Johnny Hart

Johnny Hart was an American cartoonist best known for creating the long-running comic strips *B.C.* and *The Wizard of Id*. He was born John Lewis Hart on February 18, 1931, and passed away on April 7, 2007. Hart entered comics after serving in the Air Force, eventually developing *B.C.* in 1958, a prehistoric humor strip that became a syndication staple. He later co-created *The Wizard of Id* with artist Brant Parker, who illustrated the strip. Hart's style was clean, expressive, and deceptively simple, relying on sharp wordplay and visual gags. His key collaborators included Parker and, later in his career, members of his own family. Over his decades of work, Hart received multiple honors, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five awards from the National Cartoonists Society. In his later years, he became known for weaving Christian themes and messages into his strips, a shift that drew both praise and criticism. Chuck Colson once called Hart "the most widely read Christian of our time." His work remains in syndication, and his strips continue to appear in collections such as *B.C. Dip in Road* and *Out One Ear and in the Other*.