Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	*Slowly stumbles out of a portal in space-time, blinking against the light* Oh geez… has it been that long already? *Proceeds to make herself somewhat presentable with some quick grooming* Hello everyone! Well, Dark Dungeons is a pretty well-known tract among dissectors, and I was a bit surprised to see we’re taking a crack at it ourselves. But I do hope we can cover some unique ground. But maybe we kind of can, given that I’ve got some expertise in playing Dungeons and Dragons… well, despite lack of actual game experience. *le cough*
Dot	Oh boy, it's been 20 years now since an old forum post linked me to Dark Dungeons. While the tract failed to convince me of literally any of the points it was trying to make, it did immediately set off an obsession with all things Chick that has basically stuck with me my entire adult life. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the tract’s original release, and in that time, Chick Publications have flipflopped back and forth on standing by it, quietly discontinuing it, and reprinting it with the more embarrassing bits left out. Luckily our beloved webmistress has successfully managed to track down an old edition, so make no mistake, you're looking at Dark Dungeons the way Chick intended. If you want to compare the old version to the state of the tract last time it was in print, go ahead and roll your cursor over the panels to see the updated versions.
Boudreaux	This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I first played D&D around 50 years ago, when the rules consisted of three pamphlets in a cardboard box. I also well remember the Christian panic over the game, around the time this tract was first released. To say that Chick knows very little about the game is an understatement.
Jessica	Well, seems it's that time again. I was initially going to sit this one out, but I think the subject of our current study is far too large a part of the Jack Chick zeitgeist and I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if I wasn't able to get my two cents about it on the record. This particular tract is (in)famous among Chick-sympathetic True Believers, collectors, lay people and other normies due to the remarkable crossover its treatment of role-playing games allows with the wretched sub-basement generally occupied by Christian Fundamentalists. Its status as a perplexing relic of the Satanic Panic of the 1980's, in addition to its wide cultural appeal, is one of the reasons we originally chose it for the subject of our animated film way back when Boolean Union was still all about creating amateur animated movies and long before we went whole-hog into solely guaranteeing that Chick's particular brand of lunacy could never fully be scrubbed from this Earth. Unlike my esteemed and learned colleagues, I was not nearly as involved in tabletop or role-playing games in my youth. During high school and college, I was far too busy engaging in tons of premarital sex and doing loads of exotic drugs to get caught up in such tomfoolery (or was that exotic sex and premarital drugs? I can never remember… the 90's and early-aughts were just a hazy blur of vague shapes and angsty music for me). Still, I did spend a bit of time exploring the finer points of the World of Darkness universe, and Andrew and I played our fair share of Magic: the Gathering back in the day while we were at university together, so I think I'll be able to muddle my way through. So, be sure to take a moment to perform a sanity check, roll a D20 for Initiative, and enjoy our take on Dark Dungeons.

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	I don’t know why, but that guy in the back looks like he’s from the KKK.
Jessica	This may very well be a rare case of where the addition of the KKK may actually make the subject matter less depressing than it otherwise would be.
Boudreaux	I get more of a monster vibe. While I don’t give Chick credit for knowing much about D&D, I am going to go with it being a lich.
Mingnon	Or just simply a bedsheet ghost.
Jessica	I'm still sticking with my original guess from over in Spellbound? by saying it's just a more racist version of Cobra Commander.
Boudreaux	That slacker Chick, reusing artwork from a comic. As an aside, the demon’s name is Regé, which is way too preppie sounding for a D&D monster.

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Props for having the DM using a screen. The figurines are unrealistically large, but then this isn’t D&D, it is “Dark Dungeons”. Or is it? See Page 5.
Dot	I appreciate the detail of there being six figures on the board to correspond with the six players, but if they're supposed to be fighting a monster, shouldn't it have a figure as well? Now that I think about it, does nobody have dice? Everyone's got a fizzy drink or two, but nobody's got an assortment of dice - the ONE thing that's ESSENTIAL to a good TTRPG session - to hand?
Jessica	Of course, everyone knows that it just isn't a proper gaming session without the cheetos and copious quantities of Mountain Dew. That is quite an attention to detail with the figurines… which are no doubt meticulously painted. Still, while I can't fault someone like Fred Carter for not doing so, I'm surprised there wasn't any time spent to at least vaguely sketch out a map on that mat they're playing on. Or is the implication that they're just playing on an oversized sheet of blank graph paper then?
Mingnon	And the large figures have been there on the page decades before the advent of 3D Printing. Which would mean each and every one would have to use up a lot of plastic or other cheap material to make, as well as hours or even days of labor. So how much would a 5” tabletop figure cost each? $50-100?
Jessica	When we briefly looked into producing little figures of Black Leaf as give-away “feelies” for the film back in the Year of their Lord 2010, the cost was absolutely astronomical… and that was only for about a dozen or so. In 1984 it likely would have been several times more than that at least.

