Odds are, at some point in your life, you found a strange little comic in a rest stop restroom, wedged into a crevice on a rural gas pump, or amongst the fun-sized candy bars in your trick-or-treat bag. These comics included kitschy and campy art decrying the evils of rock music, role playing games, or the Roman Catholic church, and often ended with an EC Horror comics-worthy tragic twist, an image of a light-bulb headed God or an altar call sermon by a guy who looked a bit like John Waters.

If you did, you found a Chick Tract, one of the stranger ways conservative evangelical churches “witnessed” to unbelievers.

These little comics, however, due in large part to the ham-handed campiness, distinctive art, and collectable form factor, over the years developed a bit of an ironic following amongst heathens and comics fans, who would get a little surge of excitement when we encountered one in the wild.

This week, sadly, word came out across the internet that Jack Chick, prolific artist and independent publisher of these little “treasures”, has passed away.

While a lot of the views expressed in these comics are repugnant (to the point that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists Chick Publications as a hate group for it’s anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and homophobic content), and often traffic in weird illuminati-conspiracy theory drivel; they’re also kind of neat, and enjoyable in a deliciously ironic way; in particular due to their greatly exaggerated presentation of Christian theology, and interesting in terms of pop art history, distinctive in their own way, and owing much to Depression-era Tijuana bibles in terms of form, style and attitude, if not in artistic intent.

These little books are an interesting low-fi cultural artifact that operates mostly under the radar, but has a devoted following. Growing up, I’d seen these things around, but developed something of a fascination with them (and other similar works) after reading links and discussions in the early aughts on fark.com about them, which often discussed favorite comics and particular artistic tics. There’s actually a wealth of discussion, including some legitimate academic analysis of these things out there, if you care to take a look.

A few have crept into more (aguably) mainstream popular culture, in particular, Dark Dungeons, a tone-deaf but appealingly batshit condemnation of role-playing games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons, drawing from the very real “Satanic Panic” in the 80s. This particular strip’s popularity culminated a few years ago in a film adaptation of the comic by some of the folks behind the popular The Gamers series of indpendent features, with the approval of Chick Publications.

I don’t expect we’ll see these little things disappear from the landscape any time soon, though with the passing of the mysterious and reclusive Mr. Chick, the world will feel a little less strange and interesting in his absence.