Comical Books 06: B.C.

 

The comic strip B.C. first appeared in 1958, produced by Johnny Hart and supported by a team of gag writers. It stood out because of its particularly biting wit and cynical humor among the milder offerings from other cartoonists. Once more, it appeared in other papers rather than in our usual San Antonio Light. I suppose our first exposure to the comic was the 1973 NBC special, B.C.: The First Thanksgiving, directed once more by Abe Levitow of Warner Brothers fame and with voices by Daws Butler, Bob Holt, and Don Messick. I’m not sure when we started collecting the paperbacks; possibly the late Seventies. Once more, my volumes are only a few from a much longer list.  

Again, it is another historical transposition, this time set in ‘Caveman Days’. The cast includes a gaggle of cave people, whose over-the-top efforts to come to terms with their lives and niches in the world can be seen as the origins and therefore crude parodies of modern situations and attitudes.

A second stream of animal characters, primitive or extinct, also provide a string of gags, and range from dinosaurs, clams, ants and an anteater, a bird and turtle duo, and ‘an apteryx, a wingless bird with hairy feathers.’

After Johnny Hart’s renewal of his Christian faith in 1984, the direction of the strip took a strange turn, especially considering B.C. literally means ‘Before Christ’. Mainly every Easter Hart would run a strip alluding to Christ’s rising from the dead. This has led some to speculate that the primitive world of B.C. is not prehistoric but post-apocalyptic. After Hart passed away in 2007 his work was carried on by the usual consortium of his relatives.

Life Goes On

The Sun Comes Up, The Sun Goes Down

Back to B.C.

Star Light, Star Bright, First …

No Two Sexes Are Alike

Great Zot I’m Beautiful

One More Time

A Rag and a Bone and a Yank of Hair

What’s New, B. C.?

A Clam for Your Thoughts

Loneliness is Rotting on a Bookrack

The Second and Third Letters of the Alphabet Revisited

B.C. Strikes Back

But Theriously Folkth

Truckin’ On Down

I Don’t Wanta Hear About It

B.C. Right On

Out One Ear and In the Other

Hurray for B.C.

B.C. Is Alive and Well

Big Wheel!

It’s a Funny World

Cave-In

Lover’s Leap

I, B.C.

B.C. On the Rocks

Where the Hell is Heck?

“Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback”

 

I also have a couple of books without covers, Dip in the Road and Take a Bow, B.C.

And this is the end of this load of ‘Comical Books’. Whether there are any others tucked away right now is a moot point.