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	This just tells me that Ms. Frost is a terrible Dungeon Master. Not only does she just kill off a character without so much as a saving throw, but her house rule is that you only have one character, and when they’re dead you’re out of the game. At least offer up a way to resurrect the character later on, or maybe make a new character altogether?
Dot	The only thing I can think of here is that the whole group just doesn't like Marcie and was looking to kick her out. Me and my brother were once in a one-off TTRPG session in uni where a guy my brother was butting heads with IRL went ahead and poisoned his character, leading to a somewhat drawn-out death following a number of failed saving throws. Obviously he didn't take it quite this hard but it still led to some awkwardness.
Boudreaux_	Debbie is being exceptionally harsh here, especially considering her reactions later on in the tract. Her personality is all over the place.
Jessica	This is perhaps one the most frequently refuted ideas put forward here. Needless to say, if your character dies not only do you not need to vacate the area, but the game isn't even necessarily over for you. As Ming points out, there's countless ways to bring a slain character back to life… or you can always just make a new one. This is the equivalent of playing a Mario Bros. game, falling in a pit and saying “Well, shit! Guess that's that then.” and then putting a gun in your mouth and blowing your brains out. I don't want to say that's never happened before… but if it has I think it's safe to say there's a bit more going on with the player than just having a spot of bad luck in a game.

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	Okay first Debbie is playing a Wizard and now she’s playing as a Cleric? That just takes us back to the death of Marcie’s character: If Debbie was really a Cleric the whole time, can’t she just cast a resurrection spell on Marcie, somehow? Or, and this is getting into more conspiratorial territory, Ms. Frost and Debbie are acting in league somehow, with the Cleric character being disguised as a Wizard. Just bad vibes all around.
Jessica	Maybe she's a Cleric named “Wizard”. That wouldn't be confusing in the slightest.
Dot	So, let's say Marcie got to stay in the game and Black Leaf survived up to Level 8. Is there a Thieves Guild she gets to join and all? If a player raises a bard to level 8, does Ms Frost invite them to join a band IRL? This whole thing just smacks of cleric favouritism to me.
Jessica	Yeah, a Thieves Guild. If my recollection of teen girls this into the whole Goth subculture is accurate in any way, Marcie probably has at least a Level 8 in Shoplifting. No way that ugly-ass shirt of her's didn't come straight from Rue21 courtesy of a five-finger discount.
Boudreaux_	Here we get into the Fundamentalist bizarro world view, where Satan bestows the ability to perform actual magic (or should that be “magick”?) on those who devote themselves to him. The rest of Christianity moved past all that in the 18th century…

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	Now we’re just blasting out of the gravitational pull of reality. Since when did DnD result in recruiting select players into a witch coven? Witchcraft and wizardry wouldn’t need a frigging Psy Op in order to gather recruits, but apparently this is what people like Chick have believed in, I guess.
Dot	I like how in the older prints, Debbie is just straight up instantly recruited as the priestess of a craft she knows nothing about (unless I've completely misunderstood Wicca and it turns out there's a surprising amount of D20 casting involved) while in the newer versions the text is rejigged a bit so that she “will become” a priestess, implying that she isn't one yet because of course she's fucking not.
Boudreaux_	I thought the game was Dark Dungeons, not D&D? And shouldn’t a sacrifice be involved? That seems de rigueur in Chick’s world.
Jessica	Well, that took a dark turn rather quickly, didn't it? This witch's coven already has 13 members, if you count Ms. Frost. Do they really have a use for this one, unassuming teenage girl? Or maybe Debbie is the sacrifice as Boudreaux suggested?

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	Kind of weird decor. Why are there vases in front of a door? Is that a table hanging from a rope on the right? And that chair looks distinctly unsittable.
Mingnon	And I’m sure there are people who don’t know if the flooring is supposed to depict stairs or a carpet.
Dot	You could tell she was ready by the way she was playing? How? We don't have anything to work on here? All we've seen her do is cast one spell of light on one monster and bully her friend out of playing with them ever again (or indeed, spoiler warning, doing ANYTHING else ever again)
Jessica	She role-played the fuck out of that campaign! So much so that she's now ready to learn real honest-to-god magic.

