Chick Tract Review: There Go the Dinosaurs

Jack Chick sez: See what happened to the dinosaurs, and what will happen to you if you reject Jesus!

Here’s the problem.

I’ve only reviewed eight of Jack Chick’s tracts, and I’m already out of euphemisms for “batshit crazy.” And now that I’ve run across a tract that could have only come from a truly broken mind, I find I have no words to describe it. It appears I shot my hyperbole wad just a little early.

There is a persistent rumor that Chick suffered a stroke in 1996, which would certainly explain the utter bugfuckery of his later works. Case in point: There Go the Dinosaurs.

In this tract, Chick blows the lid off the liberal science agenda and reveals, once and for all, what really happened to the dinosaurs. Hilariously, he even attempts to attribute his theories to the Bible by citing totally unrelated (and somewhat random) verses throughout. Honestly, it’s like looking at a psychotic break committed to paper.

We open with a whimsical prologue, in which an oddly effeminate “dragon” is being chased by spear-toting hillbillies. Seriously. I’m not making this up.

The dragon, which actually resembles a brontosaurus with long, fluttering eyelashes, lumbers up a mountain, obviously out of shape as she gasps for air. She tries to hide herself in a convenient cloud, but the prehistoric rednecks prove too wily for her.  Haw!

Later that evening, as the modern stone-age families are feasting on “yummy dino-burgers,” a hideously deformed monkey boy asks his grandfather why dragons are so hard to find. “They’re a dying breed,” Grandpa informs the young missing link. “Who knows? You may be eating the very last one!”

And with that cold open out of the way, we are thrust into the moist, quivering loins of Jack Chick’s most deranged thesis yet. A misshapen professor with a bow tie and a Hitler mustache is explaining to his class that dinosaurs ruled the world millions of years ago, but they were wiped out by a comet. And as proof, he offers up a drawing of a dinosaur shouting “Yipes!” as a comet barrels down on it.

So is that how the dinosaurs died? Hell, no! Chick isn’t having any of it. He explains that the whole dinosaur/comet theory is just a tale concocted by “people who don’t trust God.” He then offers up his own interpretation of events, which he arrogantly presents as God’s side of the story. “And God should know,” Chick insists. “After all, He was there.”

So here’s how the caper really went down. God made man and animals in the same week, which proves evolution is a lie. And among the animals he created were the dinosaurs. Chick tosses out a couple of random Bible verses to back up his claim, but I suspect he actually gleaned most of his information from watching a documentary entitled “The Flintstones.”

If you’ve ever been to Sunday School, you’re probably at least passingly familiar with the next part of the story. Although, to be fair, I don’t remember there being a lot of dinosaurs in it.

Adam and Eve get booted out of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit. Cain kills Abel. Mankind goes to hell in a bucket and starts sacrificing children to large, angry muppets. And God tells Noah to build his ark.

At this point, Chick informs us that God put “dragons and other animals in the ark.” And in a totally hilarious footnote, he tells us that the “dragons” were officially renamed “dinosaurs” in 1841. Probably by the Vatican.

So it turns out that the dragons/dinosaurs survived the Great Flood, and wandered free after the waters subsided. But, and here’s the kicker, the flood had destroyed trillions of plants. Without those plants, there wasn’t enough oxygen to support the dinosaurs, so “they got slower and easier to catch.”

The little monkey boy laments that he never got to see the Garden of Eden, or the world before the flood. “That’s the price of sin, my boy!” his grandfather tells him.  Which kind of sucks because, as far as I know, the dinosaurs weren’t the ones doing all the sinning.

Anyway, Chick must have realized at this point that he didn’t have quite enough dinosaur material to fill an entire pamphlet, because he segues into a retelling of the life of Christ.  First, he reminds us that God is going to eventually destroy the world with fire. Then he tells us how Jesus came to earth to die for our sins so we can “miss the coming wrath of God.”

We finally reach the end of a tract that was, in all likelihood, originally scrawled on Chick’s bedroom wall in his own feces. In a desperate attempt to tie the last half of the pamphlet back to the dinosaur topic, Chick concludes with “The real issue isn’t where the dinosaurs went… It’s where YOU will go when you die.”

Praise the Lord and pass the dino-burgers!

Chick Parody: Who Will Be Eaten First?

This parody was created by artist Howard Hallis, who took a Chick tract entitled The Choice and gave it a brilliant Lovecraftian twist. Hallis was threatened with legal action from Chick Publications in 2004 and took the offending material down. Fortunately, nothing is lost forever on Nobel Prize winner Al Gore’s internet. I found this copy on the Purple Monkey Mafia website (Eris bless ‘em).

Chick Tract Review: The Devil’s Night

Jack Chick sez: In this children’s book, Li’l Susy tells her friend, Buffy, how Halloween got started, and how everyone must choose between Jesus and Satan.

After the misguided morality play of Happy Halloween and the ill-advised treacle of The Little Princess, Jack Chick once again leaps headfirst into the swirling abyss of Halloween insanity with The Devil’s Night. And since the protagonist of this piece is none other than Li’l Susy Barnes, you know we’re in for some vintage Chick madness.

We open with a little girl named Buffy (ooh, take *that*, Joss Whedon!) looking at Halloween decorations with her mom. Buffy finds the whole thing scary, but her mom just gushes on and on about how she loves Halloween.

