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Neil Lindholm
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Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: China
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Jack Chick religious comics are the best-selling comics of all time

I used to find these in phone booths. Always good for a laugh. I doubt people leave them around anymore for the Godless to find. 
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Peter Hicks
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

“Best selling” implies someone paid to read them.  I was not going to invest 30 minutes to view the video.   Did anyone pay to buy that propaganda?
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Neil Lindholm
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Somebody must have bought them in order to give them out. On their webpage, you can still buy bulk copies for leaving in different places. They technically were sold initially. 
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Christopher Frost
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I remember inadvertently getting sucked into buying one of those religious Archie comics when I was a kid. There was a restaurant in our local mall that had a rack of Archie comics near the till and I would always eyeball them when we ate there. One day, I asked my dad if I could get one and he said yes. Got it home and it turned out to be a story about tithing (giving a percentage of your income to the church).  Not exactly the usual Riverdale hijinks I was looking for. 
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

I still like to quote “Dark Dungeons”, Chick’s 80s-era Satanic Panic anti-D&D comic, randomly. 

“I don’t want to be Elfstar anymore. I want to be Debbie!”

It’s even more hilarious given how popular and mainstream D&D has become in the last few years.
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Joe Aten
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Someone gave these out to kids at Halloween one year about 12 years or so ago. My kids knew I liked comics and asked  “what are these? Do you want them?” I had no idea what they were, neither did my wife. We posted them on social media to ask about them and my nephew clued us in about them and could not believe someone on a military base was handing these out.

Edited by Joe Aten on 11 August 2020 at 8:55pm
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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

 Neil Lindholm wrote:
Somebody must have bought them in order to give them out. On their webpage, you can still buy bulk copies for leaving in different places. They technically were sold initially.

If I drew up my own comic and then somehow persuaded Jeff Bezos to print 50 billion of them and give them all away, would that make me the best-selling cartoonist of all time?  It might be accurate to say Chick's books are the most widely-circulated comics of all time, but "best selling" is not an accurate way to describe it.  Distributors buying large quantities of a product and then giving it away to the public (to advance a specific agenda) doesn't really qualify as "sales."  


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 11 August 2020 at 8:52pm
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Brian Miller
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Posted: 11 August 2020 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

One of the doctors I used to work with would give one to every patient
before they left. Nothing like getting a prescription for Percocet and a
Chick Tract.
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132131
Posted: 12 August 2020 at 6:30am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

“Sales” can be difficult to define.

When the DSM began to account for more and more orders, the publishers quickly realized two things:

It mattered not if there were stacks of unsold issues in the stores, in the publisher’s records those counted as SOLD.

And, since only as many copies were printed as were ordered, in those same records every issue SOLD OUT, again despite those unsold copies in the shops.

It’s all about who’s counting what.

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Rodrigo castellanos
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Joined: 03 July 2012
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 11:50am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

If I drew up my own comic and then somehow persuaded Jeff Bezos to print 50 billion of them and give them all away, would that make me the best-selling cartoonist of all time?

I'd say yes.

On the Chick Tracts, they're definitely one of the most bizarre cultural artifacts of all time. I've spent countless hours reading them online. 

They're not even religious or Christian IMHO (and I was raised Catholic), they're the ramblings of a person with mental problems. But nonetheless they are well made, I admire them aesthetically and in their presentation. 

Also, I find them sort of addictive for some reason I can't pinpoint.


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Brian Miller
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

But the Chick Tracts aren't being sold, so how can they be the best
selling? That doc I worked with orders them direct to hand them out,
but he pays nothing for them. They send them to him free of charge.
How can something that's free be the best selling of that category?

Edited by Brian Miller on 12 August 2020 at 4:01pm
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Neil Lindholm
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Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: China
Posts: 4939
Posted: 12 August 2020 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Brian, your doctor maybe gets them free but somebody in the chain has to pay for them. If you go to Chick Publications online, you can see where they sell them in bulk. Perhaps his church paid for them but gave them free to its members. 
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