Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Alice, 3/18/24

Happy Monday, everybody! I’ve decided to add a few more strips into my repertoire, and here’s Alice. Here it is! I would describe this art as being extremely deranged in a 1990s-specific way, and as a Gen Xer who used to read alt-weeklies when those were a thing, I’m delighted to see it. What the fuck is going on, exactly? Can the children see the aliens? Does “Aunty” (the titular Alice, perhaps?) know this is a terrifying spacecraft and is trying to protect the children from that awful knowledge, or does she genuinely think what’s clearly a solid object is “just a cloud”? Are the ends of the spaceship transparent, allowing anyone to see inside, or is this like a cutaway drawing for the benefit of us readers, even though the exterior of the craft appears opaque to the characters? Why is one of the children not saying “Look?” Does she figure the other two are already doing it so why bother? Anyway, this is great, looking forward to more of it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/18/24

Most Barney Google and Snuffy Smith Present … Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky strips consist of absolutely terrible horse-related wordplay, so I’m actually kind of glad today’s is just about horse riding, and what happens when that goes wrong (you fall off and terribly injure yourself).

Judge Parker, 3/14/24

Ahh, it’s a classic Judge Parker time skip! I love the bold font in panel two here, which indicates that Alan is yelling. I certainly hope he’s been yelling for the past two months!

Beetle Bailey, 3/14/24

Big news, everyone! Beetle and Plato have been taken prisoner by the enemy. Guess this strip will have to go on without them until they’re released, after we sign a peace treaty with whoever it is we’re at war with.

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Blondie, 2/21/24

I am coming around to the opinion that the primary value of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Blondie is to provide anthropological insights into the mind and culture of the American middle-class boomer. Take today’s strip, for example: a real problem is identified (in this case, a formerly crucial communications channel becoming mostly a medium for delivering scams and garbage) but the issue is seen primarly as a personal affront to the viewpoint character imposed on him by whatever service worker he happens to interact with. Truly there is no clearer icon of “How can this be happening to Me, the protagonist of reality” than Dagwood impotently waving his fist in the air in panel three!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/21/24

That “feller” is almost certainly a self-insert of current Snuffy Smith artist John Rose, which means that Snuffy just missed a chance to have his own Creator craft a universe that he ruled like a king, for a mere $50! When he cast his critical eye across the canvas, did he not recognize his own lumpy nature in the scene’s imperfections?

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Hi and Lois, 2/6/24

God, this one is super bleak. Lois has convinced herself that, sure, things are tight and they can’t afford to order pizza very often even though the kids are always whining for it, but what if she just learned how to make it herself? And what if the kids learned to love that even more than the crap from Dominio’s? “Mom’s homemade pizza,” they’d call it, and it would be a fond childhood memory they’d carry with them the rest of their lives, something they looked forward to, not a marker of her and Hi’s failure to provide them with what they really wanted. This fantasy lasts mere seconds into the children’s’ actual encounter with her malformed, fucked-up pizza, and look at her face — she is devastated.

Family Circus, 2/6/24

Jeffy, meanwhile, has been abandoned by his parents and is being forced to clean the house himself even though he’s a toddler, and he’s doing fine. “Noooo, Jeffy, you’re screwing this up, do you even know what cleaning is” Dolly whines in the background, but Jeffy doesn’t care. Look at that face. Cool competence and determination. He’s thriving for the first time in his short, dumb life.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/6/24

I often think that contemporary middle- and upper-class Americans create a culture of child safety that’s unprecedented in history, with children monitored at all times well into their teenage years and not given space to explore or gain useful life skills in ways that will be really damaging down the road. But then I see strips like this and think maybe there’s something to it.