Later, we see the dreaded harridan Ms. Henn showing a drawing of Satan to her class while informing them that they’re going to spend the day drawing Halloween pictures. “And tomorrow,” she tells them gleefully, “you’ll come to school in costumes.” And the kids go wild! They love the idea! Even the principal, Mr. Harvey, is impressed with how much Ms. Henn’s class loves Halloween, which is kind of odd because I never figured Halloween was that tough to sell. I mean, it’s not like it’s one of those fruity made-up holidays, like Arbor Day or Canadian Thanksgiving.

But rather than bask in her victory, Ms. Henn grouses about the “stone in her shoe” named Li’l Susy.

Li’l Susy, in case you forgot, is being raised by her grandfather, a dashing man with an eyepatch who sits around the house in a tuxedo shirt, drinking coffee. Grandpa is also a devout Christian of the crazed fundamentalist variety, and is the source of Li’l Susy’s irrational hatred of all things non-Jesusy. When Li’l Susy gets home from school, she states emphatically that she’s *not* going to dress up like a witch. Grandpa insists that Li’l Susy MUST obey Ms. Henn, as it commands in the Book of Romans. “But Susy,” he says slyly as he sips his Emerald Espresso Mist Blend, “there’s all kinds of costumes.”

And so, Li’l Susy puts the kibosh on Ms. Henn’s fun-filled Halloween festivities by showing up in a Santa Claus costume. Apparently, in his zeal to condemn the pagan origins of Halloween, Jack Chick sort of forgot all about the pagan origins of Santa. Ms. Henn is so incensed by the passive-aggressive gesture that even her ass can’t help but think about how much it hates Li’l Susy.

After these wacky shenanigans, we get to the meat of the tract. Susy’s friend Buffy (whom we met at the beginning of the story) complains that Halloween is too spooky, and she’s afraid of ugly things like ghosts, monsters, and spiders. And, presumably, Catholics and gay people. She asks Li’l Susy why Halloween is like that, and Susy informs her that Halloween is the devil’s night, “and all the witches love it.”

Well, you know how it is with Li’l Susy. Once she gets in harangue mode, not even Bill O’Reilly could shut her down. She launches into a sordid tale that manages to condense all of Jack Chick’s half-assed Halloween conspiracy theories into a tasty nugget of pure batshittery. It’s like a unified field theory for druids, evil spirits, Satan, witches, human sacrifice, and the Death Lord Saman.

Most disturbing of all is that Susy prefaces her insane diatribe by telling Buffy, “My grandpa explained it to me this way.” And you have to wonder, what kind of responsible adult tells these kinds of things to an eight-year-old girl? Of course, Jack Chick claims that this is a “children’s book,” so I can only hope his visits with his own grandchildren are closely monitored by Social Services.

Anyway, it all started in old England, according to Grandpa (who might need to have his medication adjusted). The people lived in fear because they were a bunch of filthy pagans who hadn’t heard about God yet. And a group of satanic priests, known as the druids, were in control.

Every October 31st, Saman (the Lord of Death) would unleash a bunch of evil spirits to terrorize and torment the poor, dumb pagan bastards. So the druids would light huge fires and dance around them in masks and animal costumes to drive the restless souls away. Because if there’s one thing wicked spirits can’t stand, it’s interpretive dance.

As payment for their services, the druids would go door to door, demanding Skittles and tiny Snickers bars. If the family couldn’t spare any food, the druids would take one of their children instead. Either way, they would leave behind a Jack-o-Lantern to show that the family had paid, because receipts hadn’t been invented yet.

At this point, Buffy is so horrified by Susy’s tale that she physically transforms into Gollum! But Susy’s just getting warmed up.

You see, Susy’s story isn’t just a tale of ancient terror. That kind of stuff still goes on this very day! Evil druids are abducting children and sacrificing them on Halloween, Susy explains, which is why kids should never “go off by themselves or go anywhere with a stranger.” So forget all those after-school specials you may have seen about sexual predators, because apparently those were just clever lies made up by the druids to throw people off their trail.

Anyway, all those druids and witches will end up in hell, but Susy’s glad she won’t because her Grandpa told her about Jesus. I’m glad he found the time to slip the occasional Bible lesson into his blood-drenched bedtime stories about demons and human sacrifice. Of course, Buffy has no idea what she’s talking about, so Li’l Susy gets her proselytizing finger to wagging.

We learn how Satan got his ass kicked out of Heaven by Jesus. In retaliation, he tricked Adam and Eve into disobeying God, thus condemning the entire human race to Hell. Only Jesus, who is actually God (in much the same way that Bruce Wayne is actually Batman, I guess), came up with a clever and needlessly circuitous plan that involved coming down to Earth in human form, letting Himself be crucified, and then coming back to life. Admittedly, that last part was the tricky bit, otherwise any one of us might have been able to pull it off. But somehow, by doing that, He was able to keep Himself from casting us into Hell, because His blood washed away our sins or… something. To be honest, the whole story stops making sense when you look at it too closely. Kind of like Lost.

But fortunately, Buffy has no problem buying into Susy’s labyrinthine theology; she gets saved and instantly loses her fear of vampires. As she and Susy do their Christian Dance™, Li’l Susy brags about her brilliant plan to “reach lots of kids on Halloween night.”

“What we do is really neat!” Susy exclaims with far more enthusiasm than the situation warrants, because it turns out that her cunning scheme basically involves handing out Chick tracts to trick-or-treaters. Frankly, I’m disappointed that Chick didn’t show Susy reading The Little Princess and getting the idea from there, because a Chick tract about somebody reading a Chick tract about somebody handing out Chick tracts would be more awesome than Rush Limbaugh’s death rattle!

