Johnny Hart
B.C.

The comic book dealer is an important figure in the growth of a healthy man with strong moral principles, let's not hide it. Back in the day when I was a young lad among my circle of comic book enthusiasts, a lot of crap was going around. Especially Japanese and American crap, North American to be precise, indeed, U.S. crap; in the field of comics, it's essential to be precise. Well, it's needless to say that there were also quite a lot of porn mags (the shark editions), but that’s another story, although it’s not entirely untrue because even in that sector there were people who knew how to do their job properly (e.g., Leone Frollo). Thinking back to those days, I remember one dealer in particular who dealt stuff that today I would consider genuinely high-quality. Back then I only considered it ‘peculiar’ because, as I said, I liked to flood my pupils with crap. He sold Magnus, Pratt, Moebius, South American stuff, Lancio Story, L'Eternauta, Asterix... Thanks to him, I built up a knowledge of the greats of comic strips. He had a collection of books gathered into a heap of pages (I think they were published by Einaudi) with mountains of strips where you could binge on a particular author.

I was really fond of B.C., much more than the Peanuts. With Schulz's strips, a melancholic aftertaste stuck to my mind that I couldn't quite digest. It's not that I don't like the melancholic aftertaste, quite the contrary, but the Peanuts' one at that time wasn't for me, go ahead and shoot me. In Johnny Hart's strips, I only perceived one level, that of the dry punchline. For me, everything resolved itself in those cartoons, and I liked that. I've read other reviews of B.C., and it seems I missed out on a meta-level of communication; I should have also received a bit of fear and pessimism about the future connected with progress. These should have been conveyed to me by the surreal humor that the author managed to express in the particular setting conceived. B.C. is set in prehistory just after the discovery of the wheel, the use of fire, and the invention of a currency for trade: shells.

Bless my wooden head, that didn’t happen.

To tell the truth, it wasn't even the particular humor that attracted me, Anglo-Saxon stuff, I can't even remember if they managed to render it well in those editions (it's been a while since I read it, but some funny gags I still remember). What attracted me, as is often the case with comics in general, was the style in the drawing, the line. Hart managed to resolve it all with a few lines, essential, and the result was beautiful. How the hell did he do it? If I tried to draw four lines, the best I could hope for was a square, and I assure you I'm good at drawing. I admired his decisive lines, without hesitation, without lifting the line from the paper, fully aware. I burned my pupils over them.

Having a style that allows one to simplify, to remove more than any other artist can afford to remove to achieve the same result, I believe this is the secret every comic strip author should manage to get their hands on. The beauty in the essential. Perfection is simple, and simplicity is elegant. And certainly, elegance is one of the things you can enjoy when reading humorous comic strips. I learned to appreciate these things thanks to Johnny Hart.