B.C. by Mastroianni and Hart for December 23, 2009

not any more, Joe, not any more.

Aaw…he took their tree…what a Grinch.

Was that the one Lio decorated last week?

Aww, poor widdle creatures. Sumone dun stole der tree. Time to get a free meal wolf. Caveman surprise.

This has to rank has one of the most depressing comics I’ve ever seen.

Where would he get a saw to make that neat a cut?

Awww.. this one is too touching. Poor Animals. Agree with you monon43

You’re a monster, Mr. Grinch Your heart’s an empty hole Your brain is full of spiders, you have garlic in your soul Mr. Grinch I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You’re a rotter, Mr. Grinch You’re the king of sinful sots Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots Mr. Gri-inch! You’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!

Let’s call this one “How The Caveman Stole Christmas”

Correction: “How The Cavemen TOOK Christmas”.

HART With this comic I may joined the tree hugging, green eco people. Let me go switch my voter registration.

I don’t see an earlier strip re the tree – except for GROG decked out by Blondie! What gives?

Tis the season to give isn’t it…? And I seem too recall something about giving until it’s hurts.

There’s a difference between giving of one’s free will and someone taking as a bully would.

is this another one of those caveman commericals

B.C. is a strip that has consistently and unashamedly presented the story of Christmas and the birth of Christ every year. I’ll cut him some slack for this one.

I believe I read somewhere that Christmas was never mentioned in the Bible and was an extension of the Roman Catholic Church’s “Christ Mass”… not sure where I read that …

I have to agree that this is the most depressing comic, along with today’s Non Sequitur… it’s two days until Xmas and death and sadness abound… I’m not understanding…

He should invite them in for cookies and nog.

You hit the nail right on the head BC13… I’m happy my comment was reputed so fast! One more thing BC13 your comment about the Detroit Lions the other day gives me cause to ask if your from MI. I myself grew up in Davison, MI. and moved to NM in 1979 MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE or HAPPY HANUKAH EVERYONE

Hart can still redeem this toon - if they invite all the critters in out of the cold for Christmas.

Paul M I actually grew up in Montreal before moving around in my later years to where my job takes me. I now reside in League City (Houston) TX. ————- Note that I don’t think Johnny Hart would have penned anything remotely like this. Mason, on the other hand, often displays poor judgement, in my opinion.

Hey critters… check out the caves. they’re like tootsie pops. hard on the outside with a chewy inside.

I don’t see this as poor judgment. It’s melancholy rather than jolly, but it makes its point about Comfort and Joy being for ALL creatures by showing its opposite (Peter’s cluelessless). Some people increase their own joy by giving joy to others. Some people (like Peter) are oblivious to the idea that their own happiness might come at the expense of another’s (or worse, they know this but don’t care).

There’s a tradition of Christmas stories about the animals surrounding the manger being aware of the significance of the birth of Christ. There’s also an old traditional belief that, on Christmas Eve, animals are gifted with human speech. So it’s hardly blasphemous (it seems to me) to suggest that the forest critters might decorate a tree of their own. It’s also not inconsistent for the Reason for the Season (as they say) to be highlighted by showing the counterpoint; it is through Scrooge’s meanness at the beginning of A Christmas Carol that his redemption at the end has its significance (of course, I can hardly expect Peter to be rehabilitated in any lasting way; he’d lose his effectiveness as the “bad example” for future strips).

Today’s strip is on the sad side, but I like it. It may be Hart-less, but it’s not heartless.

is this the nitemare be for xmas.the animals should use their noses and track down that thief.and take back whats is theirs.should not be that hard to track in the snow.

fritzkringle You are right, although I still do not like this strip.

My point was that though Johnny had a good sense of humor, he had boundaries that Mason dares to cross, to the the point of poor taste, which he had achieved in a couple strips this year.

Was there a decorated tree? This one doesn’t make any sense at all - and it’s simply depressing…thought the key word here was “comics.”

I think he’s saying that animals celebrate the birth of Christ every bit as much as humans do. But some of us are too dumb to realize it.

BC13, Hart also crossed boundaries of taste from time to time. I’m thinking specifically of the outhouse/Islam strip a few years back…

It’s possible that Mason is making a deliberate attempt to modernize the strip in some ways, giving the strip an “edge”. He has inherited a strong legacy, but he’s also got to compete for space with Pearls Before Swine, Get Fuzzy, and Lio, not just Beetle Bailey, Blondie, and Dennis the Menace. He has to attract new readers, without unduly alienating the old ones. He’s still finding his way, but he seems on the right track.

But bear in mind that the syndicates ALL employ editors, and every “slip” that has made it into print has been approved by a chain of command that no doubt wants to protect the strip’s value. Hart having done the strip since dinosaurs really walked the earth, the syndicate probably gave him a lot of leeway in the later years to do whatever he wanted. In my own opinion, the last few years of Hart’s B.C. were alternating mediocrity (“Show Me…”, “My Hometown was So Small…”) and narrow-minded religious rantings. Mason’s B.C. seems fresher and funnier, and I have little doubt that the syndicate is keeping a close watch on him.

what kind of dog can be that close to a squirrel without going crazy??

Well, Wolf isn’t a dog yet; he’s a wolf.

I’ve read that wolves “imprint” on a specific prey when hunting. If a wolf is following a moose, he can track that moose single-mindedly for days (literally) and be completely oblivious to other prey (rabbits, squirrels, etc.) that he passes along the way…

fritzkringle Mason does have his moments and I grant that you can’t be funny all the time, which even Johnny has proven. I recently purchased the first 50 years and I still haven’t stopped laughing from the fist few pages I’ve read. I don’t know if I’ll be around for the publishing of the next 50 but I can only hope it will be half as funny.

This is so sad.

Has anyone considered what that may be decorated with?

Maybe the joke is on Peter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got great respect for the body of Hart’s work on the whole. I grew up reading a lot of B.C. reprint books, and they were fantastic. But by the end of his life Hart’s best work was many years behind him.

Likewise, Peanuts went through an extended fallow period from (perhaps) the mid-80’s to the mid-90’s. Fortunately, at least in my personal opinion Schulz had a real creative resurgence in the last years. The final year in particular (collected in the book “Peanuts 2000”) stands up well in comparison to the 60’s and 70’s (it’s different, but equally good in its own way). I think a lot of people who gave up on Peanuts by 1995 or so might be surprised if they gave that book a look.

Peanuts was another one I followed through thick and thin right up to the end. I still read classic Peanuts to get my Peanuts fix.

I really enjoyed the formative years as Schultz slowly added characters to the mix. Like BC, I’ve still got a number of his collections from the Sixties, but I would really like to acquire a definitive Peanuts collection.

That better not be the tree from Woodland Critters Christmas or their going to be in serious trouble.

BC13, for several years now they’ve slowly been releasing the Complete Peanuts in hardcover. Two volumes released per year, each volume containing two years of strips. (That means it’ll take 12 and a half years to publish the whole thing.)

They’re up to (I think) 1974 now, and all the past volumes are available through Amazon.com.

Aww…poor little animals.

Today’s wasn’t all that great, but in general, this comic has been fresher for a while.

Peter’s tool shack of course, Yukoner.