And… that’s about it. Jack wraps things up by informing us that “Halloween is the devil’s night,” and asking whom we will follow: “The old devil who’s going to hell? Or JESUS… who loves you?” And even though it’s obviously a rhetorical question, Chick apparently doesn’t think his readers are smart enough to figure it out, so he includes a helpful Bible verse to point them in the right direction.

Got it. Thanks, Jack!

Chick Tract Review: Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn

Jack Chick sez: School children are taught that we don’t need God, because we are just animals who came from apes. But Susy tells her young friend that God made us, and sent his Son to give us eternal life. A children’s tract.

Evolution is a thorny subject for many Christians, one that has effectively divided the faith into two groups: those who believe science is a vast godless conspiracy designed to undermine the teachings of the Bible, and those who have actually read a book. Jack Chick definitely pledges his allegiance to the former and, in his tract Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn, attempts to blow the lid off of the satanic liberal science agenda.

In this tract, we are introduced to the vile and despicable Ms. Henn. You can tell she’s a horrible person because 1) Chick subtly portrays her as a snarling hag, and 2) she goes by the liberal feminist honorific of “Ms.”

Ms. Henn is a new teacher, taking over the class of Mrs. Tucker, who just had twins. She immediately launches into her lesson, which seems to consist of showing pictures of spaceships and telling the kids how wonderful human beings are. But it turns out that this is just a clever way for her to unveil her true agenda… teaching EVOLUTION!!! Not because it’s science, and not because it’s a part of the established school curriculum, but because she’s evil! EEEEEEEVIL!

It’s interesting to note that Ms. Henn isn’t actually teaching anything related to science. Instead, she’s offering up the Chickified™ interpretation, one that is easily picked apart and disproved. A lot of fundamentalists like Jack Chick imagine there is some kind of struggle going on between scientists and Christians, where scientists keep trying to prove evolution but Christians keep poking holes in their precious theories. What they don’t seem to realize is that these theories were disproved by OTHER SCIENTISTS. And once a theory is invalidated, it is either discarded or amended to take the new data into account. In other words, it evolves. So the idea of stubborn scientists clinging to outdated theories in light of overwhelming Christian evidence is… well, it’s fucking hilarious.

For those of you who still believe evolution means men came from monkeys, let me first say thanks for taking the trouble to have somebody read this blog post to you. Evolution is a theory that postulates, among other things, that men and apes evolved from common ancestors. And while the vast majority of scientists accept the theory as the the most likely (and most elegant) explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, anyone hyperbolic enough to claim it had been “proven” would be laughed out of his or her white lab coat.

Anyway, Ms. Henn’s “science” lesson is interrupted by none other than Li’l Susy Barnes, the adorable little waif packed with enough religious paranoia to fuel several Ann Coulters. Li’l Susy claims that Ms. Henn is calling God a liar, and the incensed teacher drags her out into the hallway to read her the riot act. She takes Li’l Susy’s interjection personally, and basically threatens to ruin her life if she ever opens her mouth again. I know Jack Chick has never studied science, but it’s scenes like this that make me wonder if he ever actually went to school.

Ms. Henn continues with her satanic dinosaur lessons, while Li’l Susy prays silently to the Lord for guidance. And when class is over, her prayers are answered when she is approached by her classmate Timmy. Timmy asks what she meant when she said Ms. Henn was calling God a liar, and Susy explains that the earth was created in only 6 days, not over the course of millions of years. Because that’s a much more plausible theory. Susy goes on to explain the Book of Genesis to her pal Timmy, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Don Knotts.

Li’l Susy explains how Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church, then segues smoothly into the afterlife. Timmy optimistically hopes that everybody goes to heaven when they die, but Susy quickly disabuses him of that retarded notion. Most people, she insists, will end up in hell.

At this point, you’re probably saying, “Hey, wait a minute! What does that have to do with evolution?” Well, shut up, dumbass. I’m getting to it.

You see, it turns out that evolution is a lie created by the devil to keep people out of heaven. Because if people believe that they came from apes, they won’t pay attention to God. And… um… well, I guess it makes about as much sense as Satan’s lame Halloween scheme.

Timmy is understandably terrified by the notion that science will send him to hell, but Li’l Susy explains how Jesus did something very special “to make sure the ol’ devil doesn’t get you when you die.” And if you’ve been paying attention, I’m sure you know where this is going…

Timmy is swayed by Li’l Susy’s proselytizing, and asks Jesus to come into his heart and save him from evolution. So it’s a happy ending, at least for now. Timmy may end up regretting his decision when he dies and finds himself sharing the afterlife with a bunch of murderers and drug dealers.

No doubt Jack Chick imagined school children all over the nation would be provoked by his fiery rhetoric and would rise up in rebellion against the dark sarcasm in the classroom. So to nip these youthful riots in the bud, he provided an odd coda to Li’l Susy’s war on science. Susy reminds Timmy (and us) that even though Ms. Henn is wrong, she is to be respected because she is a teacher.

But believing in evolution will still send you to hell, so don’t get too comfortable, you Scienazis!

