Posted by: Scott | Monday, April 9, 2007

B.C. Creator Dead at 76

Popular cartoonist Johnny Hart died at the storyboard on Saturday. His comic strips were enjoyed by many including this blogger. Many times they were humorous and there were a number of times that he would make you stop and think. He was never afraid to include his faith as part of his comic, perhaps the most famous being the Easter 2001 strip that transformed a menorah into a cross with the words of Jesus on the cross being quoted in the transformation. By the way, he had a good one for this Easter too. The family plans to continue the comic strip.

HT: Sharper Iron

Posted in Announcements!, Easter/Resurrection Sunday, Fundamentalism/Christianity, Main, Newsworthy, Not Blog Related, Numerology, Spare Time

« Death, Where is Your Sting?
Tancredo Could Impact “Hawkeye Caucai” »

Responses

Hi Scott,

How sad for us — but good for him. Didn’t he also do The Wizard of Id?

By: wytammic on Monday, April 9, 2007
at 3:32 PM

I think he co-created the Wizard of Id (according to the foxnews article). That is really sad :( It seems like it was a sudden death too, unexpected. Well, I’m glad his family will continue the strip, it is one of my favorites.

By: tieki rae on Monday, April 9, 2007
at 4:34 PM

I have wondered about the role of Johnny Hart in The Wizard of Id. Yes, he co-created the other popular strip. The about page on the Creators Syndicate site states that he was the writer for Id:

[Johnny Hart and Brant Parker] began paving the path to the Kingdom of Id in 1950, when Parker, a staff artist for the Binghamton Press in upstate New York, was asked to judge a high school art contest. Among the entrants was a teenager by the name of Johnny Hart, whose work so impressed Parker that he arranged a meeting.

That lunch was the beginning of a close working and personal relationship. Parker and Hart discovered a mutual interest in cartooning, hired an agent and began submitting work to such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Good Housekeeping. By the end of the decade, Parker was working as an art director at IBM and Hart had created the comic strip B.C., a prehistoric parody of modern man’s foibles.

In 1964, Hart brought that comic concept even further up to date-from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages, to be exact-added a castle of characters and took the premise of the Wizard of Id to Parker.

By: Scott on Monday, April 9, 2007
at 9:32 PM

I got a reply from the family the other day (I sent a message through the Write the Author link). In the signature line, there was this bit of info:

Watch for GrowinGold with BC - A 50 Year Celebration.
Published by Checker Book Publishing Group, in stores this fall.
Johnny made the final edits to this book the week before he passed away!

Should be a good publication and will no doubt be precious to the friends and family of Mr. Hart.

Also: Creator’s Syndicate has added a tribute page where fellow cartoonists have done comics or written in memory of Johnny Hart. The page includes a letter from the president and founder of Creators and also a letter that Johnny Hart wrote to the newspapers 20 years ago.

By: Scott on Friday, April 13, 2007
at 7:04 AM

Leave a response






Your response:

Categories