April 9: Easter Sunday – You don’t have to believe to watch and share a religious movie.

I’ve been obsessed with Jack Chick since a copy of The Beast brutalized me when I was a kid. It’s hard to explain my love of Chick’s work, because he made near-hateful attacks on other religions and on nearly every group on people on Earth to prove his point, but the work that he created along with an army of artists is beyond outsider art. It’s much the same way why I love Ron Ormond’s films. I want to believe like they do and find myself unable to, yet I utterly respect and admire that they were able to put together their creativity and stringent beliefs into works that last long beyond themselves.

The Sissy is one of Chick’s least incendiary works. As the description goes, Duke thought Jesus was a sissy and laughed at anyone who believed in him until one trucker talked to him and showed the horrible price that the Son of God paid to forgive our sins.

You can check out the original tract here and it has some of the best art of the Chick cartoonists. Fred Carter is always the guy that does the ultra realism in these and that’s what calls this out to me. That said, the movie made from it is early computer animation.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews that make fun of the animation in this and that’s a given. It’s really poor and way too unrealistic, compared to the art of the original. But just making fun of it because it’s Christian andd simplistic is easy. As mentioned above, this has a really heartfelt message, that sometimes loving people and turning the other cheek is hard but if you believe in making the world better, that’s what you do. You don’t have to believe to see the power of that message. It’s shooting fish in a barrel trying to feel and show you are superior to this. Instead, explain your point of view. There’s a lot to make fun of in Christian media, but basic insults aren’t enough. Share how your way is better other than just scoffing.

That said — I can’t defend any of Chick’s more outrageous works. After all, the guy kept me awake for weeks as a kid,