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	Unfortunately the new version didn’t do anything about the bizarre facial expression Debbie has. I know it is supposed to express evil, but to me it is more indicative of a petit mal seizure. Get some medical help Debbie!
Jessica	Debbie does sort of look like she's about half way through a particularly violent sneeze here. Combined with her weird pseudo-squat back on Page 6, and the wonky positioning of her hand down on Page 12, I’m thinking all this Witchcraft and Satanism takes a serious toll on your physical health.
Mingnon	Not to mention that this is the first time we properly see her face, as up until this point we’ve either seen the back of her head or her front from far away. This isn’t supposed to be her ‘normal’ face, but given how Carter drew her ‘evil’ face, it gives a bad first impression.
Jessica	Mind Bondage? Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow… Everyone knows using supernatural power to override a person’s free will for your own benefit is completely demonic and not at all in accordance with the nature of a loving god. Wait a minute…
Mingnon	Don’t ever put cheesy porno music into this scenario. It will bring up a different kind of mental image entirely…

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux	Free will is supposed to be so important, that it means the risk of eternal damnation. Yet her father did not have free will in this instance. Get your story straight, Jack.
Mingnon	Eh, this kind of continuity looks fine to me. Debbie’s dad isn’t a True Christian, so therefore the loss of free will was well within the domain of Satan.
Dot	👿: “Hey Debbie, welcome to Witchcraft. It's me, the devil from Christianity. Turns out magic is real and you can do it now. The power to do sin like never before is in YOUR hands. With the power of Mind Bondage, you can now bend men's minds to your will. You can become the world's most successful politician or findom artist. The world belongs to you and all the other Level 8 clerics out there. What are you gonna do with it?” 🤷: “Well, there IS this overpriced tabletop game that I've been looking into.” 👿: “Consider it done babey….. Wait, that's it? Ugh, kids these days have no damn imagination for sin any more.”
Jessica	I'm apt to wonder just how much RPG swag $200.00 could net you back in the mid-80's. These days, you can pick up a Mind Flayer head to hang on your wall like some sort of nerd-tastic deer trophy for a little more than double that. Of course, people who are into these kind of niche fandoms are never shy to drop absolutely obscene amounts of phat lewt on some of the most screwed up merch you can conceive of. Don't know if Debbie's really into that kind of thing, though.

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	Debbie, the DM’s already paused the game to answer the phone. Nobody's fighting anything. Actually, come to think of it, where's the rest of the party? Are they all off-panel fighting the Zombie too? The one way they could have had this scene work in a way where the characters are behaving like actual humans (albeit pretty goddamn horrible humans) would be if they're ALL there, pressuring Debbie to ignore Marcie so they can just get on with the game. It would reinforce the notion that Debbie is in with a pretty horrid group of friends who kicked Marcie out of their game just because they didn't like her, and give Debbie some basic surface-level motivation for doing the blatantly wrong thing here.
Mingnon	Besides that, zombies are some of the weakest enemies in the game. A battle where a necromancer would summon a swarm of zombies would make sense, sure, but having trouble with a singular zombie makes me think that the writer didn’t look that far into the Monster Manual.
Boudreaux_	Personally I think she is playing the game by herself (since she doesn’t use the word ‘we’). Which is all kinds of weird.
Jessica	I feel compelled to once again point out just how absolutely ridiculous all of this actually is. If Marcie is getting this worked up over a simple game, then there's definitely a heck of a lot more going on with her than just that. D&D is about as psychologically damaging as playing “Cops and Robbers”, or “Cowboys and Indians”. It also amazes me that people can get this freaked out over kids just using their imaginations. After all… isn't that basically all church is when you get right down to it?

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	While there is no excuse for Debbie’s self centered behavior, it sounds like Marcie’s mother has been ignoring warning signs from Marcie for some time now.
Jessica	Nope. Definitely isn't her absentee parents, or her shitty abusive friends… it's the game that's negatively impacting her mental health.

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	And contrast this with her utter callousness in previous pages. At least she finally discovered some human empathy. It is very unfortunate that it took this tragedy to accomplish it.
Mingnon	And for some reason the art on the newer version gave her pants.
Jessica	They didn't want to give the audience any more ideas about what sort of a mess it would be if she were wearing a skirt.
Boudreaux	Speaking of art, I want to see the rest of that poster on the wall. Just what is that horned helmet dude fighting? Chick tracts used to be full of these little added details (though sadly no Fang in this one).
Jessica	Marcie's still vibrating? Either she strung herself up only recently and Debbie may still be able to save her in which case… WTF? Or else she was so hardcore she decided to hang herself from the ceiling fan in which case she gets awarded additional XP for style and creativity.

