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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

148

Sad lady eats sad muffin

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/10/26

There’s a whole social media trend of young people posting images of food service on airlines in the days of yore accompanied by captions like “RETVRN” or “THIS IS WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU,” and I hate to point out that these are mostly (1) ads for (2) first class service in an age when (3) even coach class was much more expensive than it is today, accounting for inflation. It seems that this kind of rhetoric has filtered down to the young people of Hootin’ Holler who are (both literally and, in terms of their ability to afford air travel, figuratively) miles away from the nearest airport, so I’m here to tell them: you still get snacks! They’re still handing out little bags of pretzels or whatever. Maybe not on Frontier or Spirit, but Spirit went out of business, so maybe handing out snacks is here to stay. Keep hope alive!

Dick Tracy, 11/10/26

Dick and his partner standing at crazy dutch angles relative to everyone else, somehow, while odd shadows falling from no obvious light source make everything very dramatic? Mysterious femme fatale emerging from an incongruous corner doorway? I do not regret to inform you that Dick Tracy has, to use a technical term, gone “full-on German Expressionist.”

Hi and Lois, 11/10/26

Wow, Thirsty gets a new pillow every year? I’m gonna say it: that seems like it’s pretty often. More often than I get one, for sure. Seems like something you’d only do for someone who’s doing horrible stuff to/on/near his pillows, and now I wanna know what.

Mary Worth, 11/10/26

“It’s because I keep spreading vicious false rumors about people and it alienates everyone! Uh, I mean, about other people, people not in this room, that’s it.”

142

Good faces

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Marvin, 11/5/26

The facial expressions in the second panel here are bone-chillingly perfect for the vibe of this strip. Marvin’s dad has a face that says “I want to watch football but I’m going to do the absolute bare minimum to care for my toddler son, and also probably a lot of uptight people are going to think that I’m not even doing the bare minimum,” and Marvin has a face that says “Oh no! I’m going to be stewing in my own poop, for extended periods of time!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/26

Speaking of good facial expressions, I appreciate Rudy’s here. Like, I guess I’m not excited to look at the face of an ostrich in genuine distress because his head and neck are covered in ants, but if I have to, I want to see it done well, and they really nailed it here.

Hi and Lois, 11/5/26

I don’t think Hi and Lois should do strips where little kids talk about dead dogs! I think that’s a little grim, even for the current no-punchline iteration of the strip!

Pluggers, 11/5/26

You’re a plugger if you’re suffering all the time and you want everyone to know it.

144

Deep Barney Google lore, sure, that’s what the kids want

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/2/26

Look, I get that they might have been misled by the “racing days” reference, but it’s embarrassing that these two birds have mistaken their fellow avian for a horse. This is just proof that they’re very stupid and, despite their ability to talk in the context of these Barney Google and Snuffy Smith Present … Sparkplug’s Grandson Li’l Sparky strips, it’s actually fine that Snuffy is going to steal them from his neighbors so Loweezy can kill and cook them.

Dick Tracy, 11/2/26

I know I’ve recently celebrated Dick Tracy’s turn back to the macabre, but I have to say the strip may have gone too far today. Streaming media personalities? In the comics? No thanks. Oh also the family appears to have murdered their pinheaded nurse, to cover up their various crimes, I guess.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/2/26

I am ignoring whatever joke they’re attempting to implement here, but I do want to point out that it’s now strip canon that the title characters can just drop by the office of Satan, the great Adversary, which is clearly in the depths of Hell itself, whenever they feel like. Not sure if we’re meant to understand that they have the power to move back and forth across the veil that separates the worlds of the living and the dead, or if they in fact inhabit Hell full time themselves, and the various misadventures we see them get into represent some kind of ironic punishment tailored specifically for them, due to their sins.

Mary Worth, 11/2/26

It’s day 17 of the siege by various law enforcement agencies that began when Mary hung Nelly Fenele’s flayed skin on the gates of Charterstone as a warning to those who would dare betray her. The feds thought it would take only a few days for the hungry residents to turn on the woman the media is calling “The Butcher of Santa Royale,” but the produce from the Charterstone garden has so far been enough to keep everyone loyal. Thank goodness for mild California weather!