Lola Lynn
Jack Thomas Chick (born April 13, 1924) of Chick Publications is the creator of comic-style tracts and larger comic books for the purpose of Christian evangelism in a fundamentalist theology.
Chick was born in Boyle Heights, California, USA, and experienced several health problems as a child. The family later moved to Alhambra where Chick was active in the high school drama club. After his graduation he continued his education in this area at the Pasadena Playhouse School of Theater on a two-year scholarship.
During World War II Chick was enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the Pacific theater. After the war he returned to the Pasadena Playhouse, and met his wife while working on a production there.
His wife, the former Lola Lynn, came from a family that held highly fundamental Christian beliefs, and Chick's current religious beliefs can probably be traced to their influence. It was Lola's mother who converted Chick to Christianity. Chick also counts Rev. Charles E. Fuller as a major influence.
After his marriage, he began working at the AstroScience Corporation in El Monte, California, and began an evangelical hobby, self-publishing his first tract, "Why No Revival?". Chick founded his own company (originally based in his kitchen) soon afterward.
Chick is highly controversial. Many of his tracts are strongly critical of homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, Freemasons and other groups. He quotes people who have since been discredited or whose claims are not widely accepted. Among his claims are that the Roman Catholic Church is anti-Christian and in league with Satan, Islam is a pagan lunar cult, that the Vatican has a computer that contains the names of all Protestants in the world, that Freemasonry, the New Age Movement, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and many others are in league with the Catholic Church, that the Vatican was behind the Jonestown Massacre and rock music was started by witches in Satan's service.
His chief sources are Dr Alberto Rivera - who claimed that he was once a Jesuit and had helped the Vatican destroy and infiltrate countless Protestant churches until his death in 1997; Pastor John Todd, who claims that witches and Satanists are trying to control the world; and Alexander Hislop, who claimed in his book The Two Babylons, that Roman Catholicism originated from an ancient Babylonian mystery religion. Jack Chick also claims to this day that all the modern versions of the Bible are Satanic and part of a Catholic conspiracy. He also claims that the King James Version of the Bible is God's Word. Chick is very conservative and is against Evolution and Abortion.
One of Chick's most famous tracts is "Dark Dungeons," which depicts a group of teenagers playing Dungeons & Dragons. When one player's character dies, the other player tells her: "Marcie, get out of here! YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist anymore." The game master then tells the surviving player that she will teach her how to cast real spells; meanwhile, Marcie commits suicide. The game master tells Debbie that the game and her character are more important than real life, and then a Chick-typical evangelical confronts Debbie and tells her that Jesus is more important than everything else, and then she eagerly converts and burns her books. Another famous tract is "This Was Your Life", it is about a man who dies and goes to the Lake of Fire. The man had lived a good life but never received Jesus Christ as his Lord. On Judgment Day, the man watches his life being revealed before Jesus Christ. The Lord then sends the man into the Lake of Fire.
Chick lives a more or less reclusive life; he last granted an interview in 1975. He also hires an artist named Fred Carter to help him with his work. Fred Carter is a better srtist than Jack Chick and drew many of Chick's tracts. His wife Lola passed away in 1998 and he has since remarried. He has finished a film, The Light of the World, presenting the Bible in pictures.
In 2000, he started the Bible series of his tracts. One of his most famous creations is a Fundamentalist Christian man named Bobby Williams, who appeared in the Bible Series. Between the 1970s and 80s,he published 20 comics. The first 17 comics are known as the Crusader Comics that star a white man named Timothy Emerson Clark and a black man named James Carter. These two men are fundamentalist, born-again Christians. They travel around winning converts and rescuing Christians that have gone astray. The last six comics of the Crusader Comics star Dr Alberto Rivera as the main character. In each of the six comics, Dr Alberto Rivera claims that the Vatican is behind every evil act in the world such as World War I and World War II. In the first comic Alberto,Dr Rivera claims that he was a Catholic priest and he tells how he leaves the Catholic Church. In the second comic Double Cross,Alberto rivera tells how he went to London and rescued his sister from a nunnery.In that comic,he also claims that the Vatican is trying to kill him.In The Godfathers,Alberto Rivera claims that the Catholic Church founded Communism,Nazism and Zionism and tried to destroy the Jews. In the Force,Alberto claims that the Catholic Church is using Occult power to destroy the souls of her followers.In the Four Hoursemen, Dr Alberto Rivera claims that the Vatican persecuted Christians and is using organisations to do its work.In The Prophet,Alberto claims that the Catholic Church helped start Islam to destroy the Christians and the Jews. Jack Chick has been heavily criticised for his views. The other three comics are less well known. Two of them are known as the King of kings and The Big Betrayal. The King of Kings tells major Bible stories in comic form while The Big Betrayal is the biography of another ex-Catholic priest named Charles Chiniquy who claimed that the Vatican was behind the American Civil War and Lincoln's assassination. The Big Betrayal is the comic version of Charles Chiniquy's autobiography '50 Years In The Church of Rome'. The last comic is called Jonah and is currently the only Chick Comic out of print. Jack Chick currently publishes his own newspaper called Battle Cry. Little is known about Jack Chick and there is no present portrait of him available. He has currently started the Children's Series of the tracts. The tracts tell children that evolution , homosexuality and celebrating Halloween are wrong.
