I think this dude just likes to draw cats
This is Chick’s most recent. It’s a sweet, pointless story about a cat named Jenny, then it switches to a totally different illustrator for the last eight pages (old Jack Chick art, I think) and a YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO HELL, DO YOU? message.
December 31, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 1
Lady, what have you got on your head?!
Party Girl. I think from the context this is supposed to be Mardi Gras. This one is noteworthy for the especially awful art.
December 30, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 7
Brrrr…
This Was Your Life was by far the most circulated Chick tract of all. They were everywhere. This one was personal; it led to the terrifying certainty that some day, everyone who ever lived would watch me poop.
The original Chick artwork was appalling. This was a later edition intended to reach English-speaking Asian immigrants (their description).
December 27, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 7
It’s a novel theory
If you don’t get the implications of “slower and easier to catch” his position is that people killed and ate the dinosaurs, in what looks like Medieval times. This is a fun one.
December 26, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 4
Mary looks properly horrified
I’ve come to think of this artist as Shading Guy. He did this one and many other bible stories ones. He’s a definite cut above the usual Chick artist.
Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 5
Scrooge is going to heaven, what’s your deal?
This one is classic Chick. The proof is in the truly awful faces.
I hope you’re settled in and ready for tomorrow. Here’s a recipe for sugarplums, in case you have a dearth of things to dance in your head tonight. That one calls for actual plums. This more complicated recipe involves prunes.
Hoo boy, did I ever tell you about the Christmas Eve I got into vodka and prune juice? I was visiting my mother and her water wasn’t safe to drink. Prune juice was all she had in the fridge. Did I ever get a big ol’ surprise Christmas morning!
December 24, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 4
Christmas with Jack
I was desperately trawling through Ebay looking for something interesting to buy for Onkle B for Christmas (I failed), when – for reasons known only to God and the algorithm – I was offered a block of 25 sealed copies of a Jack Chick tract, That Crazy Guy. Dear seller in Georgia – ain’t nobody pay a hundred bucks for this.
I collected Chick tracts when I were a lass. There were tons of them in circulation in the Seventies. They had two qualities I adored: really, genuinely, outrageously awful artwork and bizarre messages.
Lots of straight up evangelizing, naturally, but with odd twists. He hated Catholicism, for example – which may have limited his reach. Though it was said he was probably the most widely read living author in the world. Er, when he was alive.
Chick didn’t do interviews and remained a bit of a mystery. David Daniels, who worked with him toward the end, has published a biography, You Don’t Know Jack, and a video series of the same name.
I can’t imagine I’ll be bored enough to follow up on that.
His whole oeuvre is available at chick.com. I wish they were better about recording the artist and publication date – I can identify the hand of at least three different illustrators at minimum, each very different but all truly awful.
I thought it would be fun to visit some of the weirder panels over the holidays, by way of easy content. It’s tempting to think That Crazy Guy is a Steve Martin reference, which places it late Seventies. Untreatable AIDS (spoiler, he gives her AIDS) makes it mid Eighties. This illustrator is better than Chick.
December 23, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 3
How did they know I’m a serial killer?
One thing I was not expecting to see on my chocolate cake was a little plastic axe. “Weasel,” Uncle B says, “it’s a Yule log. Get it?”
Huh.
That’s it! I’m off! I’m done! I’ve queued up a whole holiday’s worth of posts, but nobody better die because I’m not Dead Pooling for a couple weeks.
Merry Christmas! See you on the other side!
December 20, 2024 — 2:24 pm
Comments: 13
Where’d the weasel belly go?
I didn’t realize Grok had an image creator, but it does. Go to regular Grok and type “create a picture of a weasel playing the banjo.”
It clearly has an issue with middles. And feet. It did the same thing to “badger playing a violin” (no, Uncle B doesn’t play the violin).
I satisfied my curiosity on one point: if you give it the exact same prompt you will get different images each time, including some wild ones (two-necked banjo, anyone?).
One more day of work!
December 19, 2024 — 5:02 pm
Comments: 4
*clink* moooo
Today, we went to the farm shop OF THE FUTURE! It’s a giant farm shop vending machine. Inside the cubbyholes are eggs and homemade cakes and vegetables and slabs of meat. Like a New York automat, but for farm produce.
This is their publicity photo. We found the actual shop considerably grubbier, but still cool. It’s a collection of vending machines in a shipping container on a gravel farm lot. The touch screen in the far right is where you choose what you want, pay by contactless and the correct doors pop open for you.
It’s a bit of a drive for us, but we had to go.
Oh, had a horrible scare, though. The milk vendor is in a separate building. I went to take my debit card out of my phone case to pay, and neither my credit nor debit cards were there! Turns out, when I opened my phone to take a picture of this shop, both cards fell on the ground at my feet. Found them when I went back to the car, but I had visions of ass-ache for Christmas.
December 18, 2024 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 6