© 2007 Monsterwax. Rev. 4.29.07
Older Misc. News
Here's some older factoids that you may find interesting but don't really go anywhere else!
Recent Book Illustrated by Jack Chick
Author David Daniel, (who wrote Did the Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?) has just published a new book called, "Babylon Religion--- How a Babylonian goddess became the Virgin Mary." It's crammed packed with 224 pages of illustrations by Jack Chick. The cartoons are very detailed with excellent resolution. It's a great addition to your Chick collection. You can find it for sale on the front page of www.chick.com
Chick Tracts Covered In Lark News
The Lark News is a Christian version of The Onion (a sophisticated newspaper parody, only in this case, from a Christian perspective). They've run a few ammusing parodies involving Chick tracts as well. The most recent one involves Saddam. An earlier one is a faux story about Chick buying up other comic strips.
Recent PROMO TRACT
Chick released a new promo tract called CONGRATULATIONS! It has all new Jack Chick art and basically encourages readers to use tracts. It's not on line, but is often tossed in with new orders.
Chick Tracts Inspire Short Films!
A new collection of short films based on Chick tracts is out. It's called Hot For Chicks! It uses live actors, and sometimes puppets and animation to bring the stories of nine different Chick tracts to life. There are nine different directors as well, so the styles are dramatically different. Any Chick fan will enjoy it. (And yes, they had permission to use the tract plots). We'll post more information about how to find this collection later on when we get it.
New Revised Version of "Did the Catholic Church Give Us The Bible" released
Most of the hardcore Chick comic collectors already have a copy of David Daniel's book, "Did the Catholic Church Give Us The Bible?" because it has a ton of great Chick illustrations in it. About the only improvement they could make in that book is better resolution on some of the illustrations, because a few looked somewhat grainy. But that's exactly what they've recently corrected! The new version is all clear and picture-perfect. All the current stock at Chick.com is the newer version, so if you want to upgrade, now's the time to do it.
Recently Discontinued Tracts!
(FROM OUR E-MAILBAG June 2006:) I can't believe Chick Publications is discontinuing 13 tracts! Many of them only a year old. Have you seen the list?
Apes, Lies and Ms. Henn
Birds and the Bees
The Devil's Night
Fallen
Good Ol' Boys
The Great One
The Last Judge
The Little Bride
Murph
The Nervous Witch
The Sky Lighter
Squatters
Who's Missing?
Are they gearing up for something? You should say something in the Chick News section to let collectors know.
(Thanks for the suggestion, we just posted your letter!)
Large Tract Collection $ell$
A giant auction of vintage tracts just sold on eBay for around $1,000.00. It was sold by one of our oldest collectors. Michael has been collecting Chick tracts since he was a kid (over 25 years ago). He had a near complete collection before he was a teenager, and he sold it to a stranger on the street who saw him reading them. The guy only paid Michael $10 for everything! (His name must have been Lew Siffer.) This time around, he got about 100 times as much! Michael turned around and started collecting them again when he was a kid, until he was missing less than ten titles out of the 189 available. One wonders if he might do the exact same thing now that the auction is over. Congratulations Michael!
New Variation on A Demon's Nightmare!
We just received a copy of a very old tract from India. It's a large oversized (5.5 x 4.125") version of A Demon's Nightmare. It's in English, but it's completely redrawn by Chick (dated 1965) to reflect the Indian culture. Everyone has black hair, the girls all have a dot on their forehead, and the costumes are Indian. Our thanks go out to Sunil for turning us on to this tract!
Missionaries Are Fools!
Another missing title to our tract museum was provided by Tom Raney of Indiana. Tom has helped us before (with some missing titles to Battlecry) so now we're twice as thankful for his help. Missionaries Are Fools was a 1974 promo tract that didn't appear on pricelists, so many collectors didn't even know it existed for certain. Michael Schmall remembered the title as a kid, but he wasn't positive. He thought it was called "You Missionaries Are Fools." (A reprint by the Bible & Literature Missionary Foundation provides a faithful reproduction, although it excludes two pages that specifically promote Chick tracts.) Missionaries Are Fools was later rereleased by Chick Publications as The Secret Weapon in 1994 with a few revisions. Many thanks to Tom for helping us with this elusive title.
You wanna tell someone to toast? Here's a new section devoted to all the instances in Chick tracts where one character tells another he's heading to hell. It's hellarious! (Depending on which side of the pitchfork you're on.)
Rare Somebody Goofed version
An oversized 1966 version of Somebody Goofed has been discovered by Kirk Demarais. Kirk noticed it wasn't listed in the new book or site index, and graciously donated it to our humble museum. The tract contains completely redrawn art from the current version, although the story is the same. The cover is different as well. A big thanks go to Kirk for unearthing this new discovery and sharing it with us!
"This Was Your Life" Comes to Life!
Kirk Demarais also made a video out of This Was Your Life with Chick's permission. Check it out at: http://jove.prohosting.com/sfspot/thislife.htm
This flash presentation uses the original oversized version of tract with some interesting (albeit minor) art variations.
Chick Essays
Here's a new wing devoted to extended essays about Chick's famous tracts. Some of these essays appear in the new book in abbreviated form, but you can read the full version here.
Chick Movie available on DVD
Chick's masterpiece movie, Light of the World first premiered October 11th, 2003. Since then, it is on sale at Chick.com on DVD.
Here's the lastest newspaper coverage about the movie.It includes comments and information from Fred Carter.
