Chick Tracts/Narm
This section is devoted to the cottage industry that is Chick Tract Narm. HAW HAW HAW.
- This little gem is from the very first panel of Doom Town:
- In Dark Dungeons, The protagonist reacts to her friend's suicide:
"You didn't have to do that!"
- The infamous "Dark Dungeons" tract shows so much ignorance of the game it's railing against that it's a source of hilarity among Dungeons & Dragons players. A level 8 (or higher) Cleric is having trouble with "the Zombie"—something she should be able to DESTROY AUTOMATICALLY with a single Turn Undead roll.
- An especially Narmful moment is when a player receives "the real power" upon reaching level 8. They're taught to cast real spells. For some reason, these spells for players, as opposed to PCs, are not immediately evident in the D&D rulebooks.
- The Game Master's screen says Dark Dungeons. The rule books all say Dark Dungeons. Yet, as early as the fourth panel, characters refer to the game as D&D. So, it's Dark and Dungeons now?
"DON'T BE STUPID, DEBBIE!"
"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore. I want to be Debbie!"
- Go here for a hilarious take on what Moral Guardians think kids do with Dungeons and Dragons books.
- A player is thrown out of the game and commits suicide because their character died. These people are Dungeons & Dragons players. Have they never heard of making a new character, resurrecting the old one, or joining a group that doesn't throw people out of the game for having a character die?
- More likely the girl (a girl yet, Chick is waaaay out of the loop) must have had issues long beforehand; the kind who'd declare bankruptcy after losing at Monopoly.
- Also, in the comic, it's the Game Master telling what actions the characters do and the players giving the results of the action. In any real roleplaying game, it works the other way around: players give their actions, and Game Masters tell them the results. A Jack-Chick rules RP session should be a weird mix of Railroading and Monty Haul...
- "THE INTENSE OCCULT TRAINING THROUGH D&D PREPARED DEBBIE TO ACCEPT THE INVITATION TO ENTER A WITCHES' COVEN." You can't say that with a straight face.
- "IT'S MY FAULT BLACK LEAF DIED. I CAN'T FACE LIFE ALONE"
- In Who Murdered Clarice?, an abortion doctor is being judged after death for his crime. Who is the judge?
"Surprise, everybody!!! It's the Lord Jesus Christ."
- Who named an unborn embryo that was going to be aborted Clarice, anyway?
- Easy. Hannibal Lecter.
- Who he then ate, with some fava beans and a nice chianti. SLURPSLURPSLURP
- Easy. Hannibal Lecter.
- "YOU DEVIL! ...YOU SOLD HER BABY EARS FOR $75 AND I DAMN YOU TO HELL!"
- Who named an unborn embryo that was going to be aborted Clarice, anyway?
- Bobby in The Last Generation is over-the-top in everything he does, from his Hitler Youth-style uniform to his suggesting that cats and dogs are good sacrifices.
- This one is actually a retcon - the original printed version of The Last Generation had cats and dogs as examples of "extinct animals". Chick originally couldn't make up his mind whether to have Atheism or New Age as the enforced state religion - in the reissue, he replaced all science/atheism references with occult-related phrases.
- The story about the brothers in Room 310, in which one brother impersonates the other and gets executed for murder, and the other confesses later but avoids punishment because someone paid for the crime, manages to cross the line from Critical Research Failure to funny.
- This one, called "Angels?" might just take the cake. The idea of the Angels succeeding as a band with lyrics like "We're going to Rock, Rock, Rock Rock with the ROCK!" and "Embrace Me Love of Death"...
- You would be surprised what a band can get away with.
- It also has the line, "Then I'll give you a wedding present... Some AIDS."
"Bobby died of AIDS. Jim OD'd. And Don is into vampirism."
- The corrupt boss being called Lew Siffer. These people are rockers but didn't spot that allusion?
- Satan quite seriously explains how he coerced the world into listening to rock music. (Oh noes!).
- "We're going to rock, rock, rock, rock with the ROCK!" is a line in "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen. If you know that song, then that gives the concert the Angels perform when they do their song with that lyric a whole new layer of narm.
- In one panel, Lew Siffer presents a chart explaining how he masterminded the evolution of rock music which classifies Elvis Presley and The Beatles as Hard Rock. Now consider the kinds of songs most people associate them with. If "Suspicious Minds" and "All You Need Is Love" are Hard Rock, then what would soft rock be?
- If The Beatles are "hard rock", what's "heavy death metal"? It's probably Giygas with Cthulhu, Chernabog and Hades or something.
- Giygas on vocal's, Cthulhu on the keyboard, Chernabog playing bass and Hades on the drums... Awesome!!!
- "Play "In The Dark Of The Night"!
- They're called Anal Cunt.
- The panel where the devil is revealed with a ZAP.
- The band in Why No Revival? has two songs titled "Rock of Ages" and "Rock for the Rock". Now, there is a good rock/metal song called "Rock of Ages" out there, but "Rock for the Rock" smacks of Spinal Tap.
- By Chick's logic, the entire discography of The Beatles and every other rock band ON EARTH comprises demonic hard metal songs bent on sending souls to "Lew Siffer". Even the Christian bands. Yes, the only way a band can sing about peace, love, and happiness are if they are with Lew.
- What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
- Satan's chainsaw rampage in Boo! is hard to take seriously when he has a jack-o-lantern with a goofy grin on his head..
