Troy Davis writes:
Logos International was a hugely influential but relatively unknown contributor to fringe religious literature in the later half of the 20th century. Part of the reason for its obscurity is that the publishing house existed for a little over a decade before flaming out and going bankrupt in 1981. Logos published books by people who would become stars in religious publishing: Dave Hunt, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Merlin Carothers. Most notably, Logos was the publisher behind one of the biggest literary hoaxes of the 20th century: Mike Warnke's fake memoir
The Satan Seller in which he claimed to be "Satanist high priest" before being redeemed by Jeebus; the book sold over two million copies and helped spur the satanic panic of the 1980's before being exposed as fraudulent in 1991. Amazingly, despite selling tens of millions of books in the 1970s, Logos went bust; these people must have been completely incompetent at business and management.
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One of the bad business decisions by the Logos' team was the ill-fated attempt to adapt their bestselling books into comic books. Inspired by the success of Spire Christian Comics, Logos adapted four of their books into comic books: 1) Merlin Carothers'
Prison To Praise; 2) Nicky Cruz's
Run Baby Run; 3)
Amazing Saints: The Story of Phil Saint; and 4)
Ben Israel: A Modern Jew's Search for The Messiah. It turned out that sales for
Prison To Praise and
Run Baby Run were so poor that the other two comics were released only in extremely limited print runs (oddly, although they are extremely scarce, they aren't considered valuable according to ComicsPriceGuide.com). Part of the problem was the
sub-par art by Tony Tallarico, the
Mario Mendoza of comic book artists (Tallarico did art for Dell's disastrous mid-60s efforts to transform Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Werewolf into superheroes; see the covers below).
Run Baby Run is about Nicky Cruz, a Puerto Rican who moved to New York City and became the leader of the notorious street gang, the Mau Maus before turning to Christ. It's actually an interesting story. Tallarico's art, though mediocre, is adequate.
Notes on Logos International: Some of the goofier titles by Logos: 1)
Daughter of Destiny: Kathryn Kuhlman tells the story of of the evangelist and faith healer. It was written by Jamie Buckingham whose
Power For Living was featured by the Museum
here). Jack Chick's anti-Catholic muse, Alberto Rivera, accused Kuhlman of being a Jesuit agent; 2)
A Walk with the Cross is the story of Arthur Blessitt, an evangelist who has walked through every country in the world with a cross (Blessitt also had a quixotic run for president in 1976); 3)
Child of Satan, Child of God is the story of the conversion to Christianity of Manson family murderer Susan Atkins; 4)
Eldridge Cleaver: Reborn is the memoir of the Black Panther Party founder who became a Christian.
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.
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