As I peruse these strange Chick tracts, I realize why exactly I was, as a child, not only certain of the existence of the bogeyman, but 100 percent convinced he was outside the window slavering in preparation for slurping me up in my sleep for a ghoulish dinner. According to the cartoons I was picking up instead of freakin’ Spiderman or something, everyone was about to die at pretty much every second. I could feel that bogeyman’s breath. (If you haven’t enjoyed the peculiar Chick excursion before, be sure to visit Chick publications. You stand to be both fascinated and repulsed, but probably not, as Jack Chick would prefer, scared into becoming a fundamentalist.)
If you wonder why fundamentalists flocked to Brother Bush, it’s because his vision of terrorist doom and ever-present fear was home sweet home. Maybe these folks should visit Tahiti once a year?
Everything revolves around people dying, because it’s only then, fundamentalists think, that anybody wants anything to do with all that religious stuff. They might call me a heretic, but I think that Jesus fella was preaching about how to live, not how to die.
Here are some pivotal Chick tract moments.
This fellow thinks he’s fine, because he confessed to his priest. Too bad, Chick says, because Catholics are going to hell.
Ashley has had her brain fried by drugs, and is hence about to kick off. Her grandma (Chick tracts are literally stuffed full of pious grandmothers–well, make that figuratively) hopes for the one more moment of lucidity in which to save Ashley.
This teenager has got the unholy hot foot, courtesy of some dude who looks suspiciously like Grandpa Munster:
If all that other fear of dying from drugs, being run over, shot, pummelled, beaten, crashed and what have you wasn’t enough, well, here’s what happens when you get a sore shoulder and you go to see your apparently quite sad Turkish doctor:
It’s rough to keep track of just how many ways there are to die. And considering the Chick tract in which two missionaries who’ve done good in Africa for 50 years get told they’ll also burn in hell because good works aren’t enough, even following the proper path is fraught with hellish peril. It’s a lot of work to be a fundamentalist.