- Then the pumpkin came off, revealing the killer to be SATAN. Then a cop yells, "AIEEE! Run! 'Tis the Devil himself!" Say what you will about Jack Chick; he's anything but predictable.
- The proud declaration at the top of all the pages:
"Publishing cartoon gospel tracts and equipping Christians for evangelism for 40 years."
- It's technically true, but...
- "I hate you AND your Jesus!"
- Chick's rants against the Catholic Church are at once funny and sad. To hear him tell it, an Ancient Conspiracy issuing from the Vatican has been responsible for the following: both World Wars, the Holocaust (in which Catholics were killed), the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy (the first Catholic president), the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II (it was faked, don'chaknow!), the Ku Klux Klan (also anti-Catholic), Islam (the Koran would have Catholics be killed, converted, or enslaved), Communism (which is anti-religion), Mormonism (a.k.a. the Latter Day Saints, which blames Catholics for the corruption of The Bible), Jehovah's Witnesses, and more. When his claims proved so virulent and erroneous that Protestant bookstores stopped stocking his comics, he blamed the Catholics for that!
- "My goodness, Susy, we almost became Muslims! I want Jesus!"
- This exchange from "Moving On Up!":
Cathy: Adam and Eve really blew it by disobeying God. And their sin was passed on to us!
Tyler: What a bummer!
- And from the same comic: "Then it finally happened. Tyler croaked."
The Grim Reaper: "Hi there!"
Tyler: *plop*
- Chick gets the theory of evolution wrong and essentially equates it with Hitler.
- This. The emphasis is Jack Chick's.
- Chick gets the theory of evolution wrong and essentially equates it with Hitler.
Tyler: Now I see why Jesus is banned in our school and why we hate him and his cruel Ten Commandments! Only weak, inferior people like you believe that nonsense!
- He seems to have gotten part of his information about evolution from Devo.
"...We lost our tails!"
- "... You'll be in a lake of fire with millions of others who believe we evolved from monkeys!"
"In the beginning, we came from goo!"
"You're dangerous! They don't teach that in school! We came from monkeys, you sicko!"
- Cathy told you that I died for you, but YOU REJECTED ME!
- Chick talking to himself.
Tyler: There are no absolutes.
Chick's asterisk: Lie! Here's an absolute: the words of God!
- I FEEL SOOOOOO CLEAN!
- YAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! -- screamed by victims of a poison gas attack. This probably violates the laws of biology.
- Doesn't this information upset you? It should, beloved!
- "The Sun God, Osiris?"
- One page from Something In Common? includes these gems:
"I'm a Buddhist and you don't exist!
"@!!!** !! There's nothing wrong with adultery or lying!"
- "But the papa wasn't human... God was the daddy..."
- Forbidden Fruit not being apples, but some sort of speckled ... pickle?
- The Forbidden Fruit was never stated to be apples in the Bible, so that's one thing he actually got right.
- "Grrr, kill him,"
- Tomorrow, a healer's gonna tell us about the The Mother Goddess...
- In Unloved:
I'm UNWANTED, UNLOVED, DISOWNED... and the doctor says I'm dying of CANCER!"
- The man's about to jump. A man comes up to him and starts telling him about Jesus. The first man says this:
"This better be good, or I'm going to jump!"
- Any panel where a silhouetted angel casually tosses someone into the Lake of Fire.
- The lizard - supposedly Satan in serpent form - in In the Beginning. Geez, has Chick ever seen an actual serpent?
- Also, the evangelist looks just like David "Are you serious?" Silverman, an atheist.
- Giant Faceless God.
- "What should I do, Jesus?!"
"Bang on the door!"
"Okay!"
- His "native" tract is particularly fun:
- God is a gleaming Eldritch Abomination who eternally damns his children. (Scarily, the first part is one of the few parts of The Bible Chick gets right.)
- The shaved heads and long hair. Long hair on men is a symbol of the American Indian Movement, so we'll give him credit for that; but it still has Unfortunate Implications.
- Being against having uranium tailings in your water is a sin! Being a teetotaller is a sin!
- Naturally, if you don't have long hair, then you have a mohawk.
- What's the one where he introduces a typically jolly, respectable-looking Christian evangelist missionary couple who have been running a charity in Africa their whole careers AND dutifully proselytizing the entire time, and they get on a plane, which crashes, and then they get sent to hell for not believing in Jesus hard enough? That honestly took me by surprise.
- Actually that was for not
shoving their beliefs down people's throatsconverting enough people. Yeah, if Jack Chick is right, God is a jerk. - That would be the tract called Flight 144.
- Actually that was for not
- The picture linked to under Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking from the main page, especially the snarling Sikh who's going to stab you with his giant kirpan.
- "You're going to meat the death angel."
- Apparently, even mentioning the word "Hell" is no longer acceptable in household conversation, according to "Going Down?"
- "Oh man, this is awesome! He's killing his own brother!"
- At chick.com, there are randomised "Tract Myths" and other adlike things at the bottom of each tract page. Tract Myth #3, which is about shyness, features a young girl hiding her face. She looks more like she's facepalming at the Chick Tract.
- In the comic about guardian angels, the angel leaving after one masturbation too many and the random Satanic guy who tries to stab the hero and gets foiled by his angel. Priceless.