Jack Chick, who has died in Los Angeles at the age of 92, was one of the most extraordinary, industrious and humourless comic artists of the 20th century. He claimed to be the most published author in the world. In an apparently unending series of pocket-sized cartoon tracts he laid out an idiosyncratic fundamentalism in which everyone who was not a Protestant Christian was in imminent danger of death followed by eternal torment.
Ecumenism had no charms for him and bigotry no terrors. He wrote and published tracts like “Are Roman Catholics Christians?” He even published the full length book “Convert … or Die! The Catholic Reign of Terror in Yugoslavia”. Both these, and more, I bought from a Christian bookshop on a trip to Belfast during the troubles. In that setting, they seemed less hilariously funny than when purchased from the Protestant Truth Society in Fleet Street.
Perhaps the vilest of all his works was a comic called “Lisa”, still available on the web, where Chick has become the subject of ironic attention. In this, Henry, a middle-aged, man loses his job, “and my wife had to go to work”, so naturally he turns to porn and starts to abuse his fourteen-year-old daughter. When his neighbour finds out, the girl is shared between them. When the family doctor discovers this, he explains that only God can save Henry. But it turns out this has nothing to do with what Henry has done to his daughter.“You were going to hell before this ever happenedSo the doctor gets him to pray and at once “ , Henry … You say you’re good, but the Bible tells us that no man is good, no, not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
I feel different, Doctor … I feel clean. God has forgiven a horrible wretch like me. Oh Thank you Lord. You’re such a merciful and wonderful God to clean me up. I’m so grateful.”After the epiphany he goes home and tells his wife about Jesus. She testifies in turn that she knew all along that he was abusing their daughter because she herself had been abused by her uncle. But Jesus saves her, too. In the last frame, the happy parents summon their daughter, who appears clutching a teddy bear.
“We’ve got wonderful news, Lisa. Your daddy and I will never hurt you again … Really, honey. We love you, and Jesus loves you too.”Self-righteous and self-pitying, profoundly misgynistic, deaf and blind to the reality of evil and suffering, the Christians in Jack Chick’s little tracts add up to an entirely damning indictment of fundamentalism. Quite possibly, a tract like Lisa strengthened some Appalachian child abuser in his crimes. There is no suggestion anywhere that secular justice might be involved in the process. In the end, even the Chick organisation withdrew the tract from sale, and expunged its memory from the official web site. The other thing that makes Lisa noteworthy is that it is one of the very few Chick Tracts that deals with anything recognisable as evil. As you read through the rest , it is almost impossible not to start laughing out loud, not just because of the puerility of the drawing and the story lines. There is also something fundamentally absurd and inadequate about the targets he uses to illustrate the depravity of our times. Feminists, evolutionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, players of Dungeons and Dragons, people who celebrate Hallowe’en, Witches, Jews, Rock Musicians, Gay people, Roman Catholics, Liberals – in all this library of paranoiac fantasy there is hardly anything that could worry a normal person, still less frighten them.
On reflection, this may be the secret of the appeal of Chick-type fundamentalism. It’s paranoia as entertainment, since no one could possibly be frightened of most of the things that terrify him. And then there are the sudden awfulnesses where he demonises (literally, of course) the groups that large numbers of American really do hate — Gay people, Muslims, and educated women. That’s when the paranoia stops being funny and you feel like one of his characters, suddenly borne off by an angel and dropped into hell.