According to Chick Publications, their CEO and founder Jack T. Chick died peacefully in his sleep on Sunday night. He was 92. His death is mourned by some, and celebrated by others.
Since the news broke, “Jack Chick” has been trending on Twitter. It is not a pretty picture that is being presented. This is in no way surprising. For all but a select few, the man did not have a nice word to spare. And for the rest of us, he offered only glimpses of the hellfire that awaits us.
I should back up a bit, though, on the off chance that anybody visiting this site doesn’t know who Jack Chick was. He was the creator of the famous and notorious “Chick tracts,” small pamphlets containing black and white Evangelical fundamentalist propaganda comics. Chick had been publishing these pamphlets since the early 1960s, and his oeuvre touches on an impressive array of topics, from evolution to Halloween to “false religions” (everything that is not Protestantism, basically) to the end-times to, famously, role-playing games. The basic message was always the same, however: it doesn’t matter how good or bad you have been in your life, you are going to hell unless you accept the brand of Christianity that Chick promoted. You can read most of them here. He also produced comic books and sold literature that promoted his world-view.
The legacy he leaves behind is a strange one.
Based out of the University of Florida’s Comics Studies track within the the Department of English, 