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	Okay, I'll bite. So Chick is pushing the usual kind of moral panic for this sort of thing, I.E. the RPG made her do it. I don't really need to go into all the moral panics where people push a specific narrative of “listening to heavy metal made him do it” or “playing Doom made them do it” or any of that bollocks. It's simple enough just to point out that in order to push that narrative, you usually have to ignore a lot of other things, such as what was going on in that person's life in general. Jack Chick does not have this problem. This is a fictional story that was made up by him. He could have written a narrative in which a girl's obsession with TTRPGs causes her to end her own life, and we wouldn't be able to argue with the fact that this is in fact what happened in the story. But he didn't. Instead he wrote a story about how Marcie Anderson was bullied out of her social circle by a pair of mean girls, is gaslit into thinking it's her own fault for not being good at a game they were playing, and is ghosted completely by someone she thought was a friend, who sides with the person who kicked her out of the group over her.
Mingnon	I was just going to bring up the gaslighting and bullying part, but if you take a thorough look at the events leading up to this, then you’ll understand that exactly that kind of situation was going on. Worse, Chick never realized that he’s touched on the stuff of DnD horror stories: DMs who believe they can decide the fates of their players at will, and can kill their characters and have them exiled at the drop of a hat. And it’s all with the support and admiration of those loyal to such a DM, because the DM is admired for creating such compelling campaigns. And if that outcast player is not able to learn about other tables they can play at - a situation which would be common back before the internet became massively widespread - they would be left feeling miserable over their situation. Sure, people say often that you are not your character, but it’s kind of hard to recognize that in the heat of the moment. Roleplaying in itself is a very intimate thing, through sharing your personal creation - your character - with others. You want your creation to succeed, often in an unknown world known only by the Dungeon Master. And anything they say that you feel would violate that kind of vulnerability could and would shatter any perceived feeling of being on the same side as your Dungeon Master.
Boudreaux	I played with quite a few DMs back in the day, and while some were certainly better than others, I never saw that kind of callousness towards the players in their campaigns. Maybe I was just lucky, but I never even heard about that kind of DM. Though there were certainly ones who created ridiculously hard campaigns (“everyone dies”), they tended to not be well regarded, as people want a challenge, but also want to be able to succeed. Possibly this was because I played in the early days before D&D became “cool”, I don’t know. Debbie’s group certainly scored high on the ‘jerk’ scale. You definitely don’t want to lose a character you have spent months on building up. I once had a character who was turned into a vampire, and I was able to convince the DM to allow me to keep playing as a vampire. Fun times…
Jessica	Looks like at some point Marcie started printing off all of her personal notes in Brush Script instead of just scrawling them out by hand with a fat ‘ol sharpie marker. This comic represents perhaps the height of Fred Carter's Golden Age when it comes to the quality of his artwork, but I just need to take a minute to gush over that spiral moiré pattern in the background. Executing something like that in a mass-produced 10¢ comic is really an achievement. Debbie’s hand though? Less so.
Dot	Yeah, it's one of those things that kinda bums me out about the newer prints. Whatever they did to digitise their prints has brought a WHOLE lot of messy aliasing to finer effects like that. You can REALLY see it in old prints of The Last Generation, where Carter uses effects like this all over the place to give stuff texture, but which are lost almost completely in digitized prints, and lost entirely in the shitty low-res versions on Chick's site.

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Not very adept on Ms. Frost’s part. Showing some sympathy here might have helped keep Debbie in the fold. Her master will not be well pleased.
Mingnon	Don’t you get it, Boudreaux? Only the most devoted servants of Satan use aggression and fear to keep their lessers in line! Sympathy is practically useless, as it is approved of - and thereby tainted - by The Opposition!
Dot	It's not even consistent characterization. A mere four pages ago she was all “Hey Debbie, maybe check in on your friend,” which Debbie then very specifically did not bother to do until it was too late. Presumably this is meant to be the “oh noes she is addicted to the RPG” moment, but if Ms Frost was as good at emotional manipulation as the tract likes to pretend she is, she could have EASILY twisted this into a “see THIS is why you should do as I say” type thing, giving her tighter control over Debbie, rather than just going “lmao skill issue” at a death she literally did more to try and prevent than Debbie did.
Jessica	“Satan always double-crosses his followers.” Then, may we reiterate, why the hell would anyone ever follow him? Why in the hell should anyone fear Satan or his followers when they are so incompetently self-destructive? How do they ever accomplish anything, let alone something like taking over entire towns?
Mingnon	The fine art of Underpants Gnome logic, methinks.