A Message to the Unwashed Masses

Welcome to the Bible Belt, oh mysterious traveler from afar. No doubt you find our ways puzzling, even troubling, to your liberal wife-swapping Ivy League hippie sensibilities. How you came to be here is something of a mystery. Perhaps you were on your way to Burning Man and your car broke down. Or maybe you were on your way to Mexico to buy drugs, and your car broke down. It’s entirely possible that you were simply headed west to indulge in the sodomy, prostitution, or polygamy of California, Nevada, or Utah, and your car broke down. But it doesn’t matter what transpired to strand a sinner like you amongst God’s chosen. He has delivered you unto us, and now we must make every effort to save your soul before He smites you for your wickedness or your car gets fixed.

I’m sure you have many questions, but perhaps you are reluctant to ask them because you are afraid we will be offended by your heretical ways and drag you to death behind our pickup trucks. That is why, as a service for all visiting sinners, we have provided the following list of Frequently Asked Questions. Understand that this meager resource can hardly take the place of an education gained from reading the Bible, the Left Behind series, and all of Jack Chick’s tracts, but it is as good a place as any to start you down the path of righteousness.

The Bible Belt. Putting the “fun” back into “fundamentalist.”

What *is* the Bible Belt?
The Bible Belt is a series of states that have joined together to fight against the secular humanists, Jews, gays, Papists, liberals, and Satanists who seek to persecute us for our belief. The Bible Belt is a haven of religious liberty, where people can feel free to worship as they wish, no matter if they are Southern Baptist, Evangelical, Neo-evangelical, or Pentecostal.

What do you people believe, exactly?
We believe that an invisible man (“God”) in the sky (“Heaven”) is waging war over your immortal soul against an evil red man with horns (“Satan”) who lives in the center of the Earth (“Hell”). As part of an elaborate plot to keep you out of Hell, the invisible man let the Jews kill his son (“Jesus”), who came back from the dead on Easter, which is why we hide eggs. Anyone who refuses to accept this blindly and without question is doomed to an eternity of burning and torment. This also applies to anyone who was born in a country that doesn’t worship the Baby Jesus, or those who worship a different Baby Jesus than we do.

Many people are resistant to these teachings at first, but most of them gradually come around to our way of thinking once we’ve held their head underwater for four minutes. Our beliefs are succinctly summed up by the Bible verse John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life, unless they’re gay.”
(New Red State Edition – an authentic translation of the Bible in its original English)

How do you guys feel about sex before marriage?
Sex before marriage is a sin. Sex after marriage is frowned upon as well. In fact, sex of any shape or form is filthy and should be discouraged. Unfortunately, rising above our carnal desires has had the unintended effect of diminishing our numbers. That’s why we’re so evangelical; since we don’t reproduce, we’re forced to recruit others to our cause just to keep our rosters active. Sort of like gay people.

You guys really seem to have it in for the gays. Why is that?
Ever since homosexuality was invented in the 1960s, the gays have posed a constant threat to the very moral fiber of this great nation. They’ve often aligned themselves with radical extremists like the ACLU in an effort to force their gay agenda on the rest of us. And now, our nation is faced with the issue of gay marriage, a hot-button topic that everyone really starts caring about right before elections. The fact is, if gay marriage is legalized, then its only a matter of time before bands of marauding homosexuals come marching down from the hills, divorcing good Christian folk at gunpoint, and forcing them into same-sex marriages. Besides, everyone knows that gay people don’t really love each other. They only reason they want to get married is to make the Baby Jesus cry.

What is Intelligent Design?
The liberal, godless Scienazis would have you believe that man came from monkeys, and they’re always bandying around their high-faluting “data” and their fancy-pants “scientific method” like they think that kind of talk will impress anybody. If their theory is so great, then why do they keep changing it every time they discover something new? That’s not science; that’s just flip-flopping.

To counter their outlandish monkey stories, we’ve come up with our own theories based on science. We postulate that God created everything in six days, made man out of dirt, and buried dinosaur bones to mess with the secular humanists. And unlike those wimpy evolutionists, our theories are in no way based on “data,” so there’s no danger of them changing.

Besides, it’s a matter of simple logic. God made man out of dirt, which is why man must constantly bathe. Have you ever seen a monkey bathe? Case closed.

Do you guys really believe that the Bible is the literal and unerring word of God?
Yes, because it says so, right there in the Bible!

What does it mean to speak in tongues?
It is a blessing that only occurs to those who manage to successfully rid their brains of all extraneous distractions, like thoughts and ideas. When this happens, the Holy Spirit fills that person up and demonstrates God’s majesty by making that person flail around and talk in an incomprehensible moon-man language.

But we understand that not everybody can be chosen to be a babbling, nonsensical instrument of our Lord. If you’re ever attending a service and start to feel left out because of your glossolalia impairment, feel free to join in by repeating the following phrases in a quick, high-pitched voice:

She came in a Honda.
Untie my bow tie.

If you have trouble remembering these, you can also achieve the same result by spelling the name Eddie over and over again. (“E-D-D-I-E-E-D-D-I-EEEEEEEEEE!”)

Do you guys have any enemies?
Of course we do! Apart from the usual gays, secularists, Muslims, Mormons, Papists, stem cells, French, intellectuals, and people who play Dungeons and Dragons, we have to keep a constant vigil against the Jews, who have infiltrated our entertainment industry and now control it along with the international banking cartels, which are the root of modern day communism. We’re also constantly dealing with Madelyn Murray O’Hair, who keeps rising from the grave to get TV shows canceled because they say “God” on the air, or the tireless crusades of liberals, who often kidnap orphans and grind them up to fuel their Bible burning machines.

