Post Content

B.C., 1/8/05

I know, it’s been literally weeks since I last tore into B.C. So, at the risk of making a mockery of my be-nicer New Year’s resolution, I offer this strip up for you consideration. I’m not even going to bother dwelling on the ostensible joke of this strip, which (1) isn’t funny, (2) doesn’t really make sense, and (3) is about three years late, assuming it’s a stab at “topical humor.” Rather, I’d like to point out the prevalence of B.C. running gags that the call for the same art time after time. The “you know” jokes are a good example, though they have the slightly amusing conceit of some sort of stone-age, pedal-driven mechanical system for dispensing witticisms from a hemispherical stone. “The book of phrases,” meanwhile, just involves a book on top of a rock. Strangely, despite the fact that the humor in this strip would work just as well if the image of Peter looking at the book were cut and paste from the first panel to the second, if you look closely you can tell that this bland scene was in fact drawn twice. I suppose I should respect Johnny Hart’s old-school dedication to the fine art of manual art-creation, but, really, if it’s in the service of lame-ass Enron jokes, I must withhold my approbation.

Post Content

B.C., 12/20/04

Given his track record, this is kind of a strange thing to say, but do you think Johnny Hart is trying not to offend someone? That’s the only explanation I can come up with for about the last six months of his political cartoons, which are so convoluted as to be incomprehensible. If there’s more of a punchline to this one than “The guy on the left is a Democrat,” I don’t see it — but, really, there has to be more to it. Doesn’t there? I’m thinking it’s all some sort of B.C. insider code, which ignorant leftists like myself gloss over unknowingly, while those in the know chortle uproariously as our caveman heroes once again stick it to the secularists/liberals/Jews/whoevers.

Post Content

B.C., 12/3/04

For me, one of the surprises in Jonathan Franzen’s Peanuts essay (yes, I’m plugging it again; you really should read it) was that his favorite comic in the newspaper he read as a kid was B.C. Since I refuse to actually spend good money on a B.C. anthology, or even risk being seen thumbing through one at the bookstore, I must pose this question to you all: was Franzen a little kid with no taste (not a crime; even I, current culture snob that I am, was under the spell of Garfield until I hit puberty), or was B.C. at some point in the distant past actually, you know, funny?

Since all I have to go on is what I read in the funny pages, though, I must humbly assert that B.C. is not, in fact, funny. Do I harp on this point? Well, it’s true. It also has too damn many characters, and it seems to arbitrarily introduce and get rid of them, and maybe if you’re Jonathan Franzen you’re familiar with them all, but I swear I’ve read this strip every day for years and this Queen Ida is new to me. I mean, yeah, ants have queens, and she’s a real queen, with a crown and a, um, robe and everything, but really: What the hell? I ask you.

This strip also offers a good example of a common comics misconception, which is that if you put two half-funny bits in a row in the same strip, you get an actually funny strip. Though “half-funny” might be too kind a description of the “Yankee Stadium” gag, or of the “then dig one” gag, which, I assume, against all logic, is the punchline.

And one last thing before I move on: What’s the deal with the “HBQBJ” thing at the bottom right of the third panel? Is it a secret code? A private joke? A Jesus thing? It’s a Jesus thing, isn’t it?