I won't be going to any parties on the occasion of his death, but Jack Chick's comics (or "tracts" as he called them) show him to have been a thoroughly horrible person, and a dangerous one if anyone actually believed his drivel, which I fear some people did. If you want to get an idea, look up "Lisa", probably the most vile of all his comics - you won't find it on his site (unlike most of his comics, even discontinued ones), but it can be found elsewhere online. Short version: getting 'saved' and accepting Jesus makes everything you've done before all right with no further consequences, including sexually abusing your child.

Well, when somebody run in the streets screaming "paint all dogs red!", and the morning after you see old Rex has been colored a fresh shade of crimson by your neighbor's kids, well, you know it's the kid's fault, but you kinda think the nutter had his share of responsibility.

There was a very active smear campaign against games at the time, "journalists" jumped ont the bandwagon, and parents who heard about it panicked and tried to "protect" their kids, leading to incidents that would not have happened without the anti-D&D propagandists.

Now, was Chick actually part of the problem, or did he simply jump on the bandwagon like everyone else? Difficult to say. His works were so over-the-top that I have trouble believing anybody might have taken him seriously, but he makes a convenient bogeyman, as it's harder to resent people like Pat Pulling (who was probably the worst offender, but her crusade was fueled by a personal tragedy, so you cannot help but sympathise even if she was very, very wrong) or a faceless group like "the braindead media looking for the next juicy scandal"

I am probably not entirely rational in my dislike for him (but, hey, nobody is entirely rational about anything), but the guy thought that I am personally a dangerous lunatic (as a RPG gamemaster), and I returned the favor.

Try this one.

Never heard of the guy, but from what I've read, the guy sounds like he was a bit of an insufferable twat, although I'm not necessarily sure he was fundamentally evil in the way that people like Trump, Limbaugh and Coulter are.

The sad thing is that while Trump et al. do evil things with evil intentions (greed, supremacism, lust for power), people sometimes also do evil things with the most honourable of intentions and it sounds like Chick was one of those people. That's the basic problem with religious fundamentalism.

Honestly, there are plenty of people in this world who I wish would just drop dead, possibly with a helping hand: Donald Trump, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Katie Hopkins, Nigel Farage, Alexander Gauland, Björn Hocke, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin among them. People like them make me ashamed to be part of the human race, and honestly, when they drop dead, I'll be among the first to break out the champagne, just as I proverbially did when that mobile footage of Saddam dangling from a rope was published and Hugo Chavez's death was announced.

But the death of someone like Chick is something that I don't really feel the need to mourn or celebrate. He was blinkered, not evil, and really, I'm only sorry that he didn't understand that what he was doing was wrong before he died.

I don't see him wishing anything horrible on anybody in this comic. The only point of it I'm seeing is wanting the protagonist to change his lifestyle.
Hm, didn't know such a campaign existed. Thanks for the information.

I think it's just a matter of him being more high-profile, for whatever reason, so getting his message out to more people. Again, I'm not saying it's a good thing to throw a party at his grave, I'm just saying I get why the OP would be happy that the guy won't be spreading his hatred any more. Myself, I read the news a couple of days ago and just shrugged, but as I live half a world away my only prior knowledge of Chick came from a mention in Spoony's Mazes and Monsters review.

When someone shitty dies, you have to ask yourself: What would George Carlin do?

He was high-profile? I assumed he was in relative obscurity. I didn't even know he existed until some article I read parodied his comics.
I guess that explains it a bit more, but OP and quite a few others here are still notably....bitter.
Something tells me I might want to back out of this thread before things turn ugly.

Meh, IMO Hitler was worse, probably. But congrats for finding joy in the little things.

He'd probably kick Chick's ass out of heaven, screaming "get the fuck out, you don't belong here!"

Ayup, started when some kid shot himself and his mother decided to find a scapegoat, and things went downhill after that. Anti-D&D organisations distributing tracts to school boards, books, several Hollywood movies (including one with Tom Hanks), accusations of satanic rituals, murder, rape and tomb desecration, TV shows with psychologists explaining why your kid will commit suicide if he plays an elf, labelling as a sect during official police investigations... The late 80s' (for the US) / early 90s (in France) were a bumpy ride, and to this day I still sometimes (unfrequently) meet concerned gaze and "you're careful, right?" questions when people learn I still play during my weekends :/

The weird point about that? I'm kinda nostalgic of the time I was "some kind of dangerous and edgy cult leader with satanic powers", rather than simply nowadays' "That loser playing with weird dice". ^^

Check out this video for a funny look at those days of satanic D&D paranoia. Unfortunately theo riginal is gone, so this upload with poorer quality is all I could find.

I was going to comment on the tastelessness of openly rejoicing about someone's death.

But it's Jack T. Chick, so who cares.

You get a free pass.

I have zero qualms about rejoicing for some people's death. But his ? I cannot even form an opinion on whether he brought more joy or sorrows to this world. If you know him, you owe him (directly or indirectly) so much laughter, so many fascinated reads. Would you have preferred these comics to not exist ?

There are similar creeps that do not have this redeeming factor, and whose rants and hatemongering propaganda don't manage to even be funny to behold. And who are much more pervasive in society. Pop out a Chick track in these forums, everybody laughs and has a good time. Link to a Blocher, a Trump, a Farage, a Le Pen, or a Putin, and you'll see actual supporters glorifying them and proudly praising their ideologies.

Chick was merely folkloric. He was basically Lucky Luke's version of the Dalton. In practice, he's been a joy for good guys and bad guys alike. You can measure true toxicity in how it makes smiles fade.

What do you mean "unintentional humorist"?

I guess he was probably serious, but I refuse to believe anyone can intentionally write crap like that and believe it fully.