Farewell, B.C.
filed on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 8:07:32 PM CST

Perhaps more controversial in his later years, comic strip author Johnny Hart, was creator of B.C., a funny look into things such as women's liberation, strange definitions, political satire, and a world all of its own.  Modern-day topics tackled by the cavemen and cavewomen of prehistoria (and including an anteater, a snake, some ants, a turtle, the apteryx, and Grog!).  Johnny was also, for many years, involved in The Wizard of Id, which is now carried on solely by Danny Parker.  Johnny Hart died on April 7 at the age of 76... and by some ironic twist of fate, I learned about it because I happened to pick up a copy of Time magazine this week.

It can hardly be said that Johnny Hart was as influential with his comics as say Charles Schultz, but that's only true if we're talking about the whole of America.  To me, Johnny Hart was my Charles Schultz.  My grandfather always got a chuckle out of Charlie Brown, but it was B.C. and The Wizard of Id that drew him in.  He had numerous paperback collections of B.C. and The Wizard of Id lying around.  And I found myself pouring through them constantly, and in fact, they're the one thing of my grandfather's that I'm glad I inherited.  Over the summer vacations I spent with my grandparents during my youth, I'd always have one of the books with me on car rides, flipping the pages, laughing at jokes that though I probably shouldn't have understood at my age, most of the time I did.

I can't tell you how many hours I spent doodling the B.C. characters either.  I never really turned them into creations of my own, never really used them for comics from my mind.  I just got a charge out of the simplistic style of them, how they conveyed so much in their little black-and-white line drawings.  I drew several collages of the characters, and would draw B.C. or Thor or whomever just for fun.

The loss of Johnny Hart, to me, is the loss of a childhood friend, a family friend, and a piece of my grandfather's spirit that was intangible but strong.  It's been years since B.C. appeared in print, but I still have the books, and I'll certainly look at the loss of Johnny Hart as one, to me, as great as that of Charles Schultz.

And if there truly is a heaven... I know he and my grandfather are having quite a chuckle right now.