---

  The Visitors. Tract #066. Art by Jack Chick - © 1984 Chick Publications

The Visitors - Tract #066 (VISI)
Art by Jack Chick - © 1984 Chick Publications

First Published: March 9th, 2011

"The Visitors" is one of Chick's tracts specifically aimed at believers of competing religions. In this tract, a pair of Mormon elders attempt to convert Janice's Aunt Fran, but are turned away by the force of Janice's arguments.

 

Introduction ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	Well, who's surprised to learn that Chick doesn't like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? However, he doesn't seem to feel the same ire for them as he does for Catholics.
Jessica	Chick seems to run scatter shot when it comes to other religions that might compete with his own splinter sect of Protestantism. It seems like the rough priority order is Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, Freemasons, Wiccans (Other), and Satanists. Though he tends to mix all of those up with that last one, particularly Wicca.

 

Cover / Page 1 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	Is this tract gonna be about aliens, visitors from outer space? Huh? Please? I would love to hear Jack Chick weigh in on the salvation of extraterrestrials and whether or not they have souls.
Jessica	Talk about false advertising. Could be anybody. Space aliens, girl scouts, the IRS. Who can say really?

 

Page 2 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Yeah, Aunt Fran, why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?!?
Andrew	And here we introduce a conflict over mission work in Africa, to be promptly forgotten.
Jessica	Her mother will be sorry? I think this girl's in at least her late twenties. I don't think it's really her mother's business. Although Jack seems to think that a woman is her father's property until her eventual husband signs the deed by putting a wedding ring on her, then she belongs to him. So I guess it wouldn't be up to her either way.

 

Page 3 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	"At last, I've got some real friends." This makes it sound like there's some interesting back story here- not that we ever find out what it might be.
Jessica	I am really curious as to what type of "trouble" she was having that these unassuming Mormon missionaries helped her through. She have too much free time on her hands or something?
Andrew	"A few years ago I got into trouble: I started thinking for myself and questioning the way I lived my life. It was starting to be really inconvenient, but then those nice Mormons showed up and told me I didn't have to do that anymore."

 

Page 4 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	Here again: "Not like other people I know." (with full-scale bold-italics emphasis). Who are these other people? It almost sounds like Aunt Fran is being passive-aggressive with regard to Janice, but that also makes no sense.
Jessica	Seriously. There is some severe anger boiling away under the surface with this woman. Like she's got the same issues as The Cable Guy or something. It makes me think if the Mormons hadn't shown up when they did she would have hacked Janice to pieces with a dull axe and buried her under the floorboards or something.

 

Page 5 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Fran Palmer. And here I was hoping her first name would be Rose.
Andrew	"They're Mormons!" She reacts with the same kind of shock as if it were "They're lepers!" or "They're wanted terrorists!" That's what Mormons do- they go door to door.
Jessica	Yeah, her reaction makes it seem like they're wearing the skinned faces of children as masks or something.

 

Page 6 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	So we establish here she has actually read the Book of Mormon. But yet she's in shock when Janice brings up all of the retardation that is in it. She must have poor reading comprehension skills or something. Also, burning in the bosom? Either you had too many chili peppers for dinner or it's time to get a mammogram, STAT!

 

Page 7 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	And here we get into the hypocrisy. "Don't these things that Mormons believe sound crazy? Of course they do- unlike mainstream Christian doctrine, which is as rational as mathematics. Come join a Protestant splinter-sect: we're the crazies you can trust!"
Jessica	God was once a man in your bizarre religion too, remember?
Andrew	Of course, if I recall correctly, in the Bible (the standard Bible) God sometimes appears in front of people and they don't know it's him.
Jessica	...and as to people not recognizing God as being such... ummm.... yeah.

 

Page 8 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	They'd never believe a thing like that? You know, most people who know ABSOLUTELY nothing about Mormonism at least know that they used to be polygamists. This is far from old news for anyone who hasn't spent the last two hundred years living under a rock.
Andrew	True, that's practically synonymous with Mormonism in the popular imagination. I love this "on a planet near the star Kolob" stuff, btw. It's deliciously similar to Xenu.

 

Page 9 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	In the last panel he seems really reluctant to admit they actually believe this stuff, but now he's all like "Shit, yeah. We got mad ho's ya'll. And God's totally kicking it on Kolob with all them fine-ass hunnies."
Andrew	I am amused by the whining tone of those little text boxes at the bottom. "But, but, but, the BIIIIIBLE says this!"
Jessica	Jesus created Satan? Well that was awfully nice of him. Thanks for that, Jesus. Great forethought there. (I still fail to see why this is any weirder than what the Mormons are shoveling.)

 

Page 10 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	Job 1:6 has a similar council of the gods. Excuse me, the "sons of the lord".
Jessica	The belief in many gods is held up here as a ridiculous idea, but apart of the whole Trinity weirdness, anyone recall the pronoun issues brought up in the first few chapters of Genesis? I sincerely doubt he's using the majestic plural there, since he never seems to do it again. Documentary Hypothesis FTW.

 

Page 11 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	No John. You are the demons. This really is just a competition between two books, one of which is older than the other. If you don't accept that the Bible and only the Bible is the source of truth, this argument doesn't any sense. It's like saying "According to Anne McCaffrey, dragons were genetically engineered by humans. But J.R.R. Tolkien says dragons were created by Morgoth in the Pit of Utumno."

