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Johnny Hart is the creator of the newspaper comic strip B.C., which has gotten in trouble many times in the past for using its position to evangelize readers, among other things. One strip showed a turtle complaining that his shell was covered with grafitti. This in itself is innocuous, but the vandalism in question included a swastika. Hart said that he only meant it as another example of grafitti...
But now there's been a bit of hell-raising over one of his recent comics. It's pretty simple and I'm too lazy to get an image, so I'll just describe it. In the first panel, a character walks up to an outhouse on a hill by the light of a crescent moon. In between it and the next panel, the word "SLAM" is written vertically in bold letters. The next panel shows just the outhouse on the hill; presumptively the guy is inside the outhouse. In the final panel, the guy says, "Is it just me, or does something smell in here?" That's it.
When I read it, the only problem I noticed was that it wasn't even the slightest bit funny, but it's been construed as (if you want, you can try to guess how it's offensive before reading, but it's pretty left-field; I couldn't get the frigging spoiler tag to work so I hit enter a bunch of times)
a hidden insult to Muslims. Between the outhouse door and the night sky, across three panels, there are six crescent moons in the comic, and the word SLAM is vertically arranged in the shape of an I. Ostensibly, the strip is implying that Islam stinks...
Hart denies it, and says the strip was only meant to joke about the overuse of the phrase, "is it just me, or..." and the power of human denial. Thing is, Hart is prone to this kind of joke. Any bets as to whether he meant it or not? I got this from a Washington Post article, BTW.
But now there's been a bit of hell-raising over one of his recent comics. It's pretty simple and I'm too lazy to get an image, so I'll just describe it. In the first panel, a character walks up to an outhouse on a hill by the light of a crescent moon. In between it and the next panel, the word "SLAM" is written vertically in bold letters. The next panel shows just the outhouse on the hill; presumptively the guy is inside the outhouse. In the final panel, the guy says, "Is it just me, or does something smell in here?" That's it.
When I read it, the only problem I noticed was that it wasn't even the slightest bit funny, but it's been construed as (if you want, you can try to guess how it's offensive before reading, but it's pretty left-field; I couldn't get the frigging spoiler tag to work so I hit enter a bunch of times)
a hidden insult to Muslims. Between the outhouse door and the night sky, across three panels, there are six crescent moons in the comic, and the word SLAM is vertically arranged in the shape of an I. Ostensibly, the strip is implying that Islam stinks...
Hart denies it, and says the strip was only meant to joke about the overuse of the phrase, "is it just me, or..." and the power of human denial. Thing is, Hart is prone to this kind of joke. Any bets as to whether he meant it or not? I got this from a Washington Post article, BTW.
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