Comic Strip Review: Back to B.C. | B.C. Big Wheel by Johnny Hart
B.C. and his friends are cavemen living in what appears to be prehistoric times. Fire and the wheel are relatively new inventions, and humans mix with dinosaurs and animals that can talk to each other if not to humans. Their world is a bit absurdist, but livable.
This long-running comic strip began in 1958, and creator Johnny Hart kept doing it until his death in 2007, when it was taken over by a relative. Recently I came across two collections I’d picked up in my school library discard sale, Back to B.C. (1961) and B.C. Big Wheel (1969). Since like many long-running gag strips, the status quo stays the same as much as possible, I’m reviewing both here.
B.C. is our everyman character, and a bit of a patsy. When politics comes up, he is the representative of the “complacency” party. Peter thinks of himself as smarter, and is more sarcastic. He is the representative of the “progress” party. Thor is actually pretty intelligent, being the inventor of the wheel. Wiley is more grizzled than the others, and has a wooden leg. He’s afraid of women, water, woodpeckers and other “w” things. Clumsy Carp is a bespectacled klutz, able to trip over a shadow but also able to create “waterballs” that stay stable for long periods of time. Curls is a curly-haired fellow and even more sarcastic than Peter.
The only two known women are Fat Broad and Cute Chick (they would not get actual names until after Mr. Hart passed away.)
Important animal characters include Gronk the dinosaur, the anteater and his intelligent prey, clams got legs! and the pair of Old John the turtle and Dookie Bird who rides the reptile around.
Some jokes rely on anachronism, such as the cavemen playing baseball or having psychiatrists. Others have the characters bouncing off each other’s personalities or making observations on humanity and nature. And every so often there will be an absurd sight gag. In these early days, there will usually be a sequence of strips carrying a central gag for several days under slight permutations, such as Clumsy Carp getting a clam stuck on his nose.
One gag that has passed its sell-by date is the old chestnut about hitting a woman with a club and dragging her by the hair to court her.
A couple of dated references aside, this is decent enough mild humor and has aged okay. (Late in the strip’s history, it became overtly Christian which did not go over well with some audiences.)
The art is decent enough for its purpose, deliberately crude to evoke prehistoric times, and the small cast is easy enough to tell apart after a few pages.
You can probably find the old paperback collections in used bookstores and garage sales, and these are recommended to fans of gag comic humor. The newer large collections tend to be spendy, and you should check your library to see if it can be ordered for you.