But our greatest enemy is Satan and his nefarious demons, who are responsible for every ailment, affliction, and deviant behavior. Demons cause everything bad, from gout to gayness. Fortunately, these ailments are treatable, once the demons are cast out. A word of warning: Some people think that casting out demons requires an official “exorcist,” but this is merely a fallacy perpetuated by the Papists. The fact is, demons can be cast out by *any* evangelist with a radio or TV show.

Is it possible to be Christian *and* be intelligent?
Some people think so, but they practice a brand of inclusive, tolerant Christianity that flies in the face of everything Christ stood for. We fundamentalists tend to eschew that hippie liberal stuff and stick to the basics. After all, what’s the fun of going to Heaven if just anybody can get in?

At what age can someone become a Christian?
The Papists believe that sprinkling infants will make them Christians, but we heartily disagree. The disposition of your immortal soul is perhaps one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make, so you should be at least five or six years old so you can consider the matter diligently.

Our Lord is fond of children. And while we no longer sacrifice them to Him like we used to, we still like to celebrate His love with this beautiful song that children sing in Sunday School:

Jesus loves the little Baptists
All the Baptists of the world.
White and white and white and white,
They are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the Baptists of the world.

We hope you have found this FAQ to be helpful and informative. The internets were originally created by Al Gore back in the 1970s so he and his godless accomplices could send pornography and facts about Chuck Norris back and forth to each other. However, it was our fervent hope to silk purse that sow’s ear by using their wicked bandwidth to spread the message of God’s love and mercy to those who are, no offense, probably as close to Heaven as you’re ever going to get.

But if you’ve been moved by what you’ve read, then you probably feel a pounding in your chest right now. That’s Jesus, knocking on your heart. Open it up, let him in, and experience the sheer joy that comes from knowing that you have escaped the eternal torment of Hell. Unless you’re gay.

Chick Tract Review: Li’l Susy

Jack Chick sez: Abandoned by her earthly father, Kathy [sic] learns about her heavenly Father, and His love that will never let her down. A great message for children.

Ah, Li’l Susy Barnes. Never was there a more appropriate mouthpiece for Jack Chick’s insanity than this cute little moppet.

There’s no doubt that when Chick first conceived of Li’l Susy, he envisioned her as an innocent child — guileless yet wise beyond her years — who had yet to be corrupted by the wicked liberal world. But it turns out that Chick’s militant messages of intolerance are even more jarring when being delivered by a smiling, rosy-cheeked little girl. So in a way, Li’l Susy is just like a Chick tract — adorable and childlike on the surface, but full of batshit crazy and hate on the inside.

Our story opens with the eponymous Susy talking with her friend Cathy about how she doesn’t have a mom. And two panels in, we get our first jarring reminder of just how fucked up Jack Chick is. Cathy asks if Susy’s mom left home, and Susy replies, “No, she loved me.” So apparently divorce is caused by parents not loving their kids. A great message for children, indeed!

Anyway, we find out that Susy’s mother died during childbirth (so I guess her love was sort of implied) and Susy’s father died of a heart attack last year. So now Susy lives with her grandpa, who is instilling her with good, wholesome Christian™ virtues.

Cathy tries once again to turn the conversation back to her problems. Her dad ran off to marry another lady and now wants nothing to do with her or her mother. “He hates us,” Cathy insists. “That’s why my mom and I cry a lot.”

Eager to comfort her unwashed heathen of a friend, Susy relates how she cried and cried when her daddy died until her grandpa finally had enough of her silly mourning and showed her how to get a new father. Basically, it involved drugging a stranger at a rest stop and chaining him up in the basement.

No, I kid. Susy insists that her new father loves her and watches over her, so I guess you can see where this is going. She also insists that her father is her grandpa’s father as well, which is probably a confusing concept to those folks who don’t live in the red states. Anyway, Susy gets her proselytizing finger wagging as she informs Cathy that her new father lives in heaven, and there is only one way she can meet him.

(By the way, Jack Chick has a habit of bolding and italicizing totally random words in his dialog. At first I thought it might be some kind of secret code, so I went through the tract and tried to piece together his hidden message:

Have loved still anything hates new what new so that’s not fair your so grandpa’s teasing really one way tell me tell me me everything this perfect sin mean he sinned really everything lie Bible trouble that terrible hated loves only way only hate alive never lost wow still sorry believe new wonderful God’s not gone me sisters you never.

Not sure what it means, but I suspect it contains veiled references to the shepherdess, no temptation, and noon blue apples.)

Anyway, Susy relates the story of how God sent his only Son to Earth by putting him inside a virgin. That baby’s name, incidentally, was Jesus. And as Baby Jesus grew into Grown Up Jesus, He never sinned. Cathy is a bit confused by the concept of sin and makes the mistake of asking Susy to explain. And in the midst of her explanation, Li’l Susy Barnes goes apeshit. I don’t know how else to describe it. One second, she’s a cute little girl. The next, she’s a fiery instrument of God’s vengeance.

I can only imagine that’s the look that Mr. Chick gets on his face when he thinks about Catholics or gay people.

Cathy is suddenly afraid that she’s on the outs with God as well because, as she confesses, “I lie a lot!” Which leads me to suspect that her dad never really left and she made the whole thing up just to get sympathy. Susy comforts her by telling her that liars can’t get into heaven. And just as the looming threat of eternal damnation is about to erupt the aneurysm in Cathy’s head, Susy begins relating the story of the Crucifixion in exquisite, CSI-level detail.

