"Lisa": Viewing pornography and a breakdown in one's marriage leads to molesting children, among other things—or vice-versa. Also that raping a child, infecting her with an incurable STD, and allowing your neighbor to do the same is perfectly acceptable so long as you become a very certain type of fundamentalist Christian afterwards (hell, you wont even face any real world punishment), whereas not being a very certain type of fundamentalist Christian gets you thrown into hell even if you were a good person in life.
Ms. Henn is a Troll. Either she's deliberately tormenting Li'l Susy by bringing up topics she knows will be a Berserk Button for Susy, or she's secretly a fundamentalist Christian who's using Poe's Law to indoctrinate her students by making progressive secularists look like Jerkasses, and Susy is her shill who promotes the message she really wants the kids to get.
Susy has been interpreted as a impressionable orphan who's being warped by her grandfather's extreme religious views.
Chick does this for other people's work. In "Humbug", he portrays Bob Cratchit as an Evangelical Christian.
Anvilicious: A deliberate hallmark of his tracts. For example, to make sure you're aware certain characters are evil, he'll sometimes draw invisible demons hanging around them.
Awesome Art: Certainly not from Chick himself, but Fred Carter's Bible story tracts look amazing.
Canon Defilement: Humbug! is Jack Chick's adaption of A Christmas Carol. Needless to say, people weren’t happy with Chick rewriting it to back up his own evangelical craziness.
Confirmation Bias: The tracts have been particularly criticized in how while they're intended to convert people to the author's version of Christianity (more often than not believing that the type of Easy Evangelism seen in the tracts actually works), most of the time they're used to preach to the choir. As if that wasn't enough, most of the non-Bible sources cited come from books also published by Chick Publications.
Crosses the Line Twice: The tracts often end up doing this unintentionally. For example the Grim Reaper's hilariously inappropriate "Hi there!". The "Dark Dungeons" movie is doing this quite intentionally. The theatrical trailer ends with the reveal that tabletop games aren't the product of Satan as Chick claims. No they're the product of Cthulhu.
Designated Hero: The way God is portrayed in the tracts does not come across as unimpeachably benevolent to all readers, though that is certainly what the author intends. Some even think that God Is Evil in the tracts.
Designated Villain: Numerous antagonists. Chick seems to believe that not being Christian automatically makes you a Jerkass, at least in private (which, when you think about it, kind of flies in the face of the "faith not works" message). A good example is Dr. Westhall in "Reverend Wonderful," whose only "crime" is preaching that all religions should live in peace and who immediately does an about-face to a "HAW HAW HAW"-ing douche when the protagonist of the comic tries to convert him.
The Pope is depicted in more than one chick tract as a very unappealing man who is claimed to be creating mass deceit in the world.
The notorious "Dark Dungeons" made roleplaying out to be an exciting life-or-death scenario that introduced real occultism and gave players fabulous supernatural powers that they can use to brainwash their parents into buying them stuff. More than a few roleplayers love the tract and it has been parodied and affectionately referred to in innumerable ways among the subculture. The tract has become so famous that a live-action movie was funded on kickstarter. "Dark Dungeons: The Movie!" seems to have gotten most of its backers from the gaming community.
In his anti-Catholic tracts, Chick shows very little downside to being one of those dastardly Papists, since they seem to have nothing but crazy sex parties and oodles of cash, and be secretly running the world. Well, except that they end up burning in Hell forever, of course...
Depending on the tracts, he'll even make the devils funny or sufficiently clever to provide comic relief (sometimes they're actually adorable cuddly-looking imps), which makes anyone who wins against them seem like a bit of a killjoy. Who wouldn't want to have help from a demon like Bruth from The Poor Little Witch, who can make your enemies look like fools and talks like a schmoozy Hollywood agent?
Bruth: Gotcha, baby!
Halloween is another Satanic thing, so he fully expects children to read tracts about how a holiday that involves dressing up and carving pumpkins and abstain from such a heinous holiday. One tract shows a bunch of "bad" people partaking in a huge Halloween party in a rented cabin, which looks like a ton of fun (barring the cat sacrifice at the end), while the "good" kid sits quietly in his house, praying to God and apparently having the most boring evening ever.
