A parody? Of a Chick tract?

That was kind of half-assed. And yes, a parody of a Jack Chick tract is redundant.

I liked Satan's bat wings.

Sure there is! If you pronounce Z as "zed" instead of "zee". That way, you could be (in a funny accent) "Zee DEVIL!" How much time have you got? I could grasp at more straws. :D

Honestly - if it hadn't been in a different drawing style, it could easily have passed off as a Chick cartoon. It contains, had it been honest, the same level of ignorance, fanaticism and downright religious lunacy. Chick is the kind of guy who could easily have put forth the infamous, now-memetic banana argument against atheism in one of his tracts, and considered it a pinnacle of intellectual achievement.

RE: Last Panel

That's why so many of my students missed my math tests yesterday! They were raptured!

Remember the only difference between being raptured or ruptured is "u"

You thought the rapture would be bad...Cthulhu Fhtagn!!
http://www.myconfinedspace.com/watermark.php?src=wp-content/uploads/200…

"Z" rhymes with "D".

Glad y'all liked it, those that did. As for the rest -- no one's stopping you from doing your own parody. ;)

I'm thinking of doing a T-shirt of the Darwin/Man/Lies "throne". Just the throne, with Satan, no other commentary.

It is "Dr." P.Z. Myers, isn't it? Maybe you gave your soul to Satan when you acquired your Ph.D.

I know I'm being dense, is there a theme to the scriptures given on each panel? I don't get it.

Hm. Why not make tracts for reason that parody/emulate the Chick style? It would be perfect for the parking lot challenge. Why should the fundies have all the fun, right?

Jason: I think the author intentionally picked scriptures which had nothing to do with with the content of the tract, as a parody of the way Chick supports his positions with seemingly arbitrary bottom-line scriptures, with very little or no sense for historical (and at times even theological) kontext.

context, that is =)

There used to be a couple of terrific Chick parody sites but they were shut down. Seems the Chick minitstry is as litigious as the Scientologist.

forsen: Got it in one. The quotes are meant to be arbitrary and utterly meaningless. I particularly liked the one from Numbers.

pablo: Chick comes after anyone who remixes their art -- that is, if you scan an existing tract and put new words in on top of JTC's art, they'll sue. The idea, however, isn't copyrightable. ;)

I read a hell of a lot of these tracts when I was quite young; actually I had a pretty substantial collection of them at age ten or so, when I thought -- with a ten-year-old's naivete -- that they were true. Unlike many others, I outgrew that phase.

My initials are DD. And I'm damned proud of that fact now!

I'm sure I've seen John Wilkins spell your name with a "D"...

Jason: I was raised European Baptist (way more liberal than, say, your Southern Baptists), but I didn't run into the Chick tracts until a fundy period in my teens. Although I outgrew both the Chick tracts and religion, I must say the Chick tracts represent the very lowest, worst and most thoroughly stupid aspects of religion (And, as you know - among the god-botherers, there is some serious competition when it comes to stupidity). If there was a Razzie Award for religion, Chick would be an annual contender. Perhaps he would even sweep the Lifetime Achievement Award.

I remember seeing one really good parody of the Dungeons & Dragons tract, but I can't find it now. May have been removed per Chick protest.

Excellent Warren!

A couple of problems/suggestions

1) It's really hard to parody a Chick tract, because the originals are so outrageously stupid. There's nothing in the parody that isn't out-dumbed by the originals.

2) You need a picture of the faceless God sitting on his throne in heaven. It would also be nice to see Darwin and Dawkins burning in the eternal lake of fire.

3) Yeah, the artwork needs to be more detailed. The hairstyles are spot-on though.

Overall, I thought it was a very good parody.

Here's a website with more parodies

http://www.weirdcrap.com/chick/intro.html

Enjoy.

Christian Burnham: Thanks. You're right about the level of detail, but Chick's style is not so much inimitable as something I don't really want to take on. His proportions are often skewed (I mean in the drawings, not in his outlook) and his knack for tortured facial expression is peerless.

The one place where he seemed to always get it right was when he was drawing stereotypical hypermacho ultra-beefcake gay leather queens. Which, when you think about it, is interesting.

The tone of his tracts can be imitated, but not matched -- just try to think of the most insane argument against everything but an ultra-narrow right-wing stance, then make it about 20% more crazy, then deliver it with total deadpan seriousness. I didn't bother to try. I don't think, even after a genuiinely bad day, that I could be so full of lunatic hatred for everyone but me.

The faceless God will show up eventually, possibly even in a revision of this tract -- which is 14 pages, not 16. (It would have to be 16 pages to print up properly in a saddle-stitched format, which I'm considering doing to leave around town in various locales.) There's room to add another couple pages, showing Darwin and Dawkins being denied the presence of God and burning in Hell while the faithful are let into the cloudy comfort of Heaven.

(Maybe there'd be room for PZ to show up, rendered as a demon and reporting to Satan that his master plan to delude the gullible away from God's Truth was successful. I'd have to label him, though, since my ability to do caricatures is limited.)

BTW, thanks, PZ, for the link. That was quite nice of you.

Oh, typo again... my second post was adressed to Warren, not Jason.

The latest Chick tract takes on the tooth-fairy and the Easter Bunny!

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1033/1033_01.asp?wpc=1033_01.asp&wp…

The latest Chick tract takes on the tooth-fairy and the Easter Bunny!

That is the first Chick Tract that has ever left me speechless. I can't even make fun of it -- it's that stupid. Fortunately, I'm still able to communicate by typing.

Wow. I've read most of the Chick tracts, but yeah, that latest one surpasses them all. Given the hundreds of thousands of kids that believe in Santa, I'm amazed that every grade school isn't a perpetual bloodbath. What's really interesting is that in most Chick tracts the person repents at the end; but no, the Santa thing shook Harry enough that he was executed without even thinking about turning from his evil ways. Chick has really gone of the deep end. (not that you could tell the difference...)

Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa ... tell your kids about them and guarantee "terrorist actions" in schools.

Yeah, there's just no way to top that.

Really, you can't tell any more whether the righties are dead-serious or engaged in self-parody. But there's a ring of truth to Chick's latest spew; I remember my grandmother telling me once that gays wanted to have special privileges no one else could have, including the right to kill anyone they wanted to -- and she was completely serious, and I believed it.

BTW, Chick got it wrong, as usual. The Tooth Fairy is actually a man. And he's a lousy lay.

Anyone who's watched Pulp Fiction knows Zed's dead, baby. Or do we atheists have our own resurrection on our hands?

Well, he's right about Santa and the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy being lies, of course. Although I doubt they drive very many people to being homicidal maniacs.

But the most interesting part of that tract is what it didn't say: there was not a single reason provided why we should trust the chaplain who tells us about Jesus any more than we trust our own parents telling us about Santa.

There really *isn't* any difference between Santa and Jesus - you either believe the guy who tells you they're real (in spite of all the ways what they're telling you is physically impossible), or you don't.

In other words, Jack just blew himself up and he doesn't even seem to have realized it.

Carlie at 19: I wonder if this is the one you mean.

Hey BD, I see it hasn't disappeared yet.

Heather - that wasn't it, but I like that one even better!