunch and coffee breaks at work and kept the manuscript in his car; when the vehicle burst into flames, he saw it as a spiritual attack. Yet the Lord had his back. When the fire was put out, he found that God had “preserved that book” – and through the insurance, he even “reupholstered my car for me.” Chick was rumoured to have feared assassination. In time, a less dramatic, but no less tragic spiritual battle came closer to home.
His wife Lola had suffered ill health for many years. She died in 1999 while paramedics tried to revive her on the dining room floor – perhaps the very same room where he and his ‘Honey Girl’ had created Jack’s first ever tracts, a lifetime earlier. Yet it was his daughter, Carol, who fell victim to the very evils Chick had warned of for so long. In the authorised biography, it’s revealed that Carol Chick was turned on to witchcraft at high school, was married twice, had an abortion, and became addicted to chemical cocktails which turned her into a wheelchair bound ‘wreck’. She eventually died in 2001, before she turned 50. The pages of a Chick Tract had tragically spilled over into his own family life, yet the shy artist with the macho heart wasn’t about to give up the battle. He kept writing and designing tracts up until his death on Sunday 23 October 2016 – narrowly missing the chance to do battle with one last Hallowe’en. He was surrounded by his fellow workers, who released a social media statement. The company vowed to carry on his mission: “Our promise to you – Nothing changes; The Method, The Vision, The Purpose.”
Chick Publications still thrives today, with new artists taking up the legacy. And with a massive back catalogue of Chick’s work, there seems no sign that Chick Tracts will stop appearing.
TOUGH LOVE
Considering that Chick Tracts have been spotted pretty much everywhere, it’s ironic that during his life their creator was rarely spotted anywhere. He became something of a recluse and a notorious refuser of interviews. Pictures of him were hard to come by until his death, when his successors started sharing theirs.
His reluctance to be interviewed is no surprise to me; looking at his career – and his many, many tracts – we find a man who wanted to be in control. It’s why when talk arose of turning his Crusaders comics into a TV show, he refused. I suspect it’s also why the tracts never carried paid advertising. In a world filled with demonic conspiracies at the highest level, how could Chick ensure that his message wasn’t compromised by relying on outside agencies? He found the answer by focusing on little books of stapled paper sheets that seemed ephemeral; yet the art and ideas they contained had a rare power that still fascinates people today, regardless of their beliefs. The folks at Chick Publications attribute the power of these tracts to the Holy Spirit, moving through the pencil of a man who simply wanted to save us from the forces of darkness. They’d say his motivation was love, not hate.
Yet for others, Chick Tracts can only ever be expressions of prejudice, paranoia and a cruel lack of love. For some, who took a seat in a coffee shop and found a booklet of terror waiting for them, the mere mention of his name brings a chill. One atheist told me that, thanks to Jack Chick, he remains a “mildly paranoid adult”. Now that Chick is gone, perhaps we’ll never know what really
drove him – love, intolerance or something in between. Unless of course we get our answer at the end of life, when we tumble into hellfire to discover that the paranoid world of Jack Chick wasn’t so paranoid after all. As the demons start tearing out our tongues, we might hear his voice echoing from the distant fields of Heaven, saying: “It didn’t have to be this way. I sent you my tracts, but you just didn’t listen.”
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO FT READERS, DIRECT FROM CHICK PUBLICATIONS
I asked David Daniels, head of Chick Publications, if he had any special message to pass on to Fortean Times readers. Here’s what he said:
“This life is temporary. One slip and it’s all over. What matters most is eternity. And placing your faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to pay for your sins is the door to the best there is in eternity. And consider whom you are serving. As Jack would say: “If you are not serving the Lord Jesus Christ, you are serving the loser.” God bless you all as you consider these things. – David”
To read Chick Tracts, visit www.chick.com to view most in their entirety for free. You can also order a selection pack for a reasonable price. Or of course, you can wait for one to appear under your car’s windscreen wiper…
Tract artwork and text ©Jack T Chick LLC, www.chick.com. Used by permission. Cover of You Don’t Know Jack ©2017 by David W. Daniels, www.chick.com. Used by permission.
✒ PETER LAWS is an ordained minister with a fascination for the macabre, an author, journalist, film critic, public speaker and FT regular. He is the creator of the Matt Hunter novel series, the latest of which, Possessed, will be published in February.