Fang, a bizarre pet that seems to be a cross between a dog, cat, fox and rabbit, and continually makes background appearances. It's the sabre teeth and a saw-tail. And being the only character who never speaks.
The costumed new age healer from "The Last Generation" tract who became popular thanks to The Bible Reloaded giving him a name (Harold Penisman) and an expanded characterization that's just hilarious.
Stinky, the little devil from the halloween-themed tract of the same name, is well liked by the ironic fans for being a Ugly CuteIneffectual Sympathetic Villain
The tracts very frequently end with the death of one or several of the protagonists, so that a "judgment after death" scene can occur. This means that sometimes, protagonists die in cruel or painful ways, but due to the fact that they go to heaven, the tract treats it as a happy, even joyful ending (seen in, e.g. "Somebody Loves Me", "Hard Times" and "Bewitched?"). Special mention to "The Little Sneak", where the eponymous bad boy undergoes a Heel–Face Turn by 'accepting Jesus' — then is struck by lightning and goes to Heaven; next, without any further explanation, his parents die too — so the family is happily reunited in Heaven. The End.
Even the people who live after their conversion may have lingering emotional scars, and there's often a fair amount of undeserved forgiveness and avoiding punishment in the name of turning the other cheek. And the tracts welcome the end of days, in which the true believers are whisked away to heaven while the majority suffer, die and go to hell.
Heartwarming Moment: Believe it or not, Chick actually managed to produce a rather touching tract, namely "It's Not Your Fault," a story about genuinely overcoming adversity through finding faith, and containing no racism, conspiracy theories, or ranting about how The End Is Nigh of any kind. It remains So Bad, It's Good due to the ridiculous art and sheer glurge factor (seven-year-olds hanging themselves?), however.
The◊ demons◊ in "Bewitched?" look eerily similar to No-Face from Spirited Away, which was released a year after the tract.
The Last Surprise, coming from Chick Tracts, gets more hilarious when eventually the title was used as a catchy battle theme for Persona 5 where the climax battle involves the protagonist summoning their equivalent of Satan to shoot the equivalent of God in the face with a bullet. Jack would never see it coming, seeing that he died shortly after the game was released in Japan and it took the next year until the game was released at his home country.
The name of the dark-haired teenage heroine who saved the world from the vampire Antichrist in the "First Bite" tract is Faith.
The mother taking her son's place on the gallows in "The Execution" resembles a twist in Harry Potter—a twist that's more complicated but that makes more sense than the one in the Chick tract. In the fourthPotter book, a Death Eater's mother is revealed to have taken his place in Azkaban after she and her son used a humanshifting potion to switch places. The mother drank the potion regularly until death and was buried under the guise of her son, while the son left prison (though his father confined him to their home for over a decade afterward).
Ho Yay: Jim and Tim, "The Crusaders," from Chick's full-length comics are a pair of beefyPlatonic Life-Partners with a fondness for tight t-shirts and calling each other things like "bright-eyes." In discussions over whether or not Chick is a Poe, these two tend to be brought up.
Female example: There is some chemistry between Holly and Samantha, the attractive young witches in "The Nervous Witch". Sam tells her mother that she hates surprises (apparently because they interrupt their secret magic sessions together), and even appears jealous when Holly flirts with Mr. Williams.
Holly: Get that robe off, Samantha.note For context, Samantha's wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and overalls under the robe, but still...
Iron Woobie: The woman in the hijab from "Faithful". She converted to Christianity, and even converts her friend April. Unfortunately, at the end of the track, she is beaten by some Muslims that want to "teach her another lesson". She forgives them, of course, it's still disturbing that this happened at least once before.
Jerkass Woobie: Bruce in "Fallen." Granted, he's abrasive to others and displays indications of being an Ungrateful Bastard at times, but since the tract focuses on him getting his comeuppance rather than what he did to deserve it, his suffering can seem unfair. He also decides to wait to consider accepting Jesus, instead of rejecting Him outright, and ends up going to Hell merely for waiting.
