B.C. is a daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Johnny Hart. Set in prehistoric times, it features a group of cavemen and anthropomorphic animals from various geologic eras.
B.C. made its newspaper debut on February 17, 1958, and was among the longest-running strips still written and drawn by its original creator when Hart died at his drawing board in Nineveh, New York, on April 7, 2007.Binghamton Press April 7, 2007Fellow cartoonists pay tribute to Johnny Hart-Creators Syndicate Since his death, Hart's grandson Mason Mastroianni has produced the strip, with B.C. syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
Publication history B.C. was initially rejected by a number of syndicates until the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate accepted it, launching the strip on February 17, 1958.Harvey, R.C. "Hare Tonic: Johnny Hart to Appear B.C.," The Comics Journal (March 22, 2012). Hart was assisted with B.C. by gag writers Jack Caprio and Dick Boland (who later joined Hart and cartoonist Brant Parker on The Wizard of Id)."Johnny Hart Exhibit 'Before BC' — Collection of Pre-BC illustrations, comic strips, photographs and artwork," Bundry Museum website. Accessed Dec. 11, 2017.
When the Herald Tribune syndicate folded in 1966 due to the demise of its parent newspaper, B.C. was taken over by the Publishers Syndicate. That syndicate changed hands and names frequently — Publishers-Hall Syndicate, the Field Newspaper Syndicate, News America Syndicate, and finally North America Syndicate — eventually becoming part of King Features.Storch, Charles. "Hearst To Buy Murdoch Syndicate," Chicago Tribune (December 25, 1986). At that point, in 1987, Hart changed distributors to Creators Syndicate, becoming one of Creators' first syndicated strips.
After Hart's death in 2007, the strip began being produced by Hart's grandsons Mason Mastroianni (head writer and cartoonist) and Mick Mastroianni (writer for both B.C. and Hart's other creation, Wizard of Id), and Hart's daughter Perri (letterer and colorist). (The Mastroianni brothers also created an original strip, Dogs of C-Kennel, in 2007.)
Cast of characters For a visual glossary, see Meet The Actors at John Hart Studios.
Character inspiration Hart was inspired to draw cavemen (and many other creatures) through the chance suggestion of one of his coworkers at General Electric, and took to the idea "because they are a combination of simplicity and the origin of ideas". The name for the strip "may have been suggested by my wife, Bobby," Johnny recalls.The Johnny Hart Interview
Hart describes the title character as similar to himself, playing the "patsy". The other major characters — Peter, Wiley, Clumsy Carp, Curls, and Thor — were patterned after friends and co-workers. The animal characters include dinosaurs, ants and an anteater, clams, a snake, a turtle and bird duo, and an apteryx (presented in the strip as being the sole surviving specimen, and hence self-aware of its being doomed to extinction).
Human characters B.C.: An orange haired, humble, naïve slob and eternal patsy. B.C. occasionally makes nighttime rounds as his alter-ego, "The Midnight Skulker." Peter: A yellow haired, self-styled genius and the world's first philosophical failure, founder of the "Prehistoric Pessimists Society" and the "Truth Pedestal," and the discoverer of oil. Peter is patterned after Hart's friend, Peter Reuter; the two had been co-workers at General Electric. Thor: A brown-haired, smart, witty self-proclaimed ladies' man; inventor of the wheel and the comb. Thor was patterned after another of Hart's friends from GE, Thornton Kinney. Jane: a bossy cavewoman who enjoys clobbering snakes. Until August 29, 2019, Jane was referred to in the strip as the "Fat Broad". She is named after Johnny's mother-in-law, Janie Indiana Finch. Grace: a quiet but intellectual giant in a world of crude men. Until August 29, 2019, Grace was referred to in the strip as the "Cute Chick". She is named after Johnny's mom Grace Anna Brown. Grace's birthday is March 1. Wiley: a peg-legged, superstitious, unshaven, woman-fearing, water-hating poet and coach of the local baseball and football teams, not to mention the first bartender. Wiley was patterned after Hart's brother-in-law, Wiley Baxter, who lost his leg in World War II. Clumsy Carp: a nerdy, bespectacled ichthyologist and perpetual klutz, clumsy enough to trip over a shadow, yet with some unusual skills, such as his ability to make and stack "water balls" (similar to snowballs). Clumsy Carp was patterned after Hart's childhood friend, Jack Caprio. Curls: a master of sarcastic wit. Curls was patterned after Hart's friend from high school, Richard (Curly) Boland. Grog: pure Id, a caveman's caveman; a primitive, semi-evolved wild man with enough strength to knock the sun out of the sky using a golfball. His vocabulary was very limited until a January 1977 strip in which, to Peter's shock, he actually spoke full sentences. The Guru: an unnamed, bearded wise man living like a hermit atop a mountain, whence he dispenses wisdom and sarcasm.
