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Editor's Note: Cartoonist Johnny Hart, a devoted Christian whose award-winning B.C. comic strip appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died on April 7 at age 76. Today's Christian interviewed Hart in 1997.

Johnny Hart's house is about a half-mile from any paved road. His mind, meanwhile, is several millennia away: back in the cave man days—dwelling with his friend, B.C. The two of them took up residence together several decades ago, with the consent and support of Hart's wife, Bobby. Then came another comic strip pal, "The Wizard of Id." Today, there's a communal cheer in the leafy woods where the Harts reside in rural New York State.

Johnny often rises at four in the morning, trying not to wake the wife of his youth (they've been married 44 years). He sneaks into the cool pre-dawn as geese honk down the hill on his lake.

He winds about a quarter of a mile around his lake ("As the crow walks," jokes Johnny), past his boat house, through some woods, up another hill, and—voila!—there in his studio they wait, his old pals.

"I wash my face and brush my teeth and it's dark out and I get to watch the sun come over the lake and it's really very blissful and fun," he says.

Johnny spends early mornings with his two-dimensional friends. B.C. is more than just a paper-and-ink cartoon. With the mirror-like quality of the lake by Johnny's studio, B.C. reflects Johnny. No, Johnny does not always pick up his pen and draw, rapturously ripping paper from his artist's board, discarding one idea for another. Those days are gone now, as unnecessary as practicing lay-ups might be for Michael Jordan.

Instead, most mornings Johnny collects his ideas, then he'll draw a week's worth of strips in a mere matter of hours, deftly moving from a pencil sketch to a final, inked version. Johnny—like Michael—has moved to the higher stages of his star-studded game; he wishes he could tell friends and inquirers that he doodles for hours every morning, but it just isn't so. Johnny's mornings often materialize into a high grade of sheer nothingness.

"I know how I waste a lot of my time," he cracks while hanging around his studio one cool day. "I just sit and think, who knows what, and it all gets logged up there, and I guess I draw on it. Sometimes I don't go home until six or seven o'clock at night, and sometimes I don't eat at all. That's what's wrong with me: my brain is plodding, and very often it's plogging, too!"

As casual as Johnny seems, his life is anything but laid back. From his earliest days struggling in tough New York City for his break in the cartooning world, to his mid-career rocket to fame, creating several working auxiliaries of himself, to his more recent recommitment to the Christian faith of his youth, Johnny has never been one for sitting on a stone and plogging; that, he leaves for B.C. or his caveman friend, Wiley.

On the contrary, Johnny is busier than ever carving out, if you will, a career he hopes glorifies God. His work has reaped rewards but also heavy costs.

Preaching in panels
Today, the gray-haired "gag man" (his own description) draws a caveman with ever-growing convictions. Hart believes the Lord put him into the cartooning world for a reason. Every prudent chance he gets, he takes advantage of it.

On Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter—and many days between—Hart's characters offer messages reflecting the cartoonist's own firm belief in the gospel message. "I find myself trying to put the gospel into practically every strip I create without being obvious about it," he says.

Hart says he wants to create a "spasm" in his reader, putting a new twist on an old truth. He's been creating nationwide twitches for years now, and his peers often have paid him homage:

—Best Humor Strip in America, six times (The National Cartoonist Society)

—The Reuben—Cartoonist of the Year (The National Cartoonist Society)

—The Yellow Kid Award for Best Cartoonist (The International Congress of Comics)

—Best Cartoonist of the Year (France's highest cartooning award)

—The Sam Adamson Award, twice (Sweden's international award for graphic artists)

—The Elsie Segar Award (King Features Syndicate).

In many ways, Hart is a preacher, only his congregation absorbs his message via America's mainstream newspapers as he brings light into the often dark daily news. People who don't read the Bible or attend church services often do read Johnny's comics.

He was gratified when a woman wrote to say that a "Wizard of Id" strip kept her from committing suicide. "The strip had no real mind-jarring message," says Hart, "so I just knew that [it was] God [who] had used it to reach that precious soul."

B.C. vs. The Times
Johnny's work stirs more than a love for life. For some, Johnny's bent has become too religious and/or political. While other cartoonists' characters get away with blatant statements reflecting non-Christian views, over the past few years a different standard has been applied by some newspaper editors to Johnny's cartoon figures.

