Fifty years ago this week, Americans opened the comic page in their newspapers and readers were introduced to a new strip featuring an anteater, snake, dinosaur and assorted caveman characters in a prehistoric setting.
The comic strip B.C. by Endicott native Johnny Hart debuted Monday, Feb. 17, 1958.
While the comic strip has appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide with an audience of 100 million, Hart said he never really considered cartooning as a serious profession until he graduated from Union-Endicott (U-E) High School.
While a senior at U-E in the late 1940s, Hart met an editorial cartoonist for The Evening Press in Binghamton, Brant Parker. Parker was a judge for a high school art contest, in which Hart was a participant. Parker was impressed with Hart's work, and that led to a close working and personal friendship.
The two kept in touch during the times they went into military service and then to full-time jobs in the area. Parker went to IBM, and Hart to General Electric. During his time in the military, Hart met and married his wife, Bobby.
While on these jobs, Hart submitted some of his work to magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Good Housekeeping. During his time at G.E., Hart began reading the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz. This inspired Hart to create a strip of his own.
During the 1950s, caveman jokes were apparently popular, and a colleague of Hart jokingly suggested he create something revolving around prehistoric times.
As a result, B.C. was born. Interestingly, before the comic strip was accepted into newspapers, it was rejected five times by newspaper syndicators.
Hart later began collaborating with his friend, Brant Parker. The two co-created and wrote the comic strip The Wizard of Id, featuring an egocentric little ruler and his helpless subjects. That strip began national syndication Nov. 9, 1964.
Parker and Hart eventually quit their "day jobs."
During an interview in the 1970s, Hart said he wanted to be funny by pointing out the "foibles and follies" of mankind. He succeeded, as during his career he won numerous awards for B.C., including Best Humor Strip in America, National Cartoonist Society, 1967, among others.
A few times, his humor caused controversy. During the mid-1970s, Hart had a distinguishable shift in his spirituality. His increasingly deep religious faith and staunch political conservatism that accompanied it came to be the source of controversy with the Jewish and Muslim communities. Some newspapers refused to print Hart's strips with strong religious themes.
Broome County was always home for Johnny Hart. Nineveh became his home in the later years. After achieving his success, Hart was always active in community events. His logos, donated free of charge, have appeared throughout the county for several decades including on BC Transit buses, at Broome County parks and on promotional materials for the Red Cross and the former B.C. Open Golf Tournament, among others.
On April 7, Hart quietly passed away at his drawing board in Nineveh, at 76. The comic strip B.C. continues by a team of family members, headed by Mason Mastroianni, Hart's oldest grandson.
Oddly enough, within days after Hart's death, Brant Parker passed away at 86. Parker had retired from the Wizard of Id strip in 1997, turning it over to his son, Jeff, who continues the strip today.
Bobby Hart had always referred to Parker as "Johnny's mentor." She told The Press & Sun Bulletin in April that, "They're probably up in heaven having a good laugh thinking that we have to meet the deadlines and they don't."
This weekend: The leisure sport of train watching.
City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.
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