After Jack broke his contract with Mirror Enterprises Syndicate,
Jack's idea of a modern stone-age family
didn't die.
It was a major money-maker.
Just not for Jack.
On February 17, 1958, Johnny Hart came out
with the comic, B.C.
He kept drawing it until he passed away
at his drawing board on April 7, 2007.
It was one of the longest-running strips
both written and drawn by the same original author.
It was a great success.
Two years later, another "modern stone-age family,"
the Flintstones, debuted on September 30th, 1960
to April Fools' Day, 1966.
It was the first primetime animated TV series,
and the most successful animated franchise
until The Simpsons in the late 1980s.
TV Guide said it was the 2nd greatest cartoon series
of all time.
The ball that Jack started kept rolling for decades.
That was Jack's gift to the secular world.
Jack was ahead of his time.
But when would it be Jack's time?
You're about to find out.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
Jack continued working at Aerojet-General
through the 1950s.
Here, this is his card for the Aerojet staff
for December 1954.
See Fang?
There are a lot of mini stories going on here.
And here's the card from 1956.
Bill Taft and his wife, Ann, are the main characters here.
At Aerojet, sometimes the work didn't come.
Jack told me, "That's the hardest time of all,
when you have to look like you're working on a project,
but you have to make it up."
He explained that when clients come in,
they can't see you sitting around with nothing to do.
People who have contracts are more likely to get contracts.
So the boss told Jack and the others to look busy.
He literally had to make up projects and draw them.
Sometimes this lasted for days or weeks on end,
until the next project came.
It was literally flood or famine.
But when they had projects, Jack shined.
He was a hard worker.
But realize, some of these
were top secret projects.
Sometimes they didn't even tell the graphic artists
what they were putting together.
One day, Jack was curious.
He stayed at work and started looking at
all the smaller blueprints the others were working on.
Then he made a master chart, putting all the component parts
in their places.
When he finished, he figured out they were working on
a missile project.
The next morning he brought all the others around and
showed them what he had found out.
"So that's what we've been working on!"
One day in 1958, Jack was given a special project.
He was to make an animation that showed the benefits of
Aerojet's infrared detection system.
He was to show them how they could use
the infrared system to detect ICBM missiles
and other important things.
This is a storyboard he made for a scene called "Vulnerability."
It was so good that in March 1959 the IFPA, the Industry
Film Producers Association, gave him a Certificate of Merit
for his training film, Infrared.
But this wasn't what lit Jack's sparkler.
He wanted souls to be saved.
By 1960 Jack had gone on from Aerojet-General in Azusa
to Astro-Science in El Monte.
Shortly after that, a Christian, George Otis, bought it.
One day during lunch an old welder gave Jack
a copy of Power from on High by Charles Finney.
As Jack used to say to me, "My sparkler was lit!"
Back at church he saw deadness and hypocrisy.
Jack said, "That's why there's no revival!"
The problem wasn't in the non-Christians.
They were unsaved!
What do you expect them to do, but sin?
But the Christians should set a good example.
So Jack started sketching, illustrating Finney's words
during his lunch breaks.
He showed his sketches to Mary, a lady who ran a gospel bookstore.
Here he was a guy who was once syndicated
in over 40 papers.
But Jack was discouraged.
"Mary, I don't think anyone is going to publish these.
They hit too hard."
"Why don't you publish them yourself?"
Jack kept sketching for a while, but then crumpled them up
and tossed them into a trash barrel.
But he still wanted to do God's will.
And for once in his life, he asked God for a sign.
"Lord, if You want me to do this book, I need a verse
about the leaven of the Pharisees and I don't know where it is."
There are 1189 chapters in the Bible, and more than that many pages.
He shut his eyes and flipped pages, then stopped.
He peeked with his left eye and there were the words,
"beware of the leaven of the Pharisees..."
Jack was on fire, and he started drawing like crazy.
He got an $800 loan from a credit agency
and then printed Why No Revival.
