Troy Davis writes:
This 356-page book, one part graphic novel and the other part chapters from The New Testament, is intended to be given to teenagers. The first hundred pages are color comics, mostly competently drawn short stories that address teenage sexuality, alcohol, drugs, abortion, religious pluralism, and evolution from the standard buzzkill fundy school of childrearing.
At the end of the comics section is a black-and-white comics page consisting of two contrasting images of supposed school discipline applied to Christians but not to violent criminals. The top panel consists of thuggish weapon-wielding teenagers in the hall, one with a t-shirt of a monkey captioned with "My Ancestor"; another wears a "Drugs" shirt, and the third has a long knife; the lone female has a "Sex" tattoo on her arm; this panel has led to a viral phenomenon.
People on Twitter and other social media sites and have wrongly claimed this is the work of Jack Chick and that the image is from a Chick tract or comic book. Before I knew the source of this panel, I knew it wasn't Chick's work but Chick and the unknown artist have an over-the-top fundamentalist view of the world and the monkey-ancestor shirt is similar to the painting of the ape captioned "Our Father" behind the professor in the classic creationist Chick tract "Big Daddy?"
The book is a witnessing project of Dr. Tim Todd of West Monroe, Louisiana. The accompanying promo pamphlet has endorsements from televangelist T.D. Jakes and The Gipper's son, right-wing talk show host Michael Reagan whose daddy made 1983 "The Year of the Bible" (the museum has an 80s giveaway book dedicated to this supposedly special year).
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.