Anyway, Jesus died on the cross, but He got better so now we can all get into heaven no matter how vile and despicable we are. So in spite of the lies she’s told, Cathy will get to spend eternity with all the rapists and serial killers that inhabit Jack Chick’s vision of paradise.

So, to recap: Cathy is suffering from abandonment issues because her dad left home, and turns to her friend Li’l Susy to comfort her. The first thing Susy does is imply that her father left because he didn’t love her. Then she pitches the idea of letting God be her “new Daddy,” and sells it by describing how God sent His son away to die horribly. You’d think this would make things worse for Cathy, but she seems totally fine with the idea.

As this heartwarming story wraps up, Susy gleefully informs Cathy that she no longer has to worry about hell because “you’re on the way to heaven with me!” She then plunges a ceremonial dagger into Cathy’s neck, sealing the infernal bargain with the blood of the innocent.

No, again I kid. She and Cathy throw their arms around each other and revel in the fact that now they’re sisters. Chick wraps things up with the quotation of John 3:16, conveniently annotated and interpreted so that even people who get their spiritual guidance from comic books can understand it.

And… scene.

Not one of Mr. Chick’s more interesting efforts, but important because it introduces us to the character of Li’l Susy Barnes, who will crop up again and again in later tracts to pit her precocious wisdom and childlike innocence against the nefarious machinations of Muslims, scientists, gay people, and druids.

Chick Trope: Hot Chick on Chick Action

Occasionally, you’ll be reading through a Chick tract, and you’ll stumble across one of the characters reading a Chick tract! Elaborate metafictional construct, or blatant product placement? YOU be the judge!

Trust Me

I’m not sure if this really counts or not, since there is no Jack Chick tract entitled Jesus Loves You. Yet. But this would not be the last time Chick visited the idea of leading prisoners to the Lord through comic books…

The Bull

Here we see the titular “Bull” consigned to solitary confinement (or “the hole”). Fortunately, somebody was kind enough to leave him the Chick tract Somebody Loves Me, which is the heartwarming story of a child who gets beaten to death by his father and dies alone in the street. Hallelujah!

The Little Princess

Chick loves leading people to the Lord with dead children. The Little Princess is the story of a terminally ill girl whose last request is to go trick or treating. Fortunately, some elderly neighbors drop a copy of Chick’s Happy Halloween into her candy bag, thus saving her from an eternity in hell when she dies later that evening.

Somebody Goofed!/Oops!


Here we have an interesting parallel example in Somebody Goofed! and Oops!, which was the exact same story as Somebody Goofed!, only (and I quote) “adapted for Black audiences.” Jack Chick never actually published a tract entitled You Must Be Born Again, so I don’t know if this one counts. However, I’m assuming the You Must Be Born Again tract in the second panel is one that was specifically adapted for Black audiences…

The Letter

Here we see a kindly man trying to lead a hateful woman to Christ with the help of Somebody Loves Me. Personally, I like to think the man is a slimmed down and freshly toupeed Bull, recently paroled and trying to share the very same tract he found in his prison cell. Which means that rude lady will probably be lying in a shallow grave by the side of the road within a few hours.

Angels?

A Christian rock band (with their hit “We’re Gonna Rock, Rock, Rock, Rock with the Rock!”) sells out to a sinister agent named Lew Siffer (get it?) and descends into the kind of madness that could only be pulled from the wrinkled ass crack of Jack Chick. The band falls apart. Bobby dies of AIDS. Jim overdoses. And Don, somehow, becomes a vampire. Fortunately, one of Tom’s fans slips a copy of Chick’s The Contract into his pocket, and he comes to Jesus (as soon as he opens the thing) and rebukes Mr. Siffer. No idea what happens to Don.

Chick Tract Review: The Little Princess

Jack Chick sez: Heidi is terribly sick. But when she gets saved on Halloween night, her whole family finds Christ too. An emotional story with a happy ending.

Every once in a while, Jack Chick gets a little meta and gives us a Chick tract that tells the story of somebody reading a Chick tract. Whoa. Is that lumpy, gray paint on your walls, or did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? It may seem a tad indulgent, but it’s that kind of self-promotion that helped Mr. Chick turn his funnybook ministry into a hate-spewing empire.

So while The Little Princess does take place on Halloween night, Chick eschews his usual rants against Satan and druids and instead focuses on the heartbreaking story of dying little girl and the elderly couple who lead her Jesus with… well, a Chick tract.

We open with adorable little Heidi Spencer getting a medical examination. The doctor, obviously concerned by the fact that Heidi’s spine is on the outside, meets with Heidi’s mom and informs her that her daughter will probably be dead in a couple of weeks.

Facing her own mortality, Heidi informs her parents there’s ONE THING she wants to do before she dies. Unfortunately, it’s not “drink champagne from the skull of Ann Coulter,” because that would have been wicked cool. No, Heidi’s last request is to go trick-or-treating. It is also here that we find out, through subtle, expository dialog, that Heidi’s family doesn’t know about Heaven™, and therefore must not be Christians™.

Come Halloween night, Heidi dresses as the titular Little Princess and goes trick-or-treating with her cowboy brother Josh. After half an hour of hitting the houses, poor Heidi cries out for help and falls to the pavement with a horrendous thud!

Fortunately, Heidi hasn’t eaten any cursed devil candy or anything like that. It’s just that pesky disease rearing its ugly head. Josh insists that they go home, but little Heidi wants to visit one more house before calling it a night. She wants to visit their new neighbors, the Smiths. The new neighbors drop some candy into the kids’ sack, along with a copy of Jack Chick’s Happy Halloween tract. And as they watch poor Heidi stagger away into the darkness, they decide the best thing to do is pray for her.