Some movie background: Fred Carter did most of the art, but he is not the only one who painted pictures for the movie. He had some help from Christian artist Erik Hollander. (For a sample of Erik's work, go here and here.) There is also another artist who's done a few, named Keith Goodson (of Daystar Studios).
Fred is working on a new Crusader comic. (The movie project has created a 15 year hiatus in the Crusader series.) The movie is a montage of glorious color scenes (363 paintings) depicting the Bible running 78 minutes with narration and full orchestration. It's made to be projected onto outside building walls for third world audiences. Hopefully, a coffee table book of the art will eventually be published. Chick out Rich Lee's Review. You can also view clips online.
Haw-haw! Somebody Goofed!
It's always fun to find bloopers or unintentional anachronisms in films, books-- or whatever else. You know, like spotting the Toto album in the record collection of The Talented Mr. Ripley when the film supposedly takes place in the 1950s (yet the album didn't come out until the 1980s). What were they thinking? Or were they thinking at all?
SOMEBODY GOOFED is a new section devoted to those little bloopers that sneak into tracts. It is very small for now, but as readers email their observations, it will grow significantly. Keep in mind, however, that this is for cut and dry errors, not opinions like whether or not Alberto was a fraud or if God really exists. If it MIGHT be true, it doesn't belong here.
Check out our new SOMEBODY GOOFED wing NOW!
Chick tracts are killer comics, but have you ever considered just how many people actually die in them? We did, and the result is a new wing: Exit Wounds!
Here's a real life story of someone who passed out tracts instead of treats and paid a heavy price.
"Live" Report on Alberto's Grave
A local priest stopped by the cemetery where Aberto was buried and provided us this eyewitness account.
Jack Chick Song by Linus
A rock group named Linus wrote and preformed a song about Chick Chick and his tracts around 1987. A copy of their 45 rpm record with the title song Jack Chick recently surfaced on ebay. The cover features a drawing of the face of Betty Page. I couldn't make out all the lyrics, but what I could hear is typed out here. Be forewarned, however, that it is not a complimentary song. (We'll see about getting it stored somewhere in Real Audio.)
Chick Fanatics: East meets West!
I visited San Francisco in 2002 and I met a fellow Chick archivist, Bob Fowler. I have spoken to Bob many times on the phone, but never met him in person before. I hand delivered many of the museum's most prized tracts for examination for variations. I pointed out some modifications he had not noticed (that the man in the Spanish version of Demon's Nightmare has a mustache added) and he spotted a modification I never noticed (the river of blood in Kings of the East is printed in black and white as well as red). We were both surprised how we overlooked such obvious variations, but it goes to show how a new perspective can see new things. As if to emphasize the point, I dragged Bob into a Christian book store in his own neighborhood, a place he had walked by many times and never bothered to check for Chicks. I found a big pile of out-of-print tracts, all of which had languished on the shelf since 1993. They're still out there folks, if you only look!
Bob was a lot of fun, and gave me photocopies of the first (long defunct) VX site on Chick tracts. I had never seen these before, so it was great reading. My favorite part was the visitor comments (which is also my favorite part of this site).
The biggest difference between the two sites is that VX was openly hostile to Chick's beliefs, condemning Todd, Alberto and Brown as proven frauds. I leave that sort of assessment for the reader to make, because one man's proof is another man's opinion. (Especially when it comes to the he said/she said testimony critics use to discredit Chick's authors.) I don't vouch for any of Chick's conspiracy claims, but I won't dismiss them either, unless I have hard evidence to prove the counterclaims. (It's like UFOs sightings: You may not believe in them, but you can't really prove they are all fakes.)
The goal here is to understand Chick's beliefs, not judge them. However, visitors are encouraged to email their opinions-- pro or con-- and chances are that others will find them interesting. I know I do! -KK
Rev. Wonderful not so Wonderful?
Rev. Wonderful refers to popular ecumentical preachers who always tell the public what they want to hear, because they are more politicians than they are men of God. Billy Graham is considered one of the most beloved men of all time. But new tape releases from the Nixon archive reveal he may not be as "wonderful" as he seems. Chick is now offering a 788 page book called Billy Graham and his Friends. You might be surprised by what it reveals...
Reader Additions
One of our dedicated readers (Raymond) toiled deep into the night to retype all the Anti-Chick references from the latest couple of Catholic Apologists books by Karl Keating. In our ongoing effort to provide multiple perspectives, we've included them. (They make fun reading regardless of your viewpoint.) The first book is Catholicism and Fundamentalism (some of these comments were provided before, but have just been completed.) All new to this site are excerpts from his most recent book, The Usual Suspects. For a general introduction to Keating, go here. To read his mass mailing of Anti-Chick letters, go here. Check 'em out and see what you think. One thing's for sure: Chick REALLY gets under their skin! Haw-haw!
Ivory Towers
Chick is more than just the object of our study-- he's also the subject of this Graduate research paper. Thanks go to Celia for sharing it with us.
Knights In Satan's Service read Chick!
It's true! And we have the proof! Check out this photograph from a 1983 issue of Battlecry and see satanic members of KISS reading a copy of Somebody Goofed! Let's hope they've read all of Chick's tracts, coz where they're heading, combustible paper quickly disappears! Haw-haw-haw!
Promo Wing
A new wing listing the promo tracts (free tracts) distributed by Chick Publications, both past and present! Go here.
Key To Fowler's Book
If you have difficulty remembering all the codes in Fowler's World Of Chick book, here's a quick Key with all the abbreviations listed in alphabetical order. You can print it out as an easy reference.
Lost? View our CONTENTS page.
