Saturday, November 9, 2019

Weird Tract Number 79: "Who's Calling The Shots?" by Vic Lockman


Troy Davis writes:


vic lockman john birch comic

When it comes to religious comics from the late 20th century, the catalog of Vic Lockman (1927-2017) is less well-known than that of Al Hartley, Jack Chick, and Life Messengers comics but it more than makes up for it in generally high levels of bat-shittiness. The Museum has an extensive collection of dozens of Lockman’s tracts and booklets.


Like Chick and Hartley, Lockman did mainstream comics, doing many Disney, Dell, and Gold Key books. 
However, unlike the other two, he continued to do secular comics throughout his career. He is one of the most prolific mainstream comics artist/writers of all time.

Lockman’s politics includes some similarities with the John Birch Society such as the embrace of laetrile. “Who’s Calling The Shots” is a 12-page promotional tract for the 1960s Bircher book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a book by Gary Allen that sold millions of its screeds against global elite cabals. Lockman’s tract was part of a 1972 promotional campaign for Allen’s book because the forward was by John G. Schmitz who was running for president as the candidate for the American Independent Party, the far-right party (George Wallace was the party’s 1968 candidate). Schmitz’s campaign received only 1.7 percent of the popular vote but the book allegedly sold over 4 million copies that year.

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 . . . In the 1970s, Lockman and Walter Lang take on ancient astronaut theorist Erich Von Däniken in the tract "Was God an Astronaut?" . . .  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.

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