God Made Man, But A Monkey Supplied the Glue
You'll be relieved to learn that Sunday's B.C., which took on Charles Darwin in some of the most arrythmic rhyming verse ever carved in stone, was not dropped by any of the comic strip's 1,200 client newspapers. "Anyone who runs 'B.C.' at this point knows Johnny Hart's philosophy, so I don't think anyone was surprised," Creators Syndicate president Rick Newcombe tells Editor And Publisher. Complaints about the strip have been few and far between.
As the semi-regular controversies over B.C. are among the few sources of entertainment in the comics page, I choose not to let this particular hubbub die down. Johnny Hart (hilariously described as "the most widely read writer on earth") has a reputation for courting controversy with his out-front evangelism and slams on other faiths, but the striking thing about his method is how passive aggressive it is: He does a comic guaranteed to spark an uproar, and then when the uproar happens, he pretends he was innocent all along. "My goodness. That's incredible. That's unbelievable!" was Hart's reply to the famous Islam-in-the-potty dustup a few years ago.
I say it's time for Johnny Hart to stand up for his beliefs. A cartoonist who rejects Darwinian theory is on thin theological ground drawing a cartoon where dinosaurs (nowhere mentioned in the book of Genesis) walk and talk, apparent Cro-Magnons are suspiciously well versed in both the New and Old Testaments, Christian salvation is available to people living Before Christ, and stone tablets miraculously float—arriving at far-flung destinations with no apparent means of propulsion. Nowhere in the many interviews Hart has given about his faith has he been called on to explain this cognitive dissonance—which makes the dogma of the Immaculate Conception look solidly biblical by comparison. This is why I can't trust Protestants: The theology isn't even close enough for government work.
Come on, Johnny: Stop serving both God and Mammon. If you want to serve the savior, bring Him on! When the rapture comes, there will be room for some new crank cartoonists to jazz up the comics page with their own mad obsessions:
