Johnny Hart, RIP

As you no doubt know, cartoonist Johnny Hart died on April 7th. His strip BC was an enduring favorite of mine. I especially enjoyed his baseball jokes, the unseen people across the sea who sent cynical and sarcastic messages in a bottle, and Wiley's Dictionary.

Hart was famous, or infamous, for his occasional Christian related storylines, most of which I thought were well done. He never took a Mallard Fillmore like approach, that is he never (as far as I recall) exploited a cheap Christians-as-victims-of-the-secular-culture theme. Now and then he simply inked something good about our faith. But none of that would have worked if it weren't for the fact that his strips were clever and funny. Not every day, but most days, and more often than most comic strips.

His comics sometimes begat controversy, but they shouldn't have. I believe the strip below caused one of the bigger uproars, if not the biggest. If you don't see why (not that it's subtle) put yourself in a crescent state of mind.