I hope we can remember Johnny Hart more for his long output of funny strips than for his final years of dullness and occasional religious haranguing.
It’s been said here before but needs to be emphasized:
CLAMS GOT LEGS!!!
I’ll have a drink for Johnny Hart–for his many years of good work.
THAT’S what I was trying to remember! Thanks.
The Easter BC made more sense than the Palm Sunday one:
Why would Teech ask a question about Palm Sunday and not expect a religious answer? It’s not like she could have been expecting an answer about bunnies and eggs.
He had been getting so “spiritual” lately, with a lot of references to heaven, that I assumed he thought he was dying.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all print media agreed with Robby?
I never saw “crap” or any other of your crude terms in B. C. or The Wizard of Id (whose worst terms were “Fink” and “Dungeon.”)
Golly, in such an ideal world, Robby would never have to contemplate that anyone disagreed with him about anything–like in the Hitler hierarchy or the government of North Korea. :rolleyes:
The fact that Hart’s strip had a religious bent suggests to me a wide range of tolerance in newspaper syndicates and individual newspapers, which tolerate Garfield’s insolence, Andy Capp’s indolence, the “outing” of a character in “For Better or Worse,” and the clear political bent of “Doonesbury.”
In short, the syndicates include a wide variety of strips. So one openly discusses religion–so what? Are you of a mind to crush such a singular idea, just because it is a boil on your neck? I’d rather have B.C. with its religious slant than some of the strips weith sadistic violence and cruelty that the readers are supposed to “get off” on. (Cf. Matthew 10:34.)
Because saying that crap strip was “pretty good” is right up there with using Jesus to sell soap .
Crap is crap. If you shoehorn religion into it, it becomes crap where some people feel a requirement to say nice things about it. If you shoehorn in Trek references, it becomes crap some (other) people feel an obligation to defend.
Having a “very special message” isn’t an excuse for alleged entertainment to be crap.
-Joe
In his later years, Hart used his stip to slam other religions–mostly Islam.
But, before that, he did some wonderful work.
Sure. My papers never carried B.C., but they pretty much always had Wizard of Id.
My own specific post was referring to Hart’s last Easter comic which was referred to as “pretty good”.
-Joe
Hart himself did not always display tolerance, though. It boggles me that people still think that any mention of god or the bible or whatever is always an uplifting message. And even when not offensive, the religious messages were still heavy-handed and not terribly clever.
Counterexample: Charles Schulz. OTTOMH, I can think of the Sunday strip in which Linus’s sand castle was washed away by rain, to which he responded, “There’s probably a message here somewhere, but I can’t think of what it is,” and another Sunday strip in which Sally wanted to impart a great secret to Charlie Brown: “We prayed in school today!” Schulz never said publically how he meant that strip to be interpreted. And if you want a parable, look no further than Linus’s yearly vigils for the Great Pumpkin.
It IS possible to be devout without aggravating people.
I don’t get it. Not being snarky, I just don’t see how that’s funny…? Is there a visual element I’m missing? I mean obviously eating a pound of lard a week is a bad idea, and it may be a reference to the Atkins diet or something, I’m guessing… but I’m not seeing any funny…
If you eat a pound of lard a week, you will be spending quite a bit of time at the doctor’s office, and they will be making quite a bit of money.
ok. Well, that makes sense… still don’t really think it’s funny though.
Well, there’s also the aspect that it fits in with the public perception of health news, in that the medical establishment tells you something is good for you, only to turn around a short time later and say that it’s bad for you. This often followed later on by them telling you that it’s good for you again (and, yes, they then “reverse” this decision later on, thus completing the circle of life).
Go and tell my love
to come meet me
east of the sun
and west of the moon
below the stars
where the land rises to a point
::flap flap::
He says for you to meet him
east of the stars and
west of the land
under the sun
where the moon rises to a point
:: … ::
One of these days I’m going to kill that bird…
=====
You go tell him he’s a low-down, two-timing, yellow-bellied four-flusher!
::flap flap::
He says you’re a four-timing, two low yellow down belly flusher!
::flap flap::
I think I blew it!
Is there any sadder commentary on the state of modern comics than that, except, perhaps, the wholesale rerunning of old “Peanuts” strips? “All of dad’s strips looked the same so we don’t need to do more than write in new words and the goose will keep laying its golden eggs.” 
There’s nothing wrong with the religious slant per se, but there’s a good way to do it and a bad way to do it. Charles Schultz had a gentle touch with it that never seemed preachy or intolerant (even this infidel can’t help misting up when Linus reads from Luke). Schultz was also funny. He had a soulfulness and a sincerity to him. Hart just came off as preachy, grandstanding, smug and intolerant. Perhaps more sgnificantly, his religious strips were never remotely funny. Is counting the words in a few random Bible quotes supposed to be a rib-splitter? Is it supposed to be instructive? What is the point?
Where Schultz was thoughtful and meditative when he occasionally quoted scripture, Hart just seemed harranging and shrill. Schultz was deceptively simple. Hart was simplistic. He had nothing under the surface. His strips were the comic strip equivalent of bumper stickers.
Plus, he was a creationist. That alone shows a certain shallowness of religious thought.
How on Earth did Hitler get dragged into this discussion already? 
Anyway, I’m not saying that Hart’s later work is crap solely because of the religous content. It’s crap because it’s not funny, not clever, and makes absolutely no sense. I finally stopped reading the strip for the most part, because every time I did, I was left scratching my head, wondering what the point was. Hart’s last Easter Sunday strip was terrible. It is the epitome of all that’s been wrong with his strip for the last few years.
Someone else mentioned Charles Schultz. He did convey an uplifting message without beating the reader over the head with religion, all while staying true to his strip’s premise.
A great counterexample to Hart’s general senselessness is FoxTrot. I’ve always been impressed that Bill Amend takes the time to make his classroom examples realistic and correct. If you look at the chalkboard in his strips, they actually make sense. None of this takes away from the humor, either.
Hart, on the other hand, seemed determined to make his strips as senseless as possible. If you want to make a funny comment on religion in schools today, the way to go about it not the way Hart did with his last Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday strips that have been linked to previously.
And it makes it all the more sad because his strip of the very next day (Monday, April 9) shows he still had a mild funnybone working.
When I was a kid we had some Peanuts and B.C. paperback books of old strips. Consequently, I cannot get the clams got legs thing out of my damned head, even twenty years later. It pops up in my head at really random times and with no explanation.
Also, I clearly remember a strip about an ant on a hill talking to an arriving ant about how their mother’s beauty salon visit went. Then mom shows up with scrambles over her head and she says “they teased my antennas.” I was young enough to have no idea what “teasing” meant in hairstyling, and I thought it was the funniest strip ever. That still comes back to me too.
And I learned about sarcasm from Peanuts. Only I thought it was pronounced “sacricism” and I thought it was a made-up word.
Those old books seemed much funnier than the contemporary ones in the paper. So despite how much I grew to dislike Johnny Hart, I still remember his old strips fondly.