Weird Tract Number 86: "Ronny Reb!" by Life Messengers of Seattle

Troy Davis writes:

I previously wrote about the story of  Life Messengers of Seattle here and how, mostly in the '70s, it served as the main fundamentalist Christian comic tract competitor to Chick Publications,  (LM went out of business sometime in the early '80s). Ronny Reb is a 24-page comic from 1973 that takes on the hippies (quick aside: I'm going to be featuring another counterculture-bashing tract from the Museum's collection "Hippie Come Home" by Vic Lockman soon).

As you can see from the cover art and the panels at the end of this post, the artwork by Fred Basher is amateurish (if Tony Tallarico is the Mario Mendoza of comic book artists, Fred Basher is the Morris Buttermaker). Ronny is a hippy who embraces the counterculture and the high life. "I'll split to the big city," Ronny crows, "There I can do my own thing and LIVE!" He lives the life of the prodigal son and when he's out of dough, Ronny's fair-weather friends split the scene. Ronny escapes through drugs an he has a "real bummer" and ODs on acid. Ronny finds himself in Hell where Satan in the form of a serpent torments him. Ronny implores Old Scratch, "But . . . I don't dig this gig. I want out. PLEASE."  Satan shows him how he messed up by not accepting Christ when Bill, a student preacher, implored Ronny to become a Christian. Ronny is damned for eternity and The Serpent breaks the third wall and asks us to join Ronny. The last page tells us how to become born again.

NOTES:  The Museum has featured other Life Messengers tracts: "Hooked For Good: The True Story of Sammy Hall"; "The Lonely Cabin on the 40-Mile"; and "I Discovered The Real Person and Power Behind Witchcraft"

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.