Sic Transit
The news broke as I started to figure out what to write about today — Jack Chick has died, which news will prompt one of two possible reaction paths:
- Jack who?
- The guy behind the crazy evangelical tract comics that hated everybody that wasn’t just like him? Wasn’t he dead already?
I honestly can’t think of anybody in comics that’s been seen as widely and yet been so unknown at the same time. There are places where Chick Tracts are ubiquitous — and where the worldview he espoused is celebrated uncritically — and yet the people who were probably most aware of the depth and breadth of his work are probably about as diametrically opposed to everything he believed in. Every cartoonist knew about Chick.
I never wound up on the harmful end of Chick’s message¹ but I’m still glad that he’s no longer cranking out more of it. Others will fill his place, but I doubt anybody else will be as good at it as he was, which I’m going to count as a rare tickmark in the GOOD column for 2016.
So he’s gone, and I never want to be the sort of person that rejoices in another’s death, so let’s look at things that are positive in life today. Things that should make just about anybody smile. At least one of which probably would have enraged ol’ Jack Chick for some reason or other. After all, if the world weren’t sinful and lacking morality (in his eyes, at least), what purpose would he have had?
- Dogs! Dogs are the best and now I need to go act this one out with my cold-nosed waggy guy.
- New Hark! A Vagrant update (Wuthering Heights, no less!), including links to comics about Kate Beaton’s King Baby tour of schools and bookstores.
- New erotica Kickstarter from Iron Circus, this one being Letters For Lucardo, the first of a planned four books from Finnish creator Noora Heikkilä. It’s about an old man and an immortally young vampire, setting the stage for the series theme of the dangers of love between human and superhuman. Did I mention that the vampire is also a dude? You’re welcome, Jack.
Oh, and on a logistical note, I’m going to be on a reasonably strict client site later this week. My apologies in advance if any updates are late or skipped.
Spam of the day:
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¹ As a straight white male, I was on his good side; my atheism makes me lost but I always got the impression that my failure to believe as he did was somehow less bad in his eyes than people who actively believed differently than he did (Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, Hindus, Wiccans, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses … let’s just say almost everybody).
What I’m saying is that his ministry — such as it was — was probably more of the cajoling type when addressed at me, and less of the bludgeoning condemnation that so many other people received.
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By Fleen: The Elcoertnic Swiss Army Knife For This Topic » This Day … This Day on 10.26.16 4:23 pm
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