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	What the hell is Frost wearing here? That top looks uncomfortable as all get out.
Mingnon	Honestly, this to me leads to a clear bias on Ms. Frost’s part. Black Leaf is supposedly weak, but here it just tells me that Frost has a hatred against the Thief class (later on known as Rogue), which if you studied anything in the DnD community are among the most well-known and popular classes, mainly for how useful their skills are in dungeon-crawling. So before you go and decide to bully away your next Rogue, you’ll have to consider if you really want your party to risk getting killed by traps or even miss out on some awesome loot.
Boudreaux_	I tend to think Ms. Frost is referring here to Marcie’s character, not to Black Leaf. And yes, she must have had issues that had nothing to do with the game. But Frost’s callousness here is telling. Chick wants you to accept that everyone who is Wiccan (assuming that is the case here) is a hypocrite who is going to always end up evil in the end. A useless bit of trivia, I recently looked up which character classes can heal. Apparently all of them can now, in one way or another, except for Rogues.
Dot	I can only assume the confusion over this line is the reason Chick replaced the word “character” with “spirit” in later versions of the tract.
Jessica	She's trying to quote the Wiccan Rede here… but I thought they were explicitly trying to code Frost and her crew as Satanists instead, and who have slightly more self-serving tenets. I know Chick either doesn't know or else doesn't care to acknowledge the difference between those two.

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	More ham-handed behavior from Ms. Frost. Debbie is doing the right thing to get away. But will her new community be any better?
Dot	I really wish the tract did more (like, literally anything) to elaborate on the concept of Elfstar. Like, we only see the name here, and when Debbie’s inducted into the coven. From that we can safely infer that Elfstar is her character name, which she has also adapted as her witch name. But here, referring to Elfstar as an entity separate from Debbie could imply one of several things. What IS Elfstar, at the end of the day? A demon? A headmate? A personification of the blurring lines between fantasy and reality? Ms Frost still calls Debbie “Debbie” even when they're talking about casting spells IRL, so why make the distinction now?
Mingnon	It’s weird isn’t it? There are people on the internet who call themselves ‘kin’, believing themselves to be a different kind of person - or even a fictional character. But that isn’t what’s going on here. It seems that for some reason Frost is trying to enforce a radical personality takeover. But Dot’s right. We don’t really know what Elfstar is supposed to be, or if the wicked use of magic is part of Elfstar’s character (there is such a thing as acting out of character, after all).
Jessica	Not to side with the evil, manipulative DM lady here, but I think she should just let Elfstar handle things, too. Elfstar seems competent at her job, being able to successfully pull off both Sunburst AND Dominate Person even when in a pinch. She's adept at slaying low-level undead and also seems to be a real up-and-comer in her after school activities. Debbie, far as I can tell, is just a self-centered, neglectful dumb-ass with an unfortunate habit of ignoring her friend's mental health crises and wearing Members Only jackets.

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	OK, where did Mike come from? I want the back story!
Dot	Same! How did their first conversation on the topic go? Was it before or after she started getting into the Real Power stuff?
Mingnon	“Now everything is falling apart. Sob.” And why would Mike fast for someone without them knowing about it? Mike, you know you don’t have to do anything to yourself on someone else’s behalf, because chances are they aren’t going to appreciate it.
Dot	Not to mention, walking right up to your grieving friend and being all “I told you so” is a dick move by any standard.
Jessica	You will know they're Christians by their love, after all. “I spent a few minutes thinking nice thoughts on your behalf and skipped lunch. Would it be cool then if we were to head on over to the football field for a while and I finger blast you behind the bleachers? I promise I've trimmed my nails.”

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Boudreaux_	Kind of an odd expression on Mike’s face. If I didn’t know better, I would say this was a Daniels trace job. Maybe from a hair cream ad?
Dot	I wonder if Fred Carter drew Debbie and Logan's Run here to mirror Debbie and Ms Frost on Page 15 on purpose. Both panels have the speaker take centre frame, trying to win Debbie over to their way of thinking, while Debbie herself is pushed into the corner. In the hands of a competent writer, it would be an interesting piece of subtle commentary that perhaps Mike and Ms Frost aren't so different from one another. In the hands of Chick and Carter, it just highlights the sheer extent to which Debbie just gets bounced around between characters with absolutely no agency of her own for the back half of the tract.
Jessica	That is certainly something that could have benefited from additional exploration. By the end of the story, Debbie really has just traded up a cult that plays tabletop games and casts spells for another that just burns books (see Page 22).

