by Art Chantry:
this stuff creeps me out. always has, always will. looking at religious propaganda always sends a charlie manson chill down my spine – no matter what “sect” we’re talking about here. this stuff is all about manipulation, indoctrination and control. there is no upside, unless you buy into it totally. and if you do, you lose your ‘self’. creepy.
—this card game was published by the ‘david c. cook pub. co.’ they have a snappy little logo. perhaps this ‘david cook’ fella also drew all of it? he also printed oodles of little toiler paper handouts. david c. cook publishing was a big producer of this stuff.—AC
this is an old ‘card game’ that was issued around the mid 1930’s, though the illustration style (an etching) looks so much older. but, then most religious imagery is so rooted in a sentimental past that ‘out of period’ style is a given. the idea that you take a game of chance and turn it into indoctrination tools to convert the young is even more creepy. gamble with your everlasting soul? why would you even DO that to a kid? it’s so fucked up.
i collect this sort of crap. i even send in my $1 to get fat envelopes stuffed to the gills with this stuff. i just recently found some more jack chick tracts, too. chick was like the bull-goose looney of religious propaganda of the last half century. did you know jack chick used to work on EC horror comics? true. his is always such good funny ironic stuff. the mere existence of these tools expose the lie of their intent. these things are living breathing contradiction and hypocrisy. no way around it. it is what it is. and it’s creepy.
my question here is this: who drew these things? now, the usual answer is “many different anonymous people we can never find out”. but, i don’t think that’s true at all. i think most of these little old images on early xtian propaganda from the first half of the last century seem to all be done by the same hand. i collect this stuff, so i get to see a lot of it side by side and i have to admit, it all looks identical. i think it was mostly one guy.
one argument may be that the STYLE is identical in everybody’s hands and it was used as a sort of “xtian extremist graphic standard company style”. that may be true. but i don’t think so. i think this first half of the century material – whether it’s a crappy badly printed little tissue paper handouts or a full fledged card game or even a KJV from the period – is utterly identical in every way. it’s all stayed in print for decades and decades and you can still easily find it virtually everywhere out there. but, i’ve never found a credit or even a signature.
anybody out there know who drew all this stuff? did he ever do anything else of interest? it’s always fascinating to look at the larger careers of people associated with extremism. jack chick used to draw repulsive horror comics. wesley morse, the man who drew all of those old ‘bazooka joe’ bubble gum comics started his career drawing all of those pornographic ‘tijuana bible’ comics. adolf hitler was a pretty darn passable architectural landscape painter. so, who is this person who drew all this religious crap and what’s his story?
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…i just did a google search on david c. cook pub co. and it’s still in biz and it’s still HUGE. lots money in this stuff, folks. you never go broke catering to extremes – it’s a loyal audience, for sure. but, i can find no mention of who the artist was at all….
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