Weird Tract Number 40: "Was God An Astronaut?" by Walter Lang with art by Vic Lockman

Troy Davis writes:

I previously wrote about Vic Lockman and his connection to Ralph Rusthoi and Jack Chick. Lockman was an extremely prolific comic book artist and writer, mostly cartoony animal comics for Dell and Gold Key. He was also a crackpot who was behind numerous self-published Chick tract-sized fundamentalist religious and political tracts. He also freelanced, providing comic art for John Bircher-esque booklets on subjects like laetrile (a favorite remedy of the Birchers), Social Security, the UN, gun control, monetary policy, and "legal" tax evasion schemes (Lockman provided artwork for a tract by Irwin Schiff who died in prison while serving a term for tax evasion).

The author of "Was God An Astronaut?" was Walter Lang (1913-2004), a creationist who founded the Bible-Science Association. Later in life, he embraced Ptolemaic geocentrism. What a pair. In this 1975 tri-fold pamphlet, the pair take on another wackjob, Erich Von Däniken whose ancient astronaut theories have been debunked by serious historians, paleontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists for the past half century. Even though Lang is a fringe scientist, he does a good job exposing the flaws in Von Däniken's theories by citing the work of legitimate scientists.

NOTES ON VIC LOCKMAN:  This article looks at the role of long-forgotten publisher Ralph Rusthoi on the tract-publishing of Lockman and Jack Chick . . . Lockman goes into Bircher mode with the tract "Who's Calling The Shots?" . . . The museum featured Lockman's anti-counterculure tract Hippie Come Home. Read it here. . . Lockman and Walter Lang team up on an anti-evolution tract "Have You Been Brainwashed by Ape-Men?"

The Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts is a project of Les Zazous Postmodern Art Galley of Bellaire, Ohio. Read the Welcome Statement of The Museum here.

For more on the gallery, check out the web site here and the gallery's Twitter handle is @ZazousLes.  The Twitter handle for the museum is @WeirdTracts

The index of tracts for the museum's website is here. 

Contributions of weird tracts to the museum can be made by mail: send your weird tracts to Les Zazous Postmodern Art Gallery 3475 Guernsey Street, Bellaire, Ohio 43906.