Johnny Hart on where the characters in B.C. came from

HART: I drew these little guys and I'm having fun drawing them and I'm giving them names and trying to think up a name for the strip -ー I didn't think of B.C. right away; that might have been Bobby's [Johnny Hart's wife] suggestion. I never knew where I got the characters' triangular shapes, but I started fooling around with that. Anyway, I was having trouble -ー the cast of characters is no easy thing to do, to have a well-rounded cast of characters that you can play all kinds of situations off -ー so I didn't know how to create character traits, form personalities, and then Bobby came in and she said, "What are you trying to do?" And I told her and she said, "Why don't you just pattern them after your friends? They already have established personalities." What a great idea! I don't have to think any up! So that's what I did ー- I patterned the characters after my friends and even named them after them.