Weird Tract Number 121: "Have You Been Brainwashed About Ape-Men?" by Walter Lang and Vic Lockman

 Troy Davis writes:

This 6-page tri-fold pamphlet seems derivative. First, there's the title that is similar to the anti-evolution comic book tract released by Life Messengers "Have You Been Brainwashed?"(1973; the tract was mentioned in this museum feature article).  Much of the tract's content overlaps the claims about fossils and pre-human hominids made by the creationist student in the Chick tract "Big Daddy?" (1972). Did Lang and Lockman copy these other tracts? It's hard to say but their tract is undated but undoubtedly it's from around the mid-1970s when the pair created other tri-fold pamphlets (such as this exposé of Erich Von Däniken featured by the museum) so it was probably created after the other two.

This tract is clearly a matter of form over content. It is full of Lang's sterile creationist dogma (Lang (1913-2004) embraced geocentrism later in life;  this refutation of Chick's "Big Daddy?" claims also covers the claims in Lang and Lockman's tract). However, the art, fonts, and formatting by Lockman, a seasoned comics artist, are superb. I have included the rest of the tract below. 

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?" . . . 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.

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.