Johnny Hart & B.C.: Slam on Islam?

Friday November 21, 2003

Johnny Hart, the cartoonist who writes and draws the long-running comic strip B.C., has been criticized in the past for what many people perceive to be religious insensitivity in some of his comic. One strip in particular was seen as an attempt to claim that Christianity has superceded Judaism. Now, however, he is under renewed criticism for what many, including many other comic artists, think is a harsh attack on Islam.

Gene Weingarten discusses the recent strip for the Washington Post:

The cartoon, which appeared Nov. 10 in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide -- including The Washington Post -- shows a caveman entering an outhouse at night, and then saying, from inside, "Is it just me, or does it stink in here?" ... [T]he cartoon contained six crescent moons -- three in the sky, and three on the outhouse door -- and wondered if this might have been a veiled slur on the world's 1 billion practicing Muslims. ... [An email] noted that Hart had drawn a prominent sound effect -- "SLAM" -- between two frames to accompany the closing of the outhouse door. The SLAM was stacked vertically, in the shape of an I, and could be seen to signify "Islam." The cartoon appeared on the 15th day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

The Washington Post asked six well-known cartoonists -- all admirers of Johnny Hart -- to look at the strip. Most said they had no idea what the joke was supposed to be. When the religious interpretation was suggested, five of the six thought it was probably right, even given Hart's denial. "It's highly, overwhelmingly, incontrovertibly suspicious," said Berkeley Breathed, creator of "Bloom County" and the new Sunday-only strip "Opus." "There's no explanation for that gag without Islam. It's meaningless."

"That vertical SLAM is completely unnecessary to whatever surface gag is there," said Jef Mallett, creator of the nationally syndicated cartoon "Frazz." The cartoon would work equally well, and far more efficiently, Mallett said, without the prominent sound effect. "And other than the excuse to add three more crescents, there was no need to set the scene at night."

Hart, as indicated above, denies that the cartoon had anything to do with Islam. Perhaps it wasn't an intentional attack but, rather, an unconscious slip? That seems unlikely. Hart has a history of religious insensitivity. Hart has a history of using words very carefully in his strips. Much of the stip itself makes little sense outside of an attack on Islam.

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