Written by: John Jackson Miller
4/9/2007 12:00 AM

While a lot of the obituaries of Johnny Hart have focused on his more controversial cartoons later in his career, I'm always reminded of his earliest work, as reprinted in the old Fawcett mass-market paperbacks like Hey! B.C. and What's New, B.C.

These are pretty hard to find, so it's not surprising more haven't seen them. I had a discussion with a couple of cartoonists  a few years ago (Ted Rall and John Kovalic, not to drop names) about Hart's body of work, and I mentioned that if all readers had seen were the later stuff, they might be surprised to learn how edgy B.C. was regarded in its earliest years, versus everything else on the comics page.  Charles Schulz was a huge fan, and  The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling wrote the foreword to B.C. Strikes Back.

The strips of 1958-60, when the characters first discover simple items (and more complicated ones, like women) really make the best use of the concept. And there's a fatalistic ring to many of the early strips that speaks a lot more to the late 1960s than the late 1950s -- but then, it's hard not to be fatalistic when you're a caveman! Where Schulz had Happiness is a Warm Puppy, Hart had Loneliness is Rotting on a Bookrack.

I'd really like to see a decent reprint program for these early strips. The mass-market paperbacks are out there, but are all abridged — and if there are larger versions like there were for Peanuts, I've never seen them.

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