This is the cover.
As I told you in part 10, the Lutheran paper
creamed Jack over it, saying it was "unrealistic."
And the choir at his church recognized their faces
and gave Jack the cold shoulder.
But Jack knew he did right.
Still, he told me, "I wish I had known better
and not put their faces in the tract."
What can you say?
When Jack saw interesting faces, he drew them!
I wonder what they'd say now.
Right after this, he told me
he was driving down the road and saw some teenagers
on the sidewalk.
He knew they were in rebellion, and he didn't like that at all.
But suddenly the power of God hit him.
He suddenly saw it. They were lost,
and on the way to hell. The reality of that struck him.
He pulled over the car and just cried.
Then, suddenly an entire story
came into his head.
Still crying, he got out his paper and pen
and started writing as fast as he could.
He could see it all.
God poured it into his mind as he wrote.
He called it, "A Demon's Nightmare."
Why No Revival took weeks and weeks to write,
both times.
A Demon's Nightmare took just 15 minutes.
Now he had his first Gospel tract and no way to pay for it.
So he went to his boss, George Otis.
First, he gave a copy of Why No Revival?
to George's secretary.
Later, George called Jack into his office.
He said to Jack, "My mother in law said
you're a man of God and I should help you
on your next printing."
Jack didn't even have to ask!
As soon as he finished drawing A Demon's Nightmare,
another idea occurred to him.
He had been reading Finney's Revival Lectures and
he wanted to get the message out.
He would summarize its ideas and draw pictures
to help explain them simply.
So he worked on this project every lunch and coffee break he got
during the day, for months.
Someone saw that Jack's car was a Renault Dauphine.
He said, "So, has yours caught on fire yet?"
Evidently, they were well known for catching fire
because of some defect.
Well, guess what?
One day, just before Jack finished all his notes and drawings,
someone said, "Jack --is that your car
burning in the parking lot?"
Jack ran outside, past George Otis.
"My car is on fire!"
George said, "Well, who else's car would be burning?"
Jack said they squirted foam all over the car to put out the fire.
Jack thought, "Oh no!
All my work is gone!"
But he had to check for himself.
The car was coated in foam all over -- except in the spot
where his book and his Bible were.
Praise God!
Just one or two drops on his Bible, and nothing on his book.
Let's recap:
1961: Why No Revival?
1962: A Demon's Nightmare.
1963: what would Jack call this book?
He had no idea.
This is what Jack told me happened next:
"I walked out of the building, then it was like a whirlwind
came down right in front of me.
Sssssswish!
And I heard a voice: 'THE LAST CALL.'
Then I walked to my car.
Sssssswish!
'THE LAST CALL.'
Then I opened the door.
Again, right in front of my car.
Sssssswish!
'THE LAST CALL.'"
After that, Jack decided to call the new book,
"The Last Call."
The Last Call came out in 1963.
Jack was running his fledgling company
from his own kitchen table.
After this, Jack had another idea for a tract.
This one showed a person who went for what he wanted
in this life, then died and was judged.
Jack's wife, Lola Lynn, helped him with the Bible verses.
She was a Bible verse factory.
That helped Jack very much.
He showed it in the same way he presented company products
to government buyers: by flipchart.
Some of the people, including a pastor friend,
remember Jack going to their churches
and presenting the gospel by flipchart.
One man who viewed the gospel presentation
was a member of the BGEA, the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association.
He said, "Jack, the story you're telling
is all about this guy's sinful life and judgment.
Why don't you add a second section about what his life
could have been like?"
The idea really struck Jack.
He quickly wrote a second section: "This can be your life!"
In later 1963 Jack was invited
to present the gospel to a group of inmates
at a Prison Camp, number 9, in the mountains above Azusa.
Jack decided to try out the tract.
There were 11 prisoners.
When he finished, 9 of them got saved!
So Jack published the story as his fourth book,
This Was Your Life!
