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Animation:
Growing Old With B.C.
Look
up “fun·ny, adv.” in Wiley’s Dictionary,
and you’ll find a drawing of Johnny Hart. Look for
Wiley and you’ll find one of those unshaven, cone-shaped
cavemen that made Jonny Hart famous. But if you try to find
Hart himself, you’ll be sadly disappointed.
Jonny
Hart died in 2007 after writing and drawing that wildly
successful bunch of bananas, er, eh, cavemen in the comic
strip, B. C.
Look
up from almost any of the hundreds of comic strips reprinted
in Growing Old with B. C. and you’ll do so
with tears in your eyes and deep-throated laughter.
How can you not laugh at stuff like: Peter: Do you have
any yellow grapes? Curls: Sorry, we’re all out. How
about some
gutless nectarines?
All
of this slap-happy visual and verbal wordplay is drawn in
a simple style that looks like you could do it on a paper
napkin in a bar when you are half-sloshed. I dare you to
try it.
You’ll
also need to be very clever to imitate Jonny Hart. Surely,
he held the record for running gags, most of them featuring
a caveman leaning on a boulder lettered with a business
name like Dr. Peter: Head Shrinker, Wiley’s Dictionary,
and The Curse Exchange.
Finally,
you’ll need to be politically incorrect. Few cartoonists
today can create characters like The Fat Broad and The Cute
Chick and survive.
How
the strip could survive Hart’s demise is difficult
to imagine, although the heirs of B. C. seem to
be holding their own.
If you
wish to hold your own copy, don’t delay. This wonderful
anthology is highly recommended, and won’t last long
on book shelves. Grog!
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