For four years now, The Los Angeles Times has refused to run certain "B.C." strips containing witty Christian messages during holiday seasons. In March 1996, when the Times refused to run his Palm Sunday strip, a national uproar ensued, reaching even the Washington, D.C., talk show circuit. The strip had Wiley—a brooding, poet-wannabe in B.C.'s cast of characters—sitting against a tree, tablet in hand, writing a poem entitled "The Suffering Prince":

Picture yourself tied to a tree,
condemned of the sins of eternity.
Then picture a spear, parting the air,
seeking your heart to cut your despair.
Suddenly—a knight, in armor of white,
stands in the gap betwixt you and its flight,
And shedding his 'armor of God' for you—
bears the lance that runs him through.
His heart has been pierced that yours may beat,
and the blood of his corpse washes your feet.
Picture yourself in raiment white,
cleansed by the blood of the lifeless knight.
Never to mourn,
the prince who was downed,
For he is not lost! It is you who are found.

Spokeswoman Gloria Lopez of the Times says Mr. Hart's strip isn't the only one that has been pulled. Other examples of edited strips she cited include "Doonesbury" and "The Far Side." Says Ms. Lopez: "The bottom line is the editors reserve the right to edit."

Johnny believes such treatment is symptomatic of the battle for America's soul, and he likes the idea that his recent flaps with the Times "have gotten Christians up in arms. That's what they all need."

A lifechanging TV link
Johnny admits that for years he was anything but serious about his own walk with God. He sought pleasure, enjoying the luxuries his successful career offered.

Johnny had made a commitment to Christ in his earlier years, but never lived it out. "Bobby and I had backslidden and fallen into a life of drinking and partying," Johnny recalls. They ran with the "Hollywood types," yet he was becoming less and less satisfied.

Then Johnny had a satellite dish hooked up at his estate. A Christian father-and-son team installed it, and temporarily lived on-site with the Harts. The two workers were always flipping the dish to a Christian channel, "constantly using PTL as their test pattern," quips Johnny. And the cartoonist began viewing the shows as well.

"I became interested by osmosis," says Johnny. "PTL was always on."

Challenged by what he was hearing, Johnny and Bobby began looking back into the Scriptures. Today, he cracks, "I use TBN (the Trinity Broadcast Network) as a night light."

With time, the couple's commitment to the Lord solidified. "Probably the biggest realization—and it came to me very subtly—was that the Bible is the Word of God. I didn't have an 'experience.' Everything in my dealings with God has always been very gradual. I attribute that to my own spirit muddling things: personal resistance; me interfering."

Nevertheless, Johnny and Bobby now have set their lives on a course of service. Both teach Sunday school at the Presbyterian church in the small town of (get this) Ninevah, New York.

Faith not rocket science
Whether or not the press ever starts showing more respect to outspoken Christians, Johnny doesn't plan to change his ways. He'll keep exploring the rock-solid truth that finally was hammered into him and his Stone Age friends. And he does more than deliver the message through his comic strips. As opportunities arise, Johnny shares personally the hope of Christ with fellow cartoonists as well as executives at the news syndicate that represents his work.

Perhaps a caveman with convictions can help awaken Christians to challenge today's prevailing culture: it's not rocket science after all. Sure, some matters of faith are complex, but many are as straightforward as … as if they were chiseled in stone.

Johnny would tell you that. You see, years ago he barely passed high school and went no further in his formal education. Says Hart: "I have always been stupid … I don't have a good memory, so when I read anything, whenever I get to a word I don't know, I stop and look it up. I've looked up every word in the dictionary almost twenty times."

His lack of eloquence continually discouraged him. Even when his career was skyrocketing, he would sit down to read "just a normal book," he says, "and in one paragraph I'd have to look up five words. And I'd think, man, will I ever have a vocabulary?"

Today, it is his eloquence that has incited both his troubles and his tremendous career. Johnny Hart says he still feels "inadequate" as a verbal communicator. But he's hard on himself, he admits, "because I've been given a gift and I don't want to just fluff it out and use it indiscriminately. … I still have the same fervor today for each strip to be the funniest and best strip ever, just as I did when I started."

And so, at four a.m. on many nippy New York mornings, Bobby Hart senses her husband slipping out of bed. Through the frosty woods he goes, up a hill to meet his muse—a caveman who transcends time. Sitting together, a caveman and craftsman share life, and even at times a visit from pal Wiley, who might wax poetic on how his two friends seem one as they watch the sun rise and offer praise to the Son.

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