Johnny Hart, creator of the comic strip B.C., has died at the age of 76.
Hart created his strip in 1958, and his career is typical of many other creative individuals of his era.
B.C. may never have been a great strip, but it was initially a distinctive one, with a cast of philosophical cavemen and absurdist creatures. (Also way too typical of its era is the fact that the strip's only female characters were named "Cute Chick" and "Fat Broad".) It was never really a part of the late fifties/early sixties tradition of subversive humor, Lenny Bruce or Mad magazine, but it was informed by it. Like Charles Schulz's Peanuts--clearly an influence--it sought to explore some of the neuroses of the Age of Anxiety. Like Steve Allen's The Tonight Show, it sought to reconcile hipster cool with mainstream schtick.
And like Steve Allen, it overstayed its welcome, becoming increasingly conservative, both socially and creatively. Newspaper comic strips inevitably grow tedious over time, as the creators are forced to churn out material day after day, and the strain inevitably shows. (This is why the most fondly-remembered comic strips tend to have relatively short runs.) The decline of B.C. was a special case, however, as Hart's conversion to fundamentalist Christianity led him to preach in his strips, and his worldview became increasingly noxious, racist and anti-Semetic, and worse still, his work became astonishingly sloppy; often times his punchlines were simply indecipherable, his points obscure, vague or nonexistent. It was like a very late-period Sinatra concert--we can forgive him if he can't hit the notes anymore, but when he forgets the words, it's time to stop.
Sadly, Hart didn't stop, and in the process, trashed whatever fond memories one might have had of his strip. Sadder still, the strip is set to continue in other hands, becoming another pointless, soulless relic of another era, like Dennis the Menace, no longer attached to the spirit that created it, walking the earth like a phantom, damned to eternal irrelevance. It may not have been a great strip, but it was once a good one, and B.C. deserves a kinder fate.