Meanwhile, as poor Heidi wastes away on her death bed, she pages through the tract she received from the Smiths. And presumably after reading the harrowing account of Timmy’s eternal damnation, she demands to see the Smiths right away. Before it’s TOO LATE!

When the Smiths arrive at Heidi’s bedside, she tells them that she asked Jesus to be her Saviour. And since she uses the European spelling, I can only assume she does it in a British accent. The Smiths congratulate her on being scared into Heaven, and Heidi gushes about how everything is perfect now. Except for one thing. As we’ve established, her parents aren’t Christians™, which means they’re going to Hell. Which, if you’ve read many Jack Chick tracts, you’ll realize is actually populated with much nicer people than Heaven. But I digress…

The Smiths make with the proselytizing. They inform Heidi’s family that they aren’t there by accident, but rather they were sent by God to save them from Hell. They smoothly segue from Heidi’s imminent death to God, who sent His only begotten Son to die. The news startles Heidi’s mom so much that her hair begins to glow.

So the Smiths tell the story about how God loves us so much that He let His Son be killed so He wouldn’t have to toss us into Hell. And the Spencers find absolutely nothing odd or implausible about that scenario. Mrs. Smith bursts into Heidi’s room and yanks her out of bed to tell her the good news. While glowing. What the hell is up with that?

That night, an angel comes to claim the soul of Heidi. Fortunately, he doesn’t cast her into a lake of fire as Chick’s angels are wont to do. Instead, he carries her up to Heaven, where she runs into the arms of Jesus, a bird, and a talking mannequin.

So that’s it. We close with a tearful Josh Spencer setting his sister’s princess crown on her tombstone, and Jack Chick leaves us with a cheerful reminder of our own mortality. All in all, a fairly tame outing for our esteemed Mr. Chick. Much more glurgy than usual. And not one single “Haw, haw, haw!”

I mean, come on, Jack! The least you could have done was have Josh get killed by druids and sent to Hell! Then you could have closed with Heidi looking down at her tormented brother from Heaven and saying, “Poor Josh. Too bad he didn’t accept Jesus as his Saviour like *I* did. Oh well…” And then we’d see her scamper off to spend eternity with all the rapists and serial killers who recanted on their death beds.

And people wonder why I quit going to church…

Chick Tract Review: Happy Halloween

Jack Chick sez: It was supposed to be a fun Halloween, visiting a “Haunted House” for a great scare. But when an accident claims a boy’s life, his friends learn there is a real hell waiting for all those who die without Jesus.

For his next Halloween tale, Jack Chick takes a break from the usual conspiracy of witches and druids. Instead, he offers up a parable to demonstrate that God, not good works, will get you into Heaven. Jack is obsessed with this particular trope, and is apparently convinced that Hell is full of good people, while Heaven is packed with dickweeds who skated through the Pearly Gates on a technicality.

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Halloween. But, hey. Whatever.

It’s Halloween night, and three friends have gathered in front of the local spook house. Bobby, with his delicate, feminine features and Adolph Hitler haircut, is the protagonist of our little morality play. His buddy Timmy is a brash and smirking young tough who looks quite street in his zigzag sweater. Filling out the trio is a bespectacled whiny nerd who never gets a name. However, he wears glasses and sort of looks like Harry Potter, so I’ll call him Harry.

Timmy wants to go into the haunted house, but Harry is reluctant because his mom said not to. Timmy calls him a chicken and, unable to resist the seductive pull of peer pressure, Harry acquiesces.

And oh, what a haunted house. There’s a giant spider, and a witch, and a trap door that dumps the three kids into a tableau of Hell. And when Faux Satan informs them that they’ll be spending ETERNITY there, they gasp audibly and flee.

Make no mistake about it, the boys are terrified. In fact, Timmy is so shaken by the harrowing ordeal brought to him by the local March of Dimes that he runs blindly into the street and gets run down, despite the reflective stripes on his sleeve.

Because he “died in [his] sins,” poor Timmy finds himself consigned to Hell, which looks a lot like the fake Hell from the Haunted House. Satan, who apparently has ample time to meet and greet each new arrival personally, even taunts Timmy with the same speech about how he’ll be there for ETERNITY! And yeah, I imagine burning in Hell is pretty bad. But burning in Hell while wearing a sweater? That’s got to SUCK!

Meanwhile, Bobby and Harry are pretty distraught over the grisly death of their friend. And who could blame them? Fortunately, Harry’s mom is Mrs. Baxter, the Sunday school teacher. The boys turn to her in their grief, and Mrs. Baxter comforts them by assuring them that Timmy is roasting in Hell.

You see, Mrs. Baxter tried to lead Timmy to Christ, but he wasn’t having any of it. He called her a fanatic and he laughed at her, so I guess he deserved what happened to him. Mrs. Baxter explains that Timmy quit Sunday school because he was more concerned with impressing his worldly friends, such as the local chapter of NAMBLA…

Because of that bad decision, Mrs. Baxter says, Timmy was sent to Hell forever! And it doesn’t matter that Timmy was a good kid, because that whole belief that good people go to Heaven and evil people go to Hell is “a lie straight from the devil.” We’ve all sinned, which means we’re all bound for Hell. But God loved us so much that he decided to create a little loophole. Basically, all you have to do is pick the right religion out of the 4,000,000,000,000 possible choices, and you’ll get into Heaven with all of the rapists and murderers.

