ABOUT FRED CARTER, CHICK TRACTS, AND THE CRUSADERS (1974-82)

These images represent the expansion of evangelical and faith-based comic books and cartoon art that engaged with Black religious characters and settings, yet through a specific white-oriented institutional and theological lens.

Christian publishers in the mid-20th century presumptively tailored their comics narratives and imagery for both Black and white audiences, yet these depictions rested upon similar, often problematic, assumptions about race. A unique example of a publisher with a multi-racial reach and appeal is Jack Chick, a California-based publisher who gained notoriety within the fundamentalist Christian scene in the early 1970s. His brand of independent Baptist fundamentalism emphasized the inerrancy of Scripture and the imminent arrival of the Antichrist before Christ's triumphant return. Chick Publishing capitalized on growing evangelical anxieties about mainstream institutions, including government, the media, and established churches. Recognizing comics as a powerful medium for outreach, Chick produced cartoon "witnessing tracts" that were filled with fiery pronouncements and scathing denunciations of those deemed to be racial and religious others. These comics created caricatured portrayals of Catholicism, Islam, and non-Christian religions but also, we will see, innovated African American images and racial themes.

Though widely dismissed by religious scholars, Jack Chick's publications garnered a devoted readership. Mark Dery has described the tracts as a “cultural gene-splice of the religious tract and Maoist agit-prop booklets.” Others acknowledge that Chick is “the most underground of underground cartoonists” and one of the most successful in terms of circulation and readership. His comics offered clear pictorial and literary pronouncements of salvation and redemption woven amidst the devastation of a fallen world, promoting a base understanding of the gospel message as a clear cut vision of heaven and hell, life and death. Biblical quotes and scripture references laced with conspiracy theories and fundamentalist doctrine, painted a bleak world locked in spiritual warfare. Chick's comics furnished chilling imagery of a web of societal ills – assaults upon the traditional family, homosexuality, and drug addiction. Juxtaposed against these threats loomed Lucifer, the Antichrist figure from the Book of Revelation and a sinister portrayal of the Vatican as an occult deep state. Chick’s cultural critique, rooted in fears of increasing religious and cultural diversity and perceived moral decline, was not particular to his comics. Similar anxieties had echoed in earlier 20th-century comics. However, Chick's targets extended to those that were viewed incompatible with true Christianity within a narrow discourse of religious fundamentalism. Furthermore, unlike most Christian comics of the time, these comics also explicitly and directly addressed the Black religious experience. 

Much like Spire’s Up From Harlem, many of the Jack Chick publications adhered to  period-specific aesthetic styles in their presentation of Black people. This is especially evident in The Crusaders, written and illustrated by the African American cartoonist Fred Carter. Though uncredited for much of his career, Carter created Jack Chick comics from roughly 1972 to 1980. An ordained minister and talented painter, he authored some of the most recognizable content directed at Black audiences in the Jack Chick catalog, including Soul Story and Burn, Baby, Burn. In 2000, he produced the Children of Color Bible with original oil paintings, crafting some of the few images of Jesus Christ with a Black body. Visual studies scholar David Morgan notes that Carter's illustrations acknowledged African American identity by incorporating race and religious faith, "celebrating Blackness without apology." Carter, who passed away in 2022, is considered one of the most widely seen African American comics illustrators of the 20th century.

Jack Chick's comic tracts, ubiquitous yet contentious, became an indelible expression of American Christian conservative evangelical and fundamentalist culture. Overflowing with fiery admonitions and images of social carnage, these "horror tracts," as Religion scholar Jason Bivins has called them, combine spiritual fervor, cultural anxiety, and conspiracy. Bivins argues that Chick's brand of intense paranoia and apocalyptic rhetoric align with what he calls the "religion of fear," a religious ideology with strong political ties to the right wing evangelical moral majority ascendancy of the Reagan era.

Paradoxically, while often perceived as fear-mongering, Chick tracts have offered solace to many Christian readers. Christian converts, in particular, found use in their clear delineation of the path to salvation, their warnings of imminent spiritual peril, their affective visions of the terrible wages of sin, and their florid illustrations of the heavenly afterlife. Scholar David Lynn Bell observes that Chick tracts have resonated most with those already familiar with Christian tenets, particularly those who had not yet fully committed to the faith (Bell, 213). This suggests that the tracts' effectiveness lay in their reinforcement of existing beliefs rather than their persuasive power over the uninitiated. The subjective nature of their reception complicates the history of Chick tracts. While they evoked strong responses—whether derision and hostility from those outside conservative evangelical and fundamentalist communities, or reassurance and comfort to those within—they undeniably offer valuable insights into 20th century Christianity and its unique visual articulations in the comics form. Their inflammatory rhetoric, overt homophobia, and anti-progressive ideology have been widely denounced, but they also serve as a fascinating window into the anxieties, aspirations, and theological perspectives of a specific segment of American religious culture.