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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

137

The whackest place to live in America, maybe

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/11/26

OK, there’s two things that could be going on here. The first is that we’re meant to understand that Hootin’ Holler is one of the proposed wackiest places to live in America, which, no! No!! It’s poor and depressing and violent! That’s not wacky at all! The other possibility is that the gag writer just thought of the idea of a “wackiest places to live in America” list to serve as a counterpoint to the well-trod territory of the best places to live list, and decided that Snuffy hearing about this idea that certainly isn’t a joke and can barely be called a premise was good enough for a Saturday strip and then moved on with their life. Honestly, I respect the second one more.

Mary Worth, 4/11/26

“Mary has immediately begun to use her new pet to serve as a sounding board for her to workshop what she thinks is the best possible spin on her meddling,” is, I guess, not a huge surprise. Anyway, I just want to say now and for the record that it’s possible for an older man to have a perfectly good relationship with his children and to fall in love with a fake internet babe and send her lots of money! I feel like sending lots of money to a hot girl you met online is not necessarily something you check in with your kids about, even if you love them and speak to them regularly! The correlation here is not causation!

Family Circus, 4/11/26

The movies? Why would Billy want to do that when he could keep reading about The City of Brotherly Love, America’s silliest town! Eagles fans pelting Santa Claus with batteries … the MOVE bombing … that innocent robot they murdered … it’s all very silly and Billy simply can’t get enough!

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Animals strike curious poses (derogatory)

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/15/26

The characters in newspaper comic strips generally keep their vocabulary squeaky clean, and the Hootin’ Holler crew doesn’t even resort to grawlices as far as I can remember. That’s why I’m pretty horrified to learn today that, while we’re not seeing him in action, Snuffy is just letting loose with a nonstop stream of obscenities, blasphemies, and slurs around the house, presumably where Jughaid and li’l Tater can hear. Grim stuff! (It’s less surprising to learn, as we do in the throwaway panels, that even the Holler’s lone semi-legitimate businessman doesn’t know the difference between deflation and disinflation, as flatlanders generally struggle with that as well.)

Pluggers, 3/15/26

BlueSky, one of several social media sites where I post daily links to my blog, has an auto-moderation feature that deemed yesterday’s Pardon My Planet demonic sideboob “adult content.” Well, sorry, I’m doubling down on the smut. Check out today’s Pluggers! Depraved furry pornography! Unspeakable filth! This is the sort of thing America wants to see in the newspaper now and we all need to come to terms with that fact!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/15/26

Oh, man, were you excited at the prospect of Mud Mountain Murphy and Lorna Starr/Mae Mae Clodfelter getting to know each other over several days of cafe breakfasts, and maybe feeling a spark of attraction that could eventually blossom into romance? Well, too bad. They already knew each other, it turns out. We’re skipping all of that! Better luck next time!

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Animal spirits

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/26

Yeah, it is a good thing they aren’t playing for money! Imagine if the Smifs had learned that Sukey, a being that they have long treated as a beast and a possession that does manual labor at their bidding, were intelligent enough to understand the concept of the exchange value of currency — and, moreover, had somehow already acquired possession of enough of it to wager. The implications would be truly horrific.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/4/26

After some reflection, I’m OK with an entire Mother Goose and Grimm strip that consists of a glimpse into the internal monologue of a character we’ve never seen before as he dances with Mother Goose. What’s unsettling me is that he’s a human and none of said monologue includes reflection on the fact that he’s dancing with a human-sized bird. Do you think he already mentally covered that ground before we got here? Do you think he has a plan for when Ma Goose’s person-sized bird boyfriend shows up, and tries to peck him to death or swat at him with his powerful wings?

Mary Worth, 3/4/26

Ah, man, I guess it’s time to start the “blame game” for why our boy Harvey has gotten himself catfished. I think we can all agree that it’s probably a woman’s fault, and “Trixie”’s puppeteer isn’t even female, so I guess the problem is … Harvey’s daughter, for living a fun go-go single life in fast-paced Goleta and not spending her every waking moment monitoring his screen time? Enh, that’ll do.