I can’t find it but there’s a thread around here somewhere which, at least in part, tries to figure out in what period the B.C. comic strip is set. If the strip for 30 June is any indication, it’s definately set in the future.
Hey, that explains a lot! I always wondered why Hart, who doesn’t hide his Christian beliefs, would set his strip Before Christ and then have his characters make apparently anachronistic Christian references. But if it takes place in some post-apocalyptic future, it all makes sense. Even the title – it could refer to the Second Coming.
Furthermore, we now have an explanation for the talking clams: mutations caused by radiation from the nuclear war that sent the world back into the stone age!
Wow. It’s just like Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, only with more lame jokes.
BC isn’t set in any coherent time period and never was, given the dinosaur that says “gronk” coexisting with the cavemen, the archeopteryx, and the two nameless “girls”.
Couldn’t have Jurassic Park-style dinosarus running around the funny pages. 
The girls have names, or maybe titles: Cute Chick and Fat Broad.
Well, of course it’s in the future! Everybody knows clams don’t have legs… yet!
:rolleyes:
No, they already do. Just because you haven’t seen 'em…
What’s with the rolleyes? It’s just a comic strip, a usually lame one these days.
Maybe it’s in “The Land Of The Lost,” which IIRC has people/creatures from many different times. Has anybody seen a sleestack in any of the strips?
You don’t know Johnny Hart very well if you think he doesn’t believe these creatures all coexisted.
I, too, was rather taken aback by this strip, and not only because it was almost mildly amusing. I had always believed that Hart in a B.C., like The Wizard of Id, in deliberately ambiguous setting–a Flintstones-like parallel universe where the technology and costumes are clearly prehistoric (or medieval, in TWoI), but the characters are free to comment on things like baseball, American history, and the Internet. This never really bothered me–having cavemen talk about Jesus isn’t really much bigger a conceit than talking animals or any of the stuff that happens in superhero comics.
This one really seemed to shatter that, however, and place B.C.* unambiguously in the future. I mean come on! “An old science magaxine from back in 2004”! If they had mentioned an old magazine from back in 1977, I would have written it off as run-of-the-mill anachronism, but I can’t see any other meaning for those words than that Hart clearly intends the strip to be set in the future. Has he hinted at this anywhere before?
BTW, although I don’t find the strip any funnier than the rest of you, I have to admit I admire Hart for his ambitious extended plotline a couple of years ago when he introduced Conahonty and the other new characters. (It was quite a dramatic change for a comic as old and established as this one–I wish it had actually worked to freshen things up a bit, but I like Hart for trying, anyway.) Since I missed most of it, I now have a perverse and almost masochistic desire to read the whole thing. Are those strips archived anywhere online or available in a print collection?
Cn:* I had always believed that Hart had placed *B.C., *like *The Wizard of Id, in a deliberately ambiguous setting. . . .
Of course clams have legs! They just haven’t any feet.
Given Hart’s obvious beliefs, I always wondered what to make of Grog, who appears to be a Neanderthal or Homo erectus or something, implying an acceptance of human evolution.
I’ve got it! B.C. takes place on Earth after the Apocalypse, and is set in the burned-out husk of Earth following full nuclear war and the God/Satan smackdown. The human cast is small because everybody else is either dead or raptured, and strange demonic/mutant creatures thrive (even forming full societies, like the ants). The references to Christianity are due to the hoping of the people that they, too, may eventually be spirited away from the irradiated desert wasteland they currently inhabit.
It’s a story about grim survival and reclaiming faith, despite evidence to the contrary. It all makes sense now.
I haven’t read B.C. in a long time. Has it gone downhill? Because when I was younger, I thought it was hilarious. I even collected the books. My favorite exchange:
B.C. : “CLAMS GOT LEGS!”
Clam: “Now I have to kill him.”
B.C. : “Why do you have to kill me?”
Clam: “Because if I don’t, the other clams will kill me for giving away the secret.”
B.C.: “How will they do that?”
Clam: “If I know them, they’ll probably kick me to death.”
B.C.: “Okay, tell you what. You agree not to kill me, and I’ll keep your secret safe. Deal?”
Clam: “Deal. Shake on it.”
B.C.: “CLAMS GOT HANDS!”
My other favorite involved the ants. Dad ant is at home, and his daughter and brings home her fiance’ to meet Dad. This is the exhange:
Dad Ant: “So, what do you do for a living?”
Fiance’ Ant: “Nothing.”
Dad: “Well, what do you plan to do?”
Fiance’: “Nothing.”
Dad: “So, you’re telling me you’re a professional bum?”
Fiance’: “Nah. I don’t turn pro until the wedding.”
You are clearly thinking of oysters. 
Oh, easy! There were Neanderthals and H. erectus and so forth, they were just created separately, like all the others.
Like you, I thought it was hilarious and collected the books when I was young. Unlike you, I have been foolish enough to read it in the past 20 years. Trust me: preserve your memories – they’re all that’s left you.
I still read it in hopes of a good visual pun turning up. Doesn’t pay off very often though.
While it’s lately turned into a forum for Hart to vent his questionable theology, my distinct impression is that the conception of the entire strip is one massive anachronism joke – cave-men characters having anachronistic knowledge of the present day, and riffing humor off that rich field of possibilities.