This week we're looking at a pile of books, the kind of book not published much anymore but once the mark of a comic strip's strong popularity -- the cheap paperback collection:
The comic strip B.C. debuted in 1958, and its creator, Johnny Hart, wrote and drew it for almost fifty years. When he passed on in 2007, he died in the saddle -- literally at the drawing board. For better or worse, B.C. continues to the present, produced by Hart's grandson Mason Mastroianni.
I enjoyed the strip when I was a kid, and my wife too was a fan. It had a terrific cast of characters, human and non-human, who worked as well together for comic and satiric purposes as the gang from Peanuts in that strip's golden age. From the title hero, B.C., an average Joe, to sarcastic Curls, to inventive Thor, to nerdy Carp, to the grouchy Wiley, to ambitious Peter, to the Fat Naggy One and the Cute Skinny One, to John the turtle, to Grog the ice man, to the Apteryx ("a wingless bird with hairy feathers"), to the ants (for domestic humor), and on and on, Hart made a great stage for his jokes and gibes. The books above are collected strips from the late sixties/early seventies, but a lot of the gags, timely then, would still work now. (As always, forgive the poor scans of old books.)
The Key Law of Comic Strips says at most a strip can remain fresh and funny for twenty years. Then it begins to fade, and attempts to revive it are poor. It can run out the string for a long time, but it can only show glimpses of its old genius. I fear that's what happened with B.C., although the strip famously underwent a large change when its creator himself underwent a large change.
When I was a young, sprightly lad, looking for work in the big city, I had a nice chat with an fellow at an employment agency who, like me, loved comic strips and once dreamed of creating one himself. He had even been to some of the conventions of comic art and seen some of his heroes, including Johnny Hart. "He was hilarious," he told me; "hammered the whole time."
B.C. strips of this era in my books dealt a lot with adult themes of the time; social satire, boozing, chasing women, etc., such as:
But in the eighties Johnny Hart had a religious awakening, and if he truly did have a drinking problem was able to put it behind him. He also put a Christian bent on the strip. Here's one of his later works:
A friend of mine, also a fan of comic art, would go bananas over these strips. "It's supposed to be B.C.! 'Before Christ'! How can characters be talking about Christ in caveman days?"
And yet, although the strips could still be funny and quite moving (and though Hart denied it, could be prickly, like the famous post-9/11 example), it still ran into the Key Law. He was a dedicated worker, did all the gags himself, productive enough to do The Wizard of Id concurrently, but coming up with a new strip every single day is brutal. I like doing cartoons occasionally on this blog, but I don't get ideas I like every day, or even ideas I sorta like. A daily strip is tough. You can do the funniest joke of your life, and the next day it's gone forever, unless someone collects it in a book like the ones above. Next gag, please! Deadlines don't wait!
But no one can ever deny that Hart was a genius of the form, as in the famous "clams got legs" series:
It became a running joke in the strip, probably to this day:
I'm glad that clams don't actually got legs; if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that yesterday's joke is today's horrific menace. I would hate to face an invasion of angry, running clams. But it's just a joke, right?
Uuuhhhhh.....
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