Chick Tract - Parodies and Popular Culture

Parodies and Popular Culture

Some cartoonists have published parodies of Chick tracts that mimic their familiar layout and narrative conventions. Examples include "Devil Doll?" by Daniel Clowes, Antlers Of The Damned' by Adam Thrasher, Jesus Delivers! by Jim Woodring and David Lasky, Demonic Deviltry by "Dr. Robert Ramos" (actually Justin Achilli of White Wolf Game Studios), and A Patriarchy's Nightmare by Keith Mayerson.

Issue #2 of Daniel K. Raeburn's zine The Imp, which consists of a lengthy essay on Jack T. Chick's work and a concordance of terms and concepts used in his comics, has dimensions and covers that imitate a Chick tract.

Hot Chicks is a collection of nine short films, each based on a Chick Tract. The film played at the 2006 Los Angeles International Film Festival, the New Fest in New York, and others. The films are word for word (and often shot for shot) adaptations of Chick Tracts. The Tracts adapted are Bewitched?, "La Princesita", "Somebody Goofed", Titanic, "Cleo", "Doom Town", "Wounded Children", "Angels?", and "Party Girl."

The blog "Enter the Jabberwock" has a section called Chick Dissection, where the blogger takes select Chick tracts and comments on them panel by panel. Similarly, Boolean Union Studios has a section where the site creators comment on Chick tracts. The same website also features an animated version of Dark Dungeons.

Why We're Here by Fred Van Lente and Steve Ellis is a Cthulhu Mythos-themed comic that parodies Chick's visual and proselytistic style as though it were promoting the theology of a cult from one of H. P. Lovecraft's stories. Where a Chick Tract, for example, would typically insert an inter-title box containing a pertinent Biblical verse, "Why We're Here" instead references verses from the Necronomicon and other fictional Mythos-linked books. Another Cthulhu-based parody is Who Will Be Eaten First which teaches that the most we can hope for when the Elder Gods return is to be eaten first.

Galactus is Coming is a parody of Chick Tracts based on Marvel Comics' planet-eating cosmic god Galactus, published online by the website Your Mom's Basement. In it, a bunch of children ask Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four if Galactus is real and might eat the Earth one day, and Richards proceeds to explain in typical Chick fashion, only using references to classic Marvel Comics in lieu of biblical quotes. The blog entry presents the forged tract as a long-lost collaboration between Chick and Marvel Comics founding editor Stan Lee for humorous effect only.

Chick Tracts depict Paganism and Neo-Paganism as a form of Satanism. As a response to this, a comic strip in the style of a Chick Publication called The Other People was written by Oberon Zell Ravenheart of the Neo-Pagan Church of All Worlds, with art by Don Lewis, in which fundamentalist Christians ring the doorbell of a Pagan family, and get a Bible lesson from the Neo-Pagan point of view.

Big Daddy was satirized by Who's Your Daddy?, Somebody Loves You was satirized by Somebody Loves You?, and Gun Slinger was satirized by The Good, The Bad, and the Fundy by the Jack T Chick Parody Archive. At least one satire website (Jack T Chick Parody Archive) has claimed copyright claims by Chick Publications to remove parody tracts.

Lance Bangs's 2003 documentary Let America Laugh details comic David Cross and his tour of small alternative rock clubs. The chapters of the DVD are taken from the titles of Chick tracts, such as Is There Another Christ?, Gomez Is Coming and This Was Your Life. (David Cross is a self-professed atheist.)