By this point, poor Bobby’s mascara is running. He asks one last time if there’s any hope for his good friend Timmy, and Mrs. Baxter tells him no. Timmy screwed up and must now spend eternity burning in Hell. Case closed.

Well, that’s all Bobby has to hear. He drops to his knees and asks Jesus into his heart. And even though his best friend is currently being torn to shreds by demonic maggots with the faces of Ann Coulter, Bobby doesn’t seem to mind. He feels safe because he knows he’ll go to Heaven when he dies. So fuck Timmy.

And Happy Halloween!

Chick Tract Review: Boo!

Jack Chick sez: This takeoff on horror films reveals the truth about Halloween.

Next up in Jack Chick’s Parade of Halloween Insanity is Boo! And I’ll say this for Mr. Chick… once he decides he’s going to lead someone to the Lord, he’s not afraid to use stacks of dead teenagers to do it.

Like the much touted “War on Christmas,” Jack Chick believes that the true meaning of Halloween has been lost amidst all the secular hijinks and commercialism. You see, when kids put on those Batman costumes and wander from house to house asking for candy, they are actually reenacting an ancient ritual where druids used to put on Batman costumes and wander from house to house asking for children and virgins.

Our story opens with Charlie, a high school student in his mid-30s, renting out a campground for the annual Salem High School Halloween party. And the name of this campground is… wait for it… Camp Basil Bub! Haw, haw, haw! Our middle-aged high school student gets a hell of a deal on the place because just one year ago, 13 people were… MURDERED! And despite the fact that the killer was riddled with bullets and still got away, Charlie gets right to planning the evening’s festivities. You know, music… snacks… sacrificing a live cat at midnight. And as the honking high school students drive away, a sinister figure with a pumpkin head and a pet snake suddenly realizes that he forgot his chainsaw.

Midnight comes, and things are getting mighty wild at Charlie’s Halloween party. The three or four people who showed up are gathered around an altar for the cat sacrifice when, suddenly, the pumpkin-headed man bursts into the cabin WITH HIS CHAINSAW! So apparently he went home and got it, thus neatly wrapping up what could have been a storyline left dangling for years. Take a lesson, writers of Lost!

Anyway, the pumpkin-headed killer dices up everybody at the party except for one guy, and a mouse and a cat, all of whom flee the grisly scene. Apparently, the sole survivor calls the police, and one of the deputies interrupts the Chief, who is using black magic to levitate a coffee cup when he gets the news of the massacre.

Forty minutes later, the Chief and his sombreroed federales have emptied their guns into the pumpkin-headed killer, who removes his mask and reveals himself to be… SATAN! The sight of the effete Prince of Darkness proves too much for one of the deputies, who lapses into an Irish brogue as he flees.

Satan makes his way to “the village” and, for nefarious reasons we mere mortals may never understand, decides to cap off an evening of slaughter by scaring a Christian. He crouches outside the window of the “Village Church” and peers inside at Joey, a fine young man who apparently spends many an evening praying until after midnight. So what was Joey praying for? No idea. I think he was pissed that he didn’t get invited to the Salem High Halloween party, so he asked God to send an unstoppable killer to hack up Charlie and his friends with a chainsaw…

As Joey makes his way home from his marathon prayer session, the devil jumps out and tries to scare him. But Joey’s faith in the Lord is strong! He rebukes Satan, who literally runs for the hills while shouting swear words that are apparently best left to the imagination. Joey defiantly shakes his fist and tells the devil that he hates him *and* his lousy birthday!

The next day, a clearly shaken Joey goes to see his pastor, which seems like a reasonable course of action once you’ve had a personal run-in with the Hoary Master of the Netherworld. I mean, let’s face it. Once you’ve come face to face with the very embodiment of evil, you’re going to have some questions of a very spiritual nature.

What Joey wants to know is if Halloween is really Satan’s birthday.

“Of course not, you retard,” the pastor almost replies. He then launches into the standard Jack Chick diatribe about druids and human sacrifice. Now, this kind of bothers me because early on in the story, the devil himself referred to Halloween as his birthday. Why would he lie about something like that? I swear, sometimes Satan can be such a bastard!

Anyway, the Insane-o-meter gets cranked up to 11 as the pastor explains Satan’s plot to Joey. Satan uses Halloween to trick little kids into becoming werewolves and witches, and then they commit human sacrifice, which God really hates. Not because it’s murder, but because it makes a mockery of the crucifixion, which Satan is trying to keep you from hearing about. And THAT, Pastor Moe Howard informs us, is his trick.

I can’t help but be disappointed with Chick at this point. Usually he puts a lot of thought into his conspiracy theories. I mean, he’s concocted a secret history of the world involving lost Israeli tribes, the Illuminati, the European Union, the Lincoln assassination, the liberal media, and the Catholic Church. That’s batshit crazy writ large, my friend! But what do we get for Satan and Halloween? Some half-assed attempt to connect a bunch of unrelated dots. Let’s face it. This “wicked scheme” is even lamer than Joker’s attempt to conquer Gotham City by becoming King of the Surfers.

So that’s pretty much it for Boo! In an epilogue of sorts, we see that Joey managed to scare the devil back to Hell by talking smack about his birthday. Whimsically dressed in his pumpkin head, Satan laughs good-naturedly as a tormented soul shakes his fist from damnation’s flame and calls him a rat.

Powerful stuff.