Sandwich ChefExplanation An edited panel from "Hi There" which alters the dialogue of a Straw Atheist soldier complaining about the sandwich his wife made him. The edit has the soldier (misconstrued as a chef due to the way his helmet gets cut off by the panel) proclaim that he's holding an "ass sandwich" that consists of "ass and poo." Consequently, his angry expression instead reads as immense passion for his scatological meal. The silliness of the edit made it a popular exploitable, with people editing the soldier's dialogue in various ways.
This edited tract◊ that replaces Jesus's dialogue with the text (which originates from the infamous dril Twitter account) "blocked. blocked. blocked. youre all blocked. none of you are free of sin" (sic) is commonly brought up on Tumblr.
Misaimed Fandom: Chick tracts are intended to be passed on indefinitely, but most people who pick them up (and don't throw them away) keep them. Many people actually collect them. Then there are the people who think the tracts are parodies.
The "Dark Dungeons" tract is very popular among role-playing gamers, and on gaming message boards it's not uncommon for people to make jokes about Black Leaf and "real magic."
The tracts in general have a surprising and almost definitely unintended fandom among atheists and religious skeptics because of their hilarious campiness and bizarre theology.
Seasonal Rot: As Hannah and Jake from The Bible Reloaded pointed out in their reading of "I See You," one of the first tracts written and published after Jack Chick's passing, if you can believe it, the tracts are actually going down in quality. If you look at that tract for what it is, it's exactly what the Chick Tracts are, boiled down to their base elements; a message that you should be worried about being judged by God, to the point of being paranoid about not being in His good graces, images to reinforce the words, and narration that spells it all out to the readers. It's not even entertainingly bad like a lot of the ones that came before it, it's just what you expect instead of a story using Insane Troll Logic to try to convince you to follow Christianity and its god. It's just so forced with the Nightmare Fuel that it ceases to be entertaining in its insanity at the very least.
Spiritual Adaptation: Given its Western setting, wonky art (like most tracts.), and skewed morality (again, like most tracts.), "Gunslinger" is probably the closest thing to a comic adaptation of The Town with No Name. "Terrible Tom" even sounds like the name the outlaws you'd fight.
So Bad, It's Good: All of them. Every last one. Cheesy writing, worse art, Double Standards and cringeworthy stereotypes abound, and yet it's impossible to look away. The number of blogs dedicated to ripping these things apart is literally in the double digits, and general consensus among them is that "Dark Dungeons" is the "best" of the lot.
Dark Dungeons is so beloved in the RPG community that "Dark Dungeons: The Movie!" is primarily funded by role-players.
Strawman Has a Point: In "Somebody Goofed" as well as the "edited for black audiences" version "Oops!", a man named Bobby overdoses on speed and as his friends and family are gathered around, a Christian shows up to tell them all about how Bobby is burning in Hell right now. When another man shows up to stop him we're supposed to side with the Christian. Of course, whether the Christian is right or not, moments after the death of a loved one is usually not the best time to preach to people (let alone say he's suffering eternal damnation for his choices), making the other man totally justified in trying to shut him up. Less justified, but still understandable is when he physically assaults the Christian.
The construction workers in "Hi There!" talk about many reasons someone might not believe the validity of the Bible, such as it contradicting itself sometimes, many of its preachers obsessing over money instead of the gospel or their fellow man, and using scare tactics to try and get you to join (while being no less sinful or even more so than the average layman), and insisting that only THEIR denomination or church will keep you out of Hell. This being a Chick Tract, of course, God turns out to be real, but none of these points are addressed or refuted in any way by the comic itself.
While this is not even once brought up in No Fear?, the thought of having your best friend/loved one burning in Hell can be a very difficult thing to comprehend for both Christians and non-Christians.
Ugly Cute: Demons in general are portrayed as crankily incompetent Card-Carrying Villains who look like grotesque Muppets. The gay demons in "Birds and the Bees", though, cross the line from goofy and non-threatening to downright adorable. Seriously, look at panel six◊.
The demon befriending David in "Wounded Children" is downright handsome. Possibly too much so, as this is one tract that has since been recalled by Chick himself.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Most of Chick's "villains" and jerkasses are a lot more understandable than Chick probably meant them to be, since they tend to speak out against things like bigotry, insensitivity, and raging fundamentalism. This leads the heroes to have the opposite problem.