 

Page 12 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	You know, the Doctrines of Salvation were written by Joseph F. Smith, the tenth president of the LDS, not Joseph Smith Jr., the FOUNDER of the LDS. So I can't really say if his opinions carry the weight of holy writ. I don't think it's the same thing.
Andrew	It's true that until 1978(!) the LDS church refused to ordain blacks, a policy that they claimed was based on scriptural arguments and not upon, you know, racism. That's certainly not a shining record, though Chick isn't exactly a bastion of racial tolerance himself. While it's a far cry from barring blacks from your church, reading any of Chick's "black oriented" tracts gives you a pretty good idea what he thinks of African-Americans. And of course Chick is no stranger to the "I discriminate because of scripture, not because I hate you" argument.

 

Page 13 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	"If I were black, I'd be outraged! Of course, I'm not black. Oh well." Again, this is the pot calling the kettle black. (How's that for mixed metaphors?)
Jessica	Fran now officially looks like a blow-up doll.
Andrew	I knew I'd seen that face before.

 

Page 14 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Substitute this with "Isn't it true you believe you'll live in a mansion of gold after you die?" and you can just as accurately mock Janice's beliefs as well. This really does cut both ways you know.
Andrew	I love these leading questions. "Are you planning on having large families?" Uh, you mean as opposed to evangelicals, who always excercise careful population control?
Jessica	<snigger> I really like the term "Human Tabernacle" and will use it to refer to anyone I find attractive from here on out. "Check out the steeples on her!!!"
Andrew	Talk about getting into the position of the church.

 

Page 15 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Jesus has always been God. Even when he was a man. So he was fully man AND fully God. And the Holy Spirit. He's in there too. But the Holy Spirit wasn't man. And it wasn't God. But Jesus was God... and also man. I need a venn diagram or something. You people need to get your crap straight.

 

Page 16 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	Janice reminds me of something here... but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Andrew	Yeah, I've been getting a strong Marriage Mess vibe from this one as well. Only six faces indeed.
Jessica	Serving idols is demon worship. Screw you.

 

Page 17 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	So he changed made up titles in another made up religion. What's the point here?
Andrew	Well, looks like he uses William "I Was a Vampire Mason Priest" Schnoebelen as a source for that nugget, so what do you expect?

 

Page 18 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	ZOMG!!! Babylonians, Jews, Masons AND Catholics?!?! Christ, these people must be EEEEEVVVVIIILLLL!!!
Andrew	It all comes back to the Catholic Church, doesn't it. With Jack Chick, it's certainly true that all roads lead to Rome.

 

Page 19 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	C'mon Elder Tanner! Don't you want to cut through the unscriptural nonsense so that you can discover some scriptural nonsense?
Jessica	Elder Grant is all like "Nope. We like being hell bound, thank you very much!"

 

Page 20 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	This guy sucks at his job. Though if it were really that easy to shake a lot of Mormon's faith then very few would survive the first atheist household they came calling on.
Andrew	Good point. Considering that missionary work explicitly involves working with unbelievers, you think they'd lose a lot of people that way.

 

Page 21 ⇑ ⇓

Andrew	And there goes the fourth wall. "Isn't it time you made the right decision? Yeah you, the knucklehead reading this tract. C'mon, do it."
Jessica	Everyone in these damn cartoons is such a GODDAMNED SHEEP!!! Think for yourself, for crying out loud!!!

 

Page 22 ⇑ ⇓

Jessica	She avoided joining one bullshit cult for another bullshit cult. Don't break out the champagne and noise makers just yet!
Andrew	Well, that didn't take long for Aunt Fran to see the light. Because there are only two religions: Mormonism and whatever Jack Chick believes. If you discredit one, then there's only one option.

 

Conclusion ⇑ ⇓

Andrew

The danger with doing commentary like this is that it could be interpreted as a defense of Mormon belief. It isn't. I've long felt that the main difference between Mormonism and more mainstream versions of Christianity is about 2000 years of percolation. Christianity has had time to forget a lot of the oddities from the time of its creation, whereas the founders of Mormonism have copious documentary evidence in a modern language regarding their words and actions. If Mormonism had been founded 2000 years ago, most likely inconvenient details such as Joseph Smith's idol of Jupiter or that business with the magic glass would have been airbrushed away. In my opinion, the idea of Jesus and Satan being "spirit brothers" isn't really any stranger than the idea of God, Jesus, and the holy ghost being the same person and separate, or of Jesus being simultaneously 100% man and 100% god. We are told by mainstream Christians that we must accept the latter two things on faith, but that's clearly not something they are willing to extend to Mormons. I think the main reason Mormons make mainstream Christians (especially Protestants) so uncomfortable is that they really aren't very different from each other, despite some of the odd trappings. For the most part, Mormons are about the squarest people around. The other reason, of course, is that Mormons have been successful at mission work, winning many converts, particularly in the developing world. In short, they're eating Jack Chick's lunch. The really annoying thing, though, is that despite this rivalry, politically, some Mormons have made common cause with the same evangelical Christians who view them as heretics, in order to further a socially conservative agenda that tramples on the rights of others. Given enough time, it may turn around and bite them on the ass as well.

 

Further Reading ⇑ ⇓

• Vintage page at Boolean Union

 

Other Reviews & Commentaries ⇑ ⇓

• User Slick146 (Space Battles Forums) - https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/lets-read-chick-tracts.525049/page-32#post-365318770

 

Parodies ⇑

• The Church of Tina Chopp tract "The Visitors" - features Bruce and Randy, travelling Tinite missionaries, who encounter a young Satanist and her aunt.