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	Oh, you sweet summer child, Mr. Pastor. You really shouldn’t be saying ‘dungeon’ and ‘bondage’ in the same sentence, or even just ‘bondage’ by itself. Because that just leads us to think about a very different kind of dungeon…
Dot	Would you look at that? It's unhinged conspiracy theorist, regular Chick collaborator and convicted rapist John Todd. Nice of Carter to put him right there in the tract so we know exactly who's been feeding Chick this nonsense.
Boudreaux_	Considering Todd’s checkered past, it would likely be him that is going to “lure you to destruction”.
Jessica	Yeppers… you definitely do want to watch yourself around ‘ol Johnny here just in case he ever offers you “a job” or something. Of course, he's dead now, so the risk of that is pretty minimal.

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	And here it is, the most wild and out there assertion of “I've done no fucking research” in the whole tract, one that in the end even Chick couldn't stick by. A random throwaway footnote claiming that oh by the way, Tolkien and CS Lewis are ALSO occultic. Presumably the connection is meant to be that the most famous works of both men were high fantasy stories which in turn had a massive influence on D&D, but both authors also famously had a strong faith in Christianity. Lewis in particular made Christian themes a deliberate central part of his work, to the point where Aslan of the Chronicles of Narnia isn't just a metaphor for Jesus, He canonically IS Jesus. In fact, while we're at it, it's probably worth mentioning another famous fantasy writer with an open faith in Christianity. His name was Gary Gygax and he designed a little game called…I forget. Baldur’s Gate, maybe?
Boudreaux_	Chick has no awareness of the historical associations of burning materials you don’t like. Perhaps he should have. In tracking down the removal of the Lewis and Tolkien quote, this article claims that Chick removed it because they "must be able to prove what is printed by more than one source." Which clearly hasn’t been a concern of theirs elsewhere. For example, see all the lies in Macho!, all based on the unreliable testimony of Alberto Rivera.
Dot	Hell, it's weird that they'd bring up the notion of sources in relation to this of all tracts. Chick’s idea of citing sources tends to be plugging books that he published in the first place, but Dark Dungeons cites nothing.
Jessica	In a tract completely chock-a-block with ridiculous absurdity, this is perhaps the most absurdly ridiculous assertion made here, and most people know nothing about it due to the later retcon. This nonsense is something Todd explicated in the book Witchcraft and the Illuminati. An obscure little tome that, while Todd is not directly credited as the author, contains several sketches later copied almost verbatim into Chick's pseudo-biography of Todd in comic book form, Spellbound?. In that book, it claims “The golden [sic] Dawn is the Rothschilds' private coven. Created in the 1770's, its members have included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis” (pg. 49). He also made the same claim in some of his “sermons” as well. So there you go… the guy who invented Lion Jesus for Kids and the guy who converted that guy to Christianity were members of the same ultra-secret, occultic society that also counted Aleister Crowley among its members. Totally legit. Chick spent quite some time defending Todd long after everyone else had realized he was a grifting rapist. Quite interesting that this was the one claim of Todd's that he actually felt compelled to drop.

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Looks like the doctor from That Crazy Guy! is there in the background giving Debbie the stink-eye. The Chick Cinematic Universe strikes again!
Boudreaux_	The only change seems to be Debbie’s clothes. She is now dressed far less formally. Why? At least the clothing change is consistent in the next page.
Mingnon	Maybe they’re going for a casual potluck burning of occult paraphernalia.

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Dot	You know, it's actually quite interesting how low key the supernatural stuff in this tract is. No Faceless God, not even a mention of the afterlife, no big stuff. Just this one panel of a (genuinely quite creepy) Fred Carter demon flying away in defeat. Well, that and somehow the Mind Bondage spell is real.
Mingnon	Oddly enough, it looks like an angel is chasing off the demon (which looks like a dragon, fittingly enough), and they look like a wizard. So yeah, make-believe wizards are considered satanic in Chick’s world, but God’s angels can cast spells at will. Not hypocritical at all.
Boudreaux_	One would think that only those who consciously engaged demonic spirits in some way or another, would be possessed by them, like Debbie was. But no, the completely innocent can as well, as we see in The Thing. Where were Chick’s much touted guardian angels then?
Dot	“Welcome to the one true faith, Debbie. Sorry to hear about your friend but rest assured God has set her on fire forever so it's probably best that you don't think too hard about it.” Oh, while we're at it BTW, I'm not entirely sure what Jack's trying to say with the warning footnote. Acts 19:13-17 is about a group of Jewish exorcists attempting to drive out demons and failing miserably, but I don't quite follow what the takeaway is meant to be.
Boudreaux_	I dove into that a bit. It seems to mean that just saying the words and expecting that to work, ends badly. One must be a True Believer. Which is all kind of ironic, considering that Todd is the one who is saying it here.
Jessica	I'm pretty sure that's it. Not to keep bringing it up, but here's yet another point they touched on over in Spellbound? It really is like they took that comic and distilled it down into a tract for ease of distribution.