This is Jack's own 1964 copy.
Jack also used to meet people at Christian Businessmen's meetings
where he visited and spoke.
One day he spent some time with Bob Hammond,
lifelong missionary and radio broadcaster for
the "Voice of China and Asia."
He told Jack that in the 1940s, Communist spies saw
how children in the United States were captivated by comic books.
They realized how they could use comic books
to win millions of Chinese children and adults to Communism.
And Bob Hammond gave Jack six of them as an example.
Here they are.
But that's not all.
What enabled them to spread so fast and overtake China
was their pocket size.
They could be carried with them and read wherever they are.
Jack eventually decided to start shrinking his tracts
to just 5 inches wide, like the Chinese tracts.
But not yet.
And this wasn't Jack's only iron in the fire.
He was drawing for an aerospace company.
But he still loved the idea of being an independent cartoonist.
So he drew opinion pictures for a local newspaper around 1964.
He got great reviews from readers.
So in 1965 he sent them to larger chains
for syndication.
And he was turned down.
Again,
And again,
He tried these guys twice.
The Mirror Enterprises Syndicate kept their promise.
They made sure Jack wouldn't get accepted
on any other syndicate.
He even made a variation on his original theme,
"Even Then," which was based around Vikings,
instead of cave men.
But nobody wanted them.
God had something better in view.
In 1966, Jack wrote The Beast --
all 52 pages of it, and Somebody Goofed.
Then Jack stopped.
He left Astro-Science and went to Lockheed Aircraft.
And Jack made a decision.
He couldn't do this alone.
He had contracted with a bookstore distributor
to supply his books to Gospel Bookstores.
He rented a post office box to begin advertising.
But his company needed a name.
Jack told me he was thinking of names like,
"In Him," or "In Christ," or something.
While Jack was mulling the idea over,
the printer said to him, "Here.
I've already printed the tracts.
You're Chick Publications."
And "Chick Publications" was born!
Soon orders started coming in.
He needed a partner -- a Christian partner.
He met co-workers who said they were Christians.
Then he caught them doing things he didn't think glorified Christ,
like gambling, and ... other stuff.
Then, in 1968 he heard about a guy there
who was supposed to be a Christian.
So he found him.
"I hear you're a Christian."
"Yeah."
"Hi, I'm Jack Chick."
"I'm George Collins."
That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
They moved the business part from Jack's table to George's garage,
and Jack went back to drawing more tracts.
Jack had shrunk the tracts to 5 inches wide.
But one more thing happened.
Their printer, John Boewe, had set up all his presses
to print a little bit smaller tract, one called The Four Spiritual Laws
for Campus Crusade.
He told Jack and George that if they could reformat the tracts
to that size and just 24 pages, they could save a lot of money,
and sell them for a nickel, and people could easily
put them in their pockets.
Jack had a lot of reformatting to do, but it was a deal!
Then they sent out the newly reformatted tracts
to a mailing list Jack had meticulously saved.
And suddenly, as George put it, "Sales exploded!"
Right away, they needed a staff.
And they needed a place to put everything.
So they got a small office suite in Pomona.
Then they needed another, then another.
A few years later, their printer died
and another took his place.
He didn't share the same vision, and the prices
were going to go way up.
George had already thought ahead, and figured how they could
get their own printing press to print them themselves.
And that was when Chick Publications
went into full swing as an independent publisher.
When people think of Chick Publications,
I want them to realize that it's not a building.
It's not a corporation.
It's not even the people.
It's a vision to reach the lost, in the most efficient way possible,
so that the most hurried, or shy person,
can become an instant missionary, by means of low-cost,
gospel tracts.
And Chick Publications is God's company.
God put it together, and we pray for God to lead it
through the next generation, just like He did,
throughout Jack's lifetime.
Next you will find out about the preparations Jack made
for the next generation, and how God chose me,
of all people, to be Jack's friend and coworker.
Until then, God bless you
and have a wonderful day.