Animals and other non-human characters John the Turtle and the Dookie Bird: this prehistoric odd couple are inseparable friends, especially when making their annual trek south for the winter. The Dookie Bird rides on John's back when they travel. The Snake: the put-upon, mortal enemy of Jane (and her club). The Anteater: eats ants with a sticky, elastic tongue and a ZOT! sound. Hart actually drew something of a hybrid—with the long ears of an aardvark and the bushy tail of a giant anteater. (This character was the inspiration for Peter the Anteater, the University of California, Irvine team mascot. Also served as the inspiration for the mascot of the now disestablished US Navy fighter squadron VF-114 the "Aardvarks".)The Anteater Mascot, UCI Library Maude: an ant, a nagging wife with a smart-alec son (Johnny) and a quarrelsome, straying husband. Jake: ant husband of Maude, who is always threatening to run off with Shirley. Queen Ida: the queen ant, an unfeeling and abusive dictator. Queen Ida was based on Hart's wife Bobby, whose given name was Ida. She was featured every year on her birthday, December 3, until Mrs. Hart's death in 2018. (The December 3, 2019 strip featured a parting message from the Queen to her subjects.) The Dinosaur: big but not too bright—a sort of sauropod with spinal plates like a stegosaurus. Sometimes called Gronk, which is the only sound he makes (although he can talk fluently in recent strips). The Clams: talking clams with legs, among other appendages. (Clams are also the preferred unit of currency in B.C.) The Apteryx (kiwi): a "wingless bird with hairy feathers", as he invariably introduces himself. The Turkey: makes his yearly appearance at Thanksgiving time, eluding the mighty hunters. Oynque: the turkey's porcine partner in crime, rarely seen without his trademark mud puddle. Wolf: the newest B.C. character August 24, 2009;John Hart Studios.com a blissfully deviant domestication of Precambrian fur. Man's first friend. Various incidental ants, including a schoolteacher and her students. Raptors: velociraptors that try to eat the other characters.
There are also several odd inanimate characters, including a talking Daisy and its friend, a talking Rock.
Seldom-used or one-shot human characters Although the strip seldom expands its human cast outside of the established group of characters, there are a few exceptions.
Anno Domini, or A.D., introduced during a weeks-long journey by Peter to discover the new world, which he successfully accomplished. His name is arguably a riff on B.C.'s name. He dresses as a caveman very much like the rest of the characters, but has a thick mustache and a stereotypical Italian accent, assuming a bit of a take on Christopher Columbus. He befriends Peter in the "new world". Conahonty, a Native American Indian, who also appears in the "new world" storyline, and befriends Peter. He is a friend of A.D.'s, and speaks rather stereotypical broken English. He dresses more like a somewhat stereotyped Indian than a caveman, and at one point even specifically states that he is an American Indian. He and A.D. were not frequently seen after Peter returned from his epic journey. The two are the most oft-appearing non-regular human characters in the history of the strip other than the Guru, due to the strip's tight focus on its core cast of humans. His name is a spoof of the name Pocahontas. Peter's Pen Pal, An unseen person whom Peter corresponds with by tossing "floating stone tablet" letters into the ocean and receiving answers the next day.
Setting The characters live, for the most part, in caves, in what appears to be a barren, mountainous desert by an unidentified sea. Background detail is often limited to a simple horizon line broken up by the occasional silhouettes of a stray volcano or cloud. "Retail stores", "shop counters", and "businesses" are symbolized by a single boulder, labeled (for instance): "Wheel Repair", "Advice Column", "Psychiatrist", etc. The February 5, 2012, strip gives a nearby location of , which is in present-day Dublin, Ireland.
Originally, the strip was set firmly in prehistoric times, with the characters clearly living in an era untouched by modernity. Typical plot lines, for example, include B.C.'s friend, Thor (inventor of the wheel and the comb), trying to discover a use for the wheel. Thor was also seen making calendars out of stone every December. Other characters attempt to harness fire or to discover an unexplored territory, like Peter trying to find the "new world" by crossing the ocean on a raft. Animals, like the dinosaur, think such thoughts as, "There's one consolation to becoming extinct—I'll go down in history as the first one to go down in history." Grog arrived in early 1966,Take a Bow, B.C. published in 1970, containing cartoons from 1965 and 1966 emerging from a miniature glacier which melted to reveal what Wiley called "Prehistoric man!"
B.C., like Hart's Wizard of Id, is a period burlesque with a deliberately broad, non literal time frame. As time went on, the strip began to mine humor from having the characters make explicit references to modern-day current events, inventions, and celebrities. Increasingly familiar visual devices, like the makeshift "telephone" built into a tree trunk, also started to blur the comic's supposed prehistoric setting and make it rife with intentional anachronisms. One of the comic's early out-of-context jokes, from June 22, 1967, was this one: Peter: "I used to think the Sun revolved around the Earth." B.C.: "What does it revolve around?" Peter: "The United States!"
Another early example: Near Christmas time, the apteryx, dressed as Santa Claus, modified his usual spiel: "Hi there, I'm an Apterclaus, a wingless toymonger with batteries not included!" A devout Christian, Hart included didactic references to the death and resurrection of Jesus in Easter installments. The Washington Post columnist and comics critic Gene Weingarten suggestedChatological Humor, The Washington Post, July 2004 that B.C. is actually set not in the past but in a dystopic, post-apocalyptic future.
Format and style B.C. follows a gag-a-day format, featuring (mostly) unrelated jokes from day to day, plus a color Sunday strip. Occasionally it will run an extended sequence on a given theme over a week or two. It also follows the convention of Sunday strips with a short, setup/payoff joke in the first two panels, followed by an extended gag, which allows newspapers to trim the opening panels for space. The principal cast is small and varied, with each character imbued with a developed personality. "The art style, like that of Charles Schulz's Peanuts, masks sophisticated minimalism with a casually scratchy veneer," according to comics historian Don Markstein.B.C. at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on August 27, 2015.