BC RIP

[kip_w]

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I just got word that cartoonist Johnny Hart passed on at his drawing table at the age of 76. His flagship strip, BC, was at one time brilliantly innovative and hilarious. A peek at those first few anthologies shows that it was no illusion. He was a genius. Even in recent years, he was still funny ha-ha a couple of times a year.

Mom told me, years ago, that I was distantly related to him through her mother's side of the family. If so, he probably never suspected my existence. I was certainly aware of him, though. He was one of the great ones.
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Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

A few great early B.C. strips turned up in my high-school physics textbook. I remember this one:

Clumsy Carp: I've been staring at the sun all day.
B.C.: What did you learn?
Clumsy Carp [walks into tree]: Not to stare at the sun all day.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Clams got knobby knees! :-)

Too bad the man allowed his sense of humor to be drowned by sanctimony these past ten years or so. He had real talent, of the sort that one weeps to see subverted or suppressed, as he so clearly did.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

"Clams got police brutality!"

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

How ironic that he did not make it to see one last Easter. Oh well, at least I'm sure he died secure in the knowledge that he was able to get one final preachy and unfunny Sunday strip in.

I mourned the loss of the great talent that was Johnny Hart, years ago.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

YMMV. I thought his work was still amusing. B.C. and The Wizard of Id are still far more entertaining than most other daily comic strips even today, decades after they first appeared.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It was such a ghost of its former self that, for me, the irritation value outweighed the amusement most days. Especially with its doctrinal slant, laid on with a trowel. Basically, I liked it best when it was a strip about cavemen and not about pay phones and TV shows and all. Anachronisms were funny for the first few months, then they became a routine.

The Wizard of Id used to be mean-spirited and much funnier. Now it's mainly mean-spirited and, again, routine. In a chat last night, someone asked what classic strips there were these days, and I ran and got the Saturday paper to check. The classic strips are all ghosted or continued by family members. I couldn't come up with a single example. Squishing down the size of the strips certainly hasn't helped.

[davesslave.livejournal.com]

That is sad news. I always liked BC.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have a vague memory of another strip he might have done; the characters were all ants. That ring any bells? I especially remember two ants talking to one another.

ant 1: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
ant 2: well, go away. Godliness wants to be alone for a while.

K.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Periodically, BC is turned over to the ants while the cavemen take the day off (I presume they go somewhere and say funny things).

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I thought you might be interested to read what Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten wrote about Hart in today's online chat:

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Gene Weingarten: I tried to write an appreciation of Johnny for today's paper, but failed. It was coming out nasty, and that was bad.

Johnny Hart was one of the greatest cartoonists who ever lived. "B.C." during the first few years of the strip was breathtakingly brilliant; really, if you're too young to remember (everyone but me is) go on ebay and buy a few of his very early collections, from before about 1963.

One of my favorites:

Peter, the smart one, declares he is going to travel across the earth dragging a forked stick in the sand, to prove that two parallel lines never meet. He starts out toward the right of the page. In the next several panels, you see him dragging that forked stick through desert and tundra and jungle, with parallel lines following him the whole way. Finally, he returns to his friends from the left of the panel, obviously having completely circumnavigated the globe. They all look down. The two forks of the stick have been abraded down into a single nub. The parallel lines have met.

Another one: The cavement discover this lumpy creature and decide they have to name it. Peter says: "Well, let's name it for its most obvious characteristic. What is it?" And Thor answers: "It eats ants." So they decide to name it an "eatanter."

Another one: They decide to name that muscle in the chest that pumps blood. Peter decides to call it a "Hart." And B.C. yells at him: "Bootlicker!"

Hart was a genius. Then he got weird and scared, and it made him selfish and intolerant and preachy. I hope he's in heaven, because it was REALLY important to him to get there. It warped his priorities.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Actually, Clumsy Carp suggested calling it a "hart," and Curls calls him a bootlicker.

I've tried manfully to refrain from quoting my favorite strips, because it just wouldn't end.

But it wasn't religion that made him lose his edge. When the strip was about cavemen, he was tapping a completely different vein of humor from everyone else, and he was exploring a wild country in an exhilarating way. Yeah, there were the Flintstones and other cave comedies (going back to some stop-motion silent animation by, I believe, Willis O'Brian), but those were all about modern life with stone and animal appliances. As long as BC wasn't about those, it was wildly amusing. When it became a look at the 70s with cavemen acting out the parts, it was still somewhat amusing, but on the path to obsolescence. Even jokes like Peter telling BC that we no longer believe the sun goes around the earth ("What does it go around?" "The United States.") are pretty funny. Being like everybody else limited him, though, and hurt the strip.

I'm not sure he was selfish, though. From everything I'm reading these past couple of days, he was generous with drawings and logos. When they were for civic organizations, he didn't demand royalties. His worldview was warped by his religion, but he was still a pretty good guy, as far as I can tell.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

He was reportedly very, very generous, even to the point of loaning his comic strip's name to a professional golf tournament.