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	So all Debbie has accomplished in the story is throwing Dad’s money down the tubes. Great job. Way to make a difference in the world.
Boudreaux_	Too bad they got rid of the first panel in the new edition, to make room for “the pledge”. Todd was giving off a Van Helsing or Exorcist vibe. Of course he couldn't have held up a crucifix, because that would have been, well, too Catholic. Speaking of Christian symbols, is she really free? Because now she is compelled to disdain all the people who don’t follow her brand of Christianity. She exchanged one ‘cult’ for another.
Dot	Ah. Ending with a big religious ritual burning are we? No way that can ever go wrong. Truly Sumer is icumen in.
Jessica	It's weird how they shoe-horned these weird little questionnaires into a few of their tracts. What were you supposed to do with them anyway? Keep them for posterity? Hand them in at your local church? Mail them in for the rebate?
Dot	I think you're supposed to be buried with it, then on the Day of Judgement you can show it to Ol’ Faceless and have it hastily pasted into the Book of Life. That's why it asks for your name and everything.

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Mingnon	That wraps it up for the dissection of Dark Dungeons. But before I really play us out, I want to bring up something: The Satanic Panic, of which D&D had fallen victim to during that time. You see, a lot of christian followers had this crazy idea during the late 70s that things were steering too far away from God’s Word. But rather than focus on the actually harmful things of that time, they instead opted to take something out of the book Michelle Remembers, among other things, and point at various children’s games, toys, media, and even daycare centers - alongside the mainstay of rock music - and declare them all Satanic. Even the disappearance of a depressed young man at that time was greatly misconstrued - with D&D to blame - and thus the tabletop game also became a target of the Satanic Panic. As such, religious writers such as Chick would be inspired to write material that played into the Panic, such as Dark Dungeons. Thankfully the Panic ebbed down midway into the 90s onward, but a lot of lives were harmed and childhoods ruined in the process. What I’m trying to get at here is that once religion - almost any religion - gets its followers into a frenzy, anything that comes off suspicious becomes a target. Just ask fellow contributor Anna about the Witch Trials! But really, you shouldn’t let your fear of something you don’t know too much about scare you into doing something that could get innocent people hurt. Even the media I mentioned is mostly harmless. Well… Mostly. Some stuff actually does more harm than good. Discretion is key, after all. Anyway, be sure that whatever candy you get on Halloween, you spread out as much as possible! 😀 Everyone reading should have a happy and safe October 31st!
Boudreaux_	Dungeons and Dragons was and is a game that has many positive aspects. It provides a social outlet for kids (and adults) that might otherwise be shy and withdrawn. It offers an opportunity to practise planning and strategy, enhancing cooperation and problem solving skills. But what should really appeal to the Jack Chick crowd is that at its essence, it is a contest between Heroes and Monsters, with the Heroes expected to prevail. But because it has monsters that aren’t in the Bible, and because characters use ‘magic’, the whole thing must be a tool of the Devil, and they must make up absurd myths like that players can perform actual magic spells in the real world, and that playing the game leads to actual deaths. Thus they deprive their children and themselves of a fun social exercise in imagination. Of course if it is the specifics of the game they can’t handle, there are even Christian themed modules available. But that would require them to actually consider all this with some degree of subtlety, and subtlety and fundamentalism don’t go too well together. It is all kind of sad in its own way. Living in a bubble is less interesting than occupying the real world. If you haven’t played, consider seeking out a local group to try it out. Most players are actually quite nice, and not at all like the jerks portrayed in this tract. And I can 100% guarantee you won’t be possessed by an evil spirit, and you won’t be invited to join a coven or worship Satan. Gentle readers, I hope that your Samhain Halloween is a frightfully joyful occasion.
Dot	Sometimes Chick Publications seem to just exist in their own weird little bubble to the extent that you gotta wonder… do they actually know how much of a little cultural phenomenon this specific tract is independent of all their other stuff? And yeah, they know. Back in the day, the web version had three or four extra links to random articles about how their D&D research was TOTALLY legit u guise. Naturally, one of them was Schnoebelen’s weird monologue where he doesn’t actually talk about D&D, but instead goes off on one about how he was a Real Actual Cthulhu-Worshipping Vampire. In 2008, DD was one of the tracts featured in the book Hot Topics, a compilation of controversial Chick titles (and honestly, probably the most tame in the whole package.) Chick and Daniels talk there about how the tract is the most popular on their website. In 2013, it got brought back into print, with an accompanying article rationalising their decision as follows: “Since first written, we have watched thousands of gamers come to the Chick website every week to read this tract online. Many of them scorn it, but they all read it and get