Esau. The tracts involving the story of him and Jacob seem to imply that he deserves God's hatred for not valuing his birthright enough, and trading it for food when he was (possibly literally) starving. The fact that Jacob tricked their father into giving him a blessing and later reconciled with him when he was older don't seem to deter Chick from using them as parallels to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It's weird how well Satan comes off in the banned 'Wounded Children' Tract, considering he's The Devil. Instead of being evil to the degree you'd expect, he comes off as a guy who fully accepts the main character of the Tract, David, as being gay when even his family wouldn't and encourages him to embrace who he is, even being his wingman when he goes to a gay bar. Then he gives David actually useful advice to take it slowly with understanding himself and his journey to accept his being gay. Sure, it's apparently Satan who put him on the track to being gay, but afterwards he actually legitimately tries to help David be gay in a time when that wasn't socially accepted. The tract, instead of being entirely about blaming homosexuality on Satan, comes off more like it's encouraging people to hate gays just because they're gay and influenced by Satan rather than any legitimate reasons. David himself comes off as a Woobie because he's not a bad person, he's just a guy trying to understand who he is and why. The tract even, most likely unintentionally, says being gay isn't a person's choice when it shows David struggling to be happy with himself before he accepts his homosexuality. Sure, he's influenced by Satan at most, but it's not a choice he would've made on his own.
"The Nervous Witch" attempts to portray Holly as a hardened, demonic occultist, but she just comes off, as one blogger put it, as "The lamest Satanist ever." More likely, she's just a confused (and perhaps closeted) Emo Teen who's a bit of a Drama Queen. Chick liked her enough to bring her back in "Gladys" (not that things ended well for her, though).
The recurring Easy EvangelistCreator's Pet characters, Bob Williams and Li'l Susy, both come off as smug, patronizing know-it-alls, even though we're supposed to view them as pure, uncorrupted truth-tellers. Chick makes it even worse by putting them up against a Straw Character.
As mentioned under Strawman Has a Point, the Christian who witnesses to people after a man's death through overdosing is supposed to be seen as trying to save people from hell, but comes off as callous and insensitive.
The extreme fundamentalist rhetoric clashes with many people harder than a fly clashes with the windshield of a car on a highway. Including the vast majority of Christians, as they typically don't hate everyone. Even those who do hate the tracts.
In The Traitor, an in-universe example comes up when the Hindu priest Ramu asks the Christian protagonist about how powerful Jesus is, asking about traits such as how many heads he has, what weapon he uses and the sacrifices he demands. (Also, the whole tract is an incredibly transparent ripoff of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)
The protagonists of "Unloved", "Somebody Loves Me", "Hard Times", "Lisa", and "The Poor Little Witch" — to name a few. Also, the various characters who end up being tossed into hell could be considered unintentional examples of this trope.note That said, it may not be completely unintentional— the readers may well be supposed to feel sorry for the damned because they gave up their chance at salvation.
Juan from "Fat Cats". A Wide-Eyed Idealist in a Latin American dictatorship, he joins a Communist revolutionary, believing the man will help him and his people, ignoring his father-in-laws warnings that the revolutionary is a snake. Then, after the dictator is toppled, Juan learns that revolutionary's adviser murdered his family, and then the same adviser manipulates the revolutionary into murdering Juan. Once he dies, he is told by God he will rot in hell, rather then rejoin his family in heaven.Sheesh...
Ashley in "Baby Talk". Her family doesn't give a rat's ass about her and make her sleep on the couch once her brother's wife claims it for herself, her boyfriend dumps her after learning she's pregnant, and ends up nearly forced to get an abortion by her family when she's unsure what to do. It does end happy for her, since her boyfriend does come back and they make up.
": Viewing pornography and a breakdown in one's marriage leads to molesting children, among other things—or vice-versa. Also that raping a child, infecting her with an incurable STD, and allowing your neighbor to do the same is perfectly acceptable so long as you become a very certain type of fundamentalist Christian afterwards (hell, you wont even face any real world punishment), whereas not being a very certain type of fundamentalist Christian gets you thrown into hell even if you were a good person in life.
