Haw Haw Haw: A Perspective on Jack Chick.
by twentyfiveforty
Chick's favorite phrase, from "The Long Trip"
When I was 12 years old, the youth group from my home church ventured to extreme southwest Georgia for our first collective mission trip. We took a small bus for the intrastate journey, but it may as well been a time machine. Indeed, this place would give Boo Radley’s Maycomb, Alabama a run for its money. It was the kind of town where racism was highly divisive and pulpits filled old sanctuaries with fiery images of brimstone and everlasting torture. It should come as no surprise, then, that it’s where I was first exposed to Jack Chick tracts. If your only encounter with these tracts was finding them nestled on top of a restroom urinal or abandoned on a counter top, consider yourself lucky. This south Georgia church had an arsenal of them, and they wanted us to freely distribute them.
If you’re not familiar with said tracts, just imagine a slightly prejudiced fundamentalist Christian message set to turbo and delivered in comic form on 20-page tracts. Doubtless, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people in fellowship with Christ right now that have come to know Him at least partially though these tracts. I praise God for these souls. I would have to speculate, though, that most of these people probably came to this decision in the 20th century. Times have changed. Chick’s techniques have not. I can only imagine how many people today may be put off by these tracts. I’d like to pick one of them apart and examine what the lost may perceive in them. (All of Chick’s tracts can be found on his website here.)
The first is a Jack Chick magnum opus of sorts, a grand tract simply entitled “Boo!”, published in 1991. I can only speculate that it was intended to be distributed amongst oblivious trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Poor kids. Of course, they probably do like the action going on in the tract; as bizarre and misguided as some of the Chick tracts are, they are all consistently one thing: entertaining. I don’t mean that in a sarcastic or smarmy way. Chick really does have a knack for threading a story along and keeping you engaged, even if you don’t agree with how he’s delivering the message or the message itself. And although he may not be a star philosopher in some respects, he is truly a gifted visual artist. But anyways. The tract (which can be found here):
The basic plot to “Boo!” is that a group of high schoolers plan on hanging out on Halloween at the Camp Basil Bub (get it??) cabins, and for some reason, their redneck ringleader wants to sacrifice a cat to Satan. Okay. Sounds normal enough…
Notice the Haw Haw. Also, I'm not sure why Satan is depicted with a pet snake here.
So we’re introduced to Satan, who is at first simply a black silhouette who for some unforeseen reason is wearing a jack-o-lantern over his head. And what do you know, he forgot his chainsaw. Apparently Halloween is Satan’s birthday. News to me.
Satan apparently finds his chainsaw and busts into their little meeting where a student identified as “Carrie” is about to sacrifice the poor cat. But the character of Satan in this tract doesn’t want the cat. Oh no. He wants Carrie. Chick spares the reader the bloody scene which ensues, in which Satan actively kills all in attendance.
'Tis the devil himself.
The law gets involved and Satan un-dons the ridiculous pumpkin on his head to reveal his true identity. And of course, Chick depicts him as a goofy horned being. And before I say anything else, I simply must address the “haw haw” thing. In all the issues I take with these Chick Publication tracts, this is perhaps the most frivolous, but I can’t help but notice every utterance of that phrase. Who laughs like that? Is it a colloquial thing? It may seem stupid to mettle over it, but to me the use of “haw haw haw” is a small indicator of how out of touch Chick is with reality. In fact, so many people find it humorous that when you search for Jack plus Chick plus the letter h, it’s the fifth thing Google predicts you to search.
Harry Potter? Oh goodness no.
But I digress. After Satan’s run-in with the law, he happens upon a church where a young man is praying and the devil decides to give him a scare. The dude rebukes him and the devil runs away. The next day, the young man talks to his pastor about the nature of Satan. What follows is a monologue that seems legit in terms of the Satan part. But after that the pastor starts rambling about the history of Halloween, spouting off points that are non-verifiable and mostly folklore. He depicts the holiday as a time when bloodthirsty Celtics roamed the land desperate for a human sacrifice in exchange for a jack-o-lantern. When in reality the holiday is more related to 
Samhain, an end-of-the-harvest holiday where Celtics thought the separation between the world of the living and that of the dead was especially thin.
How would you know?
And there again lies another Chick-real world disconnect. Instead of spending a mere hour or so researching the history of Halloween, Chick simply formulates his own fanciful rendition of its background. Now I do believe Halloween does glorify Satan more than it does God, obviously, but it’s not a time where more demons than normal come out and run amok on “Satan’s birthday”. That’s absurd.
Here’s the problem with tracts in general: when used correctly, tracts can be an effective supplement to someone sharing their faith. And perhaps that’s all Chick is intending them to be. But what happens more often is Christians thrusting them into someone’s face and running away, expecting that do the deed. They want to make a difference for the kingdom without putting any effort into relationship building whatsoever. And that’s why I dislike tracts, by and large. They are throwbacks from a bygone era. You used to be able to simply lay the truth out there and people would respond accordingly. Virtually all generations living today do not simply regard something as truth because someone else tells them it is (as was the case 50 years ago). In this day and age, to more effectively nudge someone in the direction of Christ you must show love in the form of an active relationship.
What’s more, these are simply misguided tracts. The classic blue and white “ETERNAL LIFE” tract is solid in its content through and through. It can be a quick and efficient tool in sharing the news of Christ when used properly. But Chick tracts tend to leave more heads scratching and fists clinching than they change hearts.
For example, take Chick’s depiction of Satan in the above tract. He seems to miss the point that Satan is a crafty shifter who can take many forms to mislead people, whether it be through adulterated thoughts or ill-conceived emotions or desires or anything else. He’s not an entity who will barge through a door wielding a chainsaw and donning a pumpkin on his head. He won’t actively physically kill human beings. He can do much more damage with a extant person who he’s misguided. Simply put, he’s not an easily scripted being with little horns, fangs and a tail. That’s what the world expects us to imagine him as. Chick is playing into this preconceived notion and I can only imagine it makes the whole Christian faith seem like it’s just one which believes in goofy and fictitious characters.
The fact is, God doesn’t depend on us to get the best PR out there for Him. But He has given us the sense to ponder the best way of reaching people in our day and time through our messages, and we should definitely take advantage of that.
Bonus reading: Be sure to check out this hilarious Lark News satire article regarding Jack Chick. Amazing.
