Johnny Hart

Johnny Hart (born February 18, 1931) is an American cartoonist noted for having created and drawn the comic strip B.C. which has appeared daily in newspapers since February 17, 1958. Hart also co-created and writes the comic strip The Wizard of Id, which is drawn by Brant Parker. Id has been distributed since 1964.[1] Both strips are currently syndicated by Creator's Syndicate.

Hart's first comic was published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1954.[1] He also was published in Colliers and other magazines of the period.[2]

Hart, who favored simplicity in his work, was inspired to draw cavemen through the chance suggestion of one of his General Electric coworkers and took to the idea "because they are a combination of simplicity and the origin of ideas". The name for the strip, B.C. was suggested by his wife, Bobby. B.C. is, by Hart's own telling, like himself, and plays the "patsy". The other major characters, Wiley, the Fat Broad, the Cute Chick, Thor and Peter, were patterned after friends, a relative, and GE coworkers.[2] Dry humor, prose, and devices such as Wiley's Dictionary (where common words are defined humorously with a twist) make for some of the mix of material in B.C.

The Wizard of Id is set during the Middle Ages. The principal Id characters include the King, Sir Rodney (the knight) and, of course, the Wizard of Id. The Spook is typically in jail and spends his time surreptitiously digging his way to freedom. The King can be imperious or stiff (take your pick) and his sentences to the peasants of his kingdom can be quite dark (as in death; mercy is asked for because it's Valentine's Day, and the king grants that the heart of the peasant be spared death by its forcible removal). The repeated draconian sentences from the king lead to the erstwhile refrain heard over and over in the strip: "The King is a Fink!" (Or as Hart once mangled, "The Fing is a Kink!") How the king hangs onto power in a kingdom of such (privately, away from the king's ears) malcontents results in many plot machinations such as peasant approval polls, speeches by the king to the peasants, etc.

Recently, Hart became a born again, evangelical Christian, as has his wife Bobby, and his transformation has affected his work. Certain B.C. character's statements around the Christmas and Easter seasons during the mid-1990s - especially during March, 1996 - and following have created editorial reaction from a handful of U. S. newspapers, chiefly the Los Angeles Times, and protests from Jewish and Muslim groups. The Times pulled the strips it objected to at first, and in the months and years following began placing disputed strips in the religion pages, instead of the regular comics pages. [3]

Hart and his wife are members of a local Presbyterian church in Nineveh, New York where Hart has served as an Elder, a governing church leader.[4]

Links of interest

[1]http://www.lambiek.net/hart.htm

[2]http://www.ptm.org/JulHartofBC.htm

[3]http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/7r2/7r2018.html

[4]http://www.layman.org/layman/the-layman/1999/nov-dec99/hart-of-faith.htm