God's Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick (2008) Online

This documentary beat others to the punch as it is the first one ever to address those little religious booklets everyone has seen at one point or another. Chick's tracts have an entry in the Smithsonian Institute and have been spotted in a Stephen King film. It is the first and definitive documentary on Jack T. Chick and his religious tracts.

The documentary explores the controversial worldview and work of Jack T. Chick and his little comic books, including unknown interesting trivia. Chick is a self-published author whose work has passed the 3/4 of a billion mark, making him the most published independent author and artist alive, even surpassing J.K. Rowling and Stephen King combined. It's odd that no mainstream news program has given Chick his due, no matter how controversial and distasteful people find him.

Nice to get some background info on something that formed part of the background of my youth. I dinked around with the ultra-fundie mindset when I was 14; woke up out of it around the time I turned 17.

Nice to see Hal Robins, a great artist, and no doubt subtly influenced by Chick; and Rev. Stang.

Some believers--and, really, that's all they are; they can't really be considered "people of faith"--may balk at this flick. But in fairness it's important to note that at least the film is honest enough to drop that other shoe. At one point, one of the fan/collector guys comes right out and summarizes the twisted amoral center of the black hole where Chick lives. He tidily points out the total jackass "god" plainly depicted in the tract "Holy Joe". So, yeah, this flick holds Chick out at arm's length while basking in the eerie glow of his stark cartooning style and bizarre, contempt-permeated theology.

It's great that they were able to bring in some of Chick's collaborators; especially the smokingly whacked out Dr. Brown.

I was reflecting on Chick's oft'-touted popularity, when it struck me: Fundamentalism eludes moral accountability by various tricks, such as mercurially morphing a civil, rational facade, when so pressed. So, even now, tact/circumspection inclines you to stay your hand and give these "believers" the benefit of a doubt; a benefit they would fain reciprocate, btw! The reality of Chick's stunning popularity aptly belies the facade. These people really believe that god hates you and doesn't give a rat's a55 about your pretensions to honesty or integrity. And they are legion.

Watch this and get a little background.

Oh, a moment to comment on the production values: It's pretty much a string of interview snippets, vaguely put into an order that imparts a sense of forward motion; damning with faint praise, eh? The audio and video tech is fine. So the thing isn't the most artfully done. But it still offers a decent window into Chick Publishing. Check it out.

As a born-again Christian, Chick tract distributor and collector I was eager to see GOD'S CARTOONIST. It was a thoroughly engaging documentary, featured some insightful (and inciting) interviews, and uncovered fascinating details, but ultimately it stumbles and falls short of being the definitive documentary of Jack Chick.

The movie has much to its credit; for me, the film's real coup was its landing the first on-camera interview with Fred Carter, the long-unidentified "other" Chick artist. It was Carter's amazing artwork that first captured my imagination when I came upon the tract "The Sissy?" I recall reading it a dozen times as a young kid circa 1979 when I was a big fan of Marvel Comics and truck driver television shows like MOVIN' ON and BJ AND THE BEAR. I only wish the film would have given more attention to Fred Carter's magnum opus, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, a film comprised of 360 of Carter's eye-popping paintings.

The fatal flaw of Kurt Kuersteiner's film, the one that keeps it from being the definitive document, was his decision to approach Chick as an under-appreciated underground comics icon as opposed to a Fundamentalist Christian crusader, teacher and visionary. Further damaging are a number of the film's participants, especially Dan Raeburn, who are snarky and dismissive when referring to Chick's Christian convictions. They want to deny and downplay the Christian component and emphasize only his artwork, his techniques, etc. Perhaps only Christian fans of Chick understand just how enmeshed are Chick's beliefs and his work, so essential one cannot separate them. It's akin to approaching Dante or Milton and attempting to strain out and separate the religious beliefs that inspired and thoroughly permeates them.

I also took issue with the film's premise that Chick is unknown and/or ignored by the underground comics community. Chick's Crusaders comic series received a thorough and positive review titled "Blackhawks for Christ," published in The Comics Journal #50 (Oct. 1979). (Surprisingly, the review's writer, Cat Yronwode, is an occultist!) The fact that Jack Chick himself wrote a letter of appreciation and comment (published in TCJ #54) debunks the film's suggestion that Chick is a recluse who wants no part of the bigger comic book community. A close parallel to Chick is Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and a similarly ideologically-driven comics creator (for Ditko, Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy). Ditko also shuns photographs and publicity, desiring his work to speak for itself. Nobody accuses Ditko of being a recluse, with its connotation of eccentricity, so why Chick?

The film's strongest moments come when Kuersteiner turns the camera on those in Chick's circle: David W. Daniels, Kent Hovind, Rebecca Brown, Pastor Dann and the widow of Alberto Rivera. These were especially informative (though some of their best stories appear in the Deleted Scenes). Robert Fowler (winner of the Rick Geary look-alike contest) was a real treat to watch. I own, enjoy and depend upon his "World of Jack T. Chick" book (and which actually is a definitive work). I couldn't detect whether Fowler shares Chick's beliefs, but he's certainly respectful of them and winsome when discussing Chick and his ideas. Ivan Stang was another appealing person, freely acknowledging his debt to and appreciation for Chick (even admitting he was almost persuaded to say the sinner's prayer by a Chick tract!).

Conversely, Dan Raeburn and Hal Robins alternated between contempt and condescension for Chick's theological ideas while praising the craftsmanship of the finished product, each man frequently slipping into faux-academic posturing when discussing it. Raeburn's calling Chick's work "hate literature" was the near-nadir of the film, the lowest circle set aside for the scene where Raeburn looks into the camera, addresses Jack (whom he presumes is watching), and pompously informs him that all his work is "fiction." Chick's criticism of Catholicism and homosexuality receive thorough coverage, but I was disappointed that no time was taken to touch upon Jack Chick's long crusade defending and promoting the King James Bible, an issue Chick took on as far back as "The Attack" tract and the memorable "Sabotage!" issue of The Crusaders. Creationism gets short-shrift, even with Kent Hovind among the interviewees. Premillennial Dispensationalism isn't mentioned, though that is the eschatology that informs virtually every tract (a number of the illustrations floating across the screen depict the Rapture or the Tribulation period, but they aren't commented on).

Small but vexing mistakes snuck into the finished film, such as an on-screen biblical citation that refers to Revelation as "Revelations"; the movie opens with the turning pages of Chick's most widely-read tract, "This Was Your Life," but instead of the iconic tract we all know and love Kuersteiner used a little-known African variant edition illustrated by Carter; and while Raeburn is observing how Jack Chick's wartime experience "clearly informs his vision of Armageddon," the screen is filled with a montage of Carter-illustrated panels.

Those quibbles aside, I enjoyed the film and am confident any fan of Chick's work, whether he or she be a Christian believer or not, will find much to appreciate here. GOD'S CARTOONIST is a good first step on the path towards the definitive documentary of Jack T. Chick.