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!
Chick Trope: Pitching for the Angels…
By far, this is one of Jack Chick’s favorite motifs, as it shows up in slightly more than 100% of his tracts. After a person is deemed unworthy of Heaven, he or she is then personally carted by an angel to the pits of Hell and tossed in. You’d think God would eventually streamline the process by installing a trap door in front of His throne, maybe with a fun, twisty slide down to the lake of fire. That way, the angels could spend more time in Heaven, breaking up fights between rapists and serial killers.
Chick Trope: The Five Douchebags You Meet in Heaven
One of the basic tenets of Christianity is that you don’t get into Heaven for good works, but through the grace of God. Our boy Jack Chick has taken that premise and run with it, giving us story after story of good people getting tossed into Hell while vile, despicable villains squeeze through the Pearly Gates on a technicality. To hear Chick tell it, Hell is full of preachers, missionaries, and other decent folk while Heaven is stuffed to the gills with rapists, murderers, and drug dealers. Sort of makes you want to rethink your final destination, doesn’t it?
Chick Trope: The Lincoln-Dumbass Debate
In Jack Chick’s world, the righteous are constantly having their beliefs challenged by liberals, gays, hippies, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, witches, and college professors. You know… the BAD guys. Fortunately, these agents of evil never present any intelligent or compelling arguments to support their viewpoint. Instead, they lob up straw man arguments that are easily batted down by the God-fearing protagonists.
It’s not realistic, but you have to admit that its a comforting world view for the kind of people who base their faith on what they read in comic books.
Jack Chick's Funnybook Gospel 