Syndication Marches On

Johnny Hart died. You may remember him as the man behind B.C. and Wizard of Id, two very long-running, very baseline comic strips.

Despite the small problem of, y'know, his death, the comics will continue. Does this seem bizarre to you? From the article:

Richard Newcombe, the founder and president of Creators Syndicate, which syndicates both BC and The Wizard of Id, said both cartoons would continue.

Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of drawings to work with, he told AP.

That's right. In the tradition of Sir Laurence Olivier, death is apparently not a huge handicap to creative works. I'm not what you'd call a huge fan of either of those strips, but I still think that they deserve more respect than that. Maybe I'm missing something, but this article makes it seem that these comics are going to be zombified for the sake of syndication. A computer archive of drawings? They're turning his life's work, the work of 49 years, into the newspaper equivilent of a clip-show? Does this really, honestly, truly seem like a good idea to them?

The man died. It seems to me that it would be more respectful and sensible if his creations remained as he left them.