Josh notes the passing of B.C. creator Johnny Hart, who suffered a fatal stroke (at age 76) while working on his comic strip: “the dude died at his drawing board. That’s hardcore.”
As Josh notes, B.C. was a deeply idiosyncratic strip, with thick and sometimes impenetrable doses of Hart’s Christianity and a lot of running gags, most of which were not funny. I bought a book of B.C. strips some years back; when Hart was on he could, in fact, be both funny and thoughtful, even though a lot of what he did wasn’t really my cup of tea. I agree 100% with Josh that the strip shouldn’t be continued by Hart’s family.
6 thoughts on “B.C. RIP”
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Wow. Harsh words for someone you didn’t know who recently died. Way to exemplify The Golden Rule.
B.C. used to be one of my favorites. I haven’t viewed it enough recently to comment on the content. I used to be funny to me though.
DaveD, you referring to me or Josh? I don’t think I was harsh at all.
I guess I misread your post – despite the lack of quotes, you were paraphrasing what Josh wrote. Apologies. Truth is, neither of you were harsh.
I would have to note that reading what Josh said – something I should have done last night – and reading what you said he wrote sound like two different things. Guess it was the brevity of your post that did that.
I liked BC back in the 60s when I was in 5th and 6th grade. I followed the strip for a while in the late 70s. There was an occaisional gem, but usually I read BC without much enthusiasm and I eventually drifted away from his strip. Regardless of my opinion, Hart was doing something right. Any cartoonist that can hold an audience as long as Hart did is doing something right.
“Any cartoonist that can hold an audience as long as Hart did is doing something right.”
Agreed. I liked BC a lot, although I hadn’t read it for years (because I haven’t followed comic strips for years). Hart could be laugh-out-loud, milk-out-the-nose funny in spots, and was almost always amusing, in his heyday. “Idiosyncratic”, to me, means a guy who knew who he was about and what he had to say. There are few enough people like that in the world. Now we have one fewer.