a clear gospel message. A small percentage go on to read other gospel literature after reading that tract. These are mostly young people and this tract seems to appeal to them.” It's interesting that they DON'T mention the successful Kickstarter campaign for Dark Dungeons: The Movie, which had raised $25K, double its goal, a few months prior. Chick knew about it, they'd signed off on it and everything, but literally the only way they officially acknowledged it was by bringing the tract into print for a wee while in the hopes of making a few bucks off of it. Honestly it just feels cynical that Chick’s successors still keep this one about. Like, I tend to take as a given that they're the kind of conspiracy-brainrotted weirdos who'll take the likes of Alberto and Hovind at face value because they really do believe the kind of crap they say, but in this case, they GOTTA know they're full of shit, right? Maybe it doesn't matter. Whether or not they know how full of shit they are, they're still slinging it out there. At least it's a laugh cleaning it up. Happy Halloween folks, and remember to check your kids’ candy for D20s.
Jessica	Much like the Cold War, I don't think it's really possible for younger audiences to appreciate just how worked up the Fundamentalist crowd got over Dungeons & Dragons back in the 70's and 80's without actually having been there. To listen to them talk, you'd think that role-playing in your after-school club was on par with filleting a cat and having 17-member gangbangs down in the school's Media Center or the local library. No one could honestly discuss the game without an obligatory mention of Bink Pulling and Sean Sellers and simultaneously trying to somehow pin their actions on the game. Just check out the short list we've compiled. These days, D&D has managed to gain a bit more acceptance in general society, and it can even be seen as more than just a refuge for maladjusted nerds and outcasts. If there's one thing that has withstood the test of time, though, it's religious scam artists trying to weave a moral panic out of the most seemingly innocuous things. A lot of ink has been spilled trying to determine just exactly what it is about role-playing games that gets religious type's Holy Knickers all in a twist. They claim it's because RPGs often involve the concept of magic and their instruction manual says that's bad, mmm'kay? But if you want my personal opinion (and since you're reading our dissection, I’ll assume you do), I think it's because at its core Christianity and many of its sister religions are built on the idea that supernatural and otherworldly forces are in fact real, and have actual, tangible effects on our reality. They think magic is demonstrable, even if they sometimes refer to it as “miracles” or try to differentiate it from that other, “bad” kind of magic that RPGs supposedly glorify. But either way, it requires looking at the world in a very particular manner. If your religious system requires you to convince yourself that magic is real, would it really be all that hard to scare yourself stupid that other kinds of pretend magic are real as well? If your book says that somebody can walk on water or multiply loaves and fishes or bring someone back from the dead, I can understand getting a bit indignant at another book claiming you can cast spells like Water Walk or Multiply Food or Raise Dead but can do it without the assistance of your specific god… all the more so when your book tries to convince you that other make-believe magic is both real as well and very, very dangerous. When you live in a fantasy world every day of your life, it can be hard to convince yourself that other fantasy worlds aren't real and can't actually hurt you (or your children). Welp, I suppose it's a relief that we no longer live in a world of religious witch hunts or make a habit of demonising people who might look a bit different than us or come from cultures we don't entirely understand for crass, personal benefit. Since we live in this progressive, enlightened utopia instead you can learn more about the D&D backlash of yesteryear by reading such tidbits as The Pulling Report by Michael Stackpole, which is a very thorough debunking of Pat Pulling’s hijinks and which I personally highly recommend. There's also the absolutely bonkers videos by the Chick accomplices at Jeremiah Films on both Halloween specifically and the occult in general which can be good for a chuckle if you can manage to watch while not thinking too hard about just how many lives they helped to upheave and destroy. There are a ton of links both below as well as on our Reference Page for this tract, which can provide additional resources and context on this topic. Lastly, amateur 3D printing has become far more accessible and affordable in the modern age, and so if the mood strikes you and you'd like your own Black Leaf figurine to accompany you on your personal Satanic D&D adventures, you can download an STL file (21.10 MB) of the one I mentioned previously and print it out either on your own 3D printer, or for around $10 to $20 through a company like Treatstock. Send us your photos in whatever compromising situations they might find themselves in and we may very well end up posting them here for the world to marvel at. Until next time… I hope your dungeon forays yield tons of valuable loot and experience, you don't accidentally fall victim to any devious Mimics, and that you manage to score The Real Power™ once your Cleric/Wizard finally achieves Level 8. Happy hunting, and Happy Halloween!

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

Other Reviews & Commentaries ⇑

Parodies ⇑