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p e c i a l R e p o r t--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Nightmare World of Jack T. ChickYou’ve seen them.Perhaps left in a phone booth, Laundromat, or other public place. Maybe aFundamentalist coworker or a street evangelist gave one to you. Perhaps a childgave one to your child at school. They have titles such as Are Roman CatholicsChristian?, The Death Cookie, and Why Is Mary Crying? They are Chick tracts—tinycartoon booklets produced by Jack T. Chick ("J.T.C.") and his publishing house,Chick Publications.You’ve seen them . . . but have you read one? Do so, and you step into thenightmarish world of Jack T. Chick.In this world, few things are as they appear. It is a world of shadow andintrigue, a world of paranoia and conspiracy theories, a world where demons hauntpeople sincerely trying to follow God, and the Catholic faith is the devil’sgreatest plot against mankind.Here are just a few things you will "learn" if you start reading Chick tracts andcomic books:The Catholic Church keeps "the name of every Protestant church member in theworld" in a "big computer" in the Vatican for use in future persecutions.[1] But the conspiracy is much broader than this, and it has been going on for a verylong time. In the sixth century, for instance, Catholic leaders manipulated theArabian tribesman Mohammed into creating the religion of Islam to use as a weaponagainst the Jews and to conquer Jerusalem for the pope.[2] The Jesuits instigated the American Civil War, supporting the Confederate causeand seeking to undermine the Union. When they failed, they arranged theassassination of Abraham Lincoln.[3] Later, they formed the Ku Klux Klan.[4] "Jesuits worked closely with Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin" to createCommunism, and it was "believed that soon . . . Communism would rise up as the newstrong daughter of the Vatican."[5] It was Rome that instigated the BolshevikRevolution and the murder of the czar’s family.[6] The Communist "liberationtheology" movement also is a Vatican plot.[7] The Nazi Holocaust of the 1940s was a Vatican-controlled attempt to exterminateJews and heretics.[8] Further, "Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were backed by theVatican for the purpose of setting up a one-world government to usher in the‘Millennial Kingdom’ under Pope Pius XII."[9] The Vatican conspiracy is so extensive that, through the Jesuits, Rome controlsthe Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, international bankers, theMafia, the Club of Rome, the Masons, and the New Age movement.[10]
 
 The Jesuits created the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Unity, Christian Science,and other religious groups.[11] "Pope John Paul II has been a good Communist for many years"[12] and engineered aphony assassination attempt against himself in 1981 to shame Islam into warmingrelations with the Vatican, since the would-be killer was a Muslim.[13]Tracts are only one of the ways Chick spreads his messages of hate and paranoia.His website (www.chick.com) lists large-size comic books, posters, booklets,books, videos, and DVDs for sale. Still, it is the tracts for which he is mostfamous. According to Chick Publications, more than 500 million of them have beendistributed.With shocking, sensationalist allegations such as these being distributed tohundreds of millions of people, you may be wondering . . .Who Is Jack T. Chick?Jack Thomas Chick is a recluse. Little is known about him. He does not giveinterviews. Only two out-of-date pictures of him are publicly known (one is a highschool yearbook photo). Rumors about him abound, making it difficult to sort factfrom fiction concerning his life. He was born April 13, 1924, in the Boyle Heightsneighborhood of Los Angeles,[14] and he was not always a Fundamentalist. Accordingto the biography posted on his web site:While in high school, none of the Christians would have anything to do with himbecause of his bad language. They all agreed not to witness to him, convinced thathe was the last guy on earth who would ever accept Jesus Christ.After graduation from high school, Jack won a scholarship to the PasadenaPlayhouse to study acting, but his studies were interrupted by the military. Hespent the next three years in the Army, which took him to foreign countries likeNew Guinea, Australia, the Philippines and Japan.After being discharged from the service, Jack returned to the Playhouse, where hemet and married his wife, Lynn, who was instrumental in his salvation. Whilevisiting Lynn’s parents in Canada on their honeymoon, Jack’s mother-in-lawinsisted that he sit and listen to Charles E. Fuller’s Old Fashioned Revival Hourradio program. Jack recalls, "God was already working on my heart, but when Fullersaid the words, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,’I fell on my knees and my life was changed forever."[15]The scene of falling on one’s knees to accept Jesus is one repeated over and overagain by characters in Chick tracts. But how did Jack Chick make the leap frombeing an ordinary Fundamentalist to the foremost Christian comic publisher in theworld? For a time, he worked as a technical illustrator for an aerospace companyin California, but he longed to be work for God:He wanted to be a missionary himself, but his new wife wanted no part ofmissionary life. Her aunt had been a missionary in Africa. While pregnant, she wasbeing carried across a river on a stretcher, when one of those carrying her lost a
 
leg to an alligator.[16]Eventually, Jack started combining his work as an illustrator with his passion forevangelization, producing his first published religious works, Why No Revival? andA Demon’s Nightmare. He became convinced of the effectiveness of this techniqueafter using it with a group of prisoners:[Chick] was invited to present the gospel to a group of inmates at a prison nearhis home. He drew several pieces of cartoon art and prepared a flip chart toillustrate what he was saying. At the conclusion of his message, nine of theeleven inmates present trusted Christ as their Saviour. Jack became convinced thatGod had given him a method of reaching people with the gospel that worked. Thatart was later put into booklet form and became the tract This Was Your Life![17]Following this episode, Chick Publications became a full-time venture for Jack,and, in the more than forty years since it was started, his tracts, comic books,and other publications have reached hundreds of millions of people, spreadingtheir message of simple Fundamentalist theology fused with elaborate conspiracytheories.In time, the art in the tracts received an upgrade—not because Chick changed hisown style of drawing but because he hired an artist with much better skills. Yethe did not announce this fact and did not put the new artist’s name on the workshe produced. Instead, they continued to carry the credit "by Jack T. Chick" orsimply "by J.T.C." The difference between the two drawing styles was so dramaticthat it was immediately noticed by readers, and rumors circulated about who the"good artist" might be. It would be some time before Chick disclosed that theman’s name was Fred Carter.In 1972, he hired Fred Carter, an African-American painter and illustrator fromDanville, Illinois, who had studied at Chicago’s American Academy of Art. Carter’srealistic illustrations and distinctive inking style made him a perfect fit forthe [Crusaders comic book] series’ action sequences and exotic locales. Witchburnings and ritual murders are captured in gleefully visceral detail, while thebooks’ sexual overtones—as well as scantily clad biblical sirens like Eve,Delilah, and Semiramis—have led critics to describe Carter’s work as "spiritualporn."At once, the artwork improved tenfold. Chick, however, kept Carter’s name off allof the comics. Rumors and speculation about the identity of the so-called goodartist at Chick Publications began to spread. For years fans theorized thatCarter’s work was produced by a team of illustrators or an unknown Filipino mandubbed "Artist J." Chick finally revealed Carter’s identity in 1980, claiming thatthe artist is "rather shy and declines to put his name on his art."[18]Jack Chick’s art in The HitFred Carter’s art in The Deceived 
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