WBNG has a follow-up to their story yesterday about Johnny Hart’s family taking over the B.C. feature after he passed away last April. This segment reveals some of the changes that have been made with the strip and who in the family is working on the strip. From the story we learn that Johnny’s daughter Perri Hart took over lettering and coloring, grandson’s Mick and Mason Mastroianni share writing responsibilities and Mason does the drawing. Mick has a strip in development with Creators entitled The Dogs of C Kennel.
Some of the changes they’ve made or intend to make include the artwork and writing.
When they first took over the strip, they tried to make it look exactly like Johnny Hart’s creation.
“I think we learned and realized that wasn’t really that necessary, that we have our own styles,” says daughter Peri Hart.
Johnny’s wife, Bobby, agrees.
She hopes fans will notice the new styles.
“I’m hoping soon it’ll take on a definite Mason look because over the years from the time John started this until now, the characters have probably changed 5,6,7 times,” says wife Bobby.
Readers may also notice a difference in the writing.
“The writing, I’m sure, has changed some. It’s getting sillier again. But that’s what we recall so much from my dad. And it’ll take a little bit younger feel, a more timely around what’s going on now a days,” says Peri.
Mason is doing a fantastic job on the comic! Absolutely first rate.
And Peri and Mick, wonderful.
Quite some time ago the Creators website had samples of Mick’s strip The Dogs of C Kennel posted on their website. I don’t know if it’s still on the site. It looks original and very promising.
The changes have been noticed and appreciated! Today’s strip was a good example of the welcome return to silliness!” (I also like the bigger pic and lettering, which of course is the flip side of less detail, I guess.)
I just realized of course the samples of The Dogs of C Kennel are still on the creators site because Alan posted the link in his blog entry. Sorry, that was a big DUH moment on my part.
I’m sorry, but the writing relies too much on puns and other “cheap gag” devices. They have promise, but they need to learn how to write a character-driven strip. If they submitted this as-is today, I doubt very much that it would be syndicated.
I think the look of it is great.
In a world of death and destruction, we NEED a lighter escape! Keep up the puns and silly gags! I thought that’s why they call them the “comics”