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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Who’ve you been hugging for the past few weeks? A bunch of books? SHAME

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Mary Worth, 8/28/16

Sorry I’ve sort of let coverage of the latest Tommy the Substance Abuser arc slip a little bit; that’s because it’s been less “Tommy lies around shirtless” and more “Sad Iris gets pie and advice from Mary.” And Mary’s advice is this: have you considered mothering your child? If he’s screwing up, or falling into a downward spiral of addiction, is it possible that it’s something you did, or failed to do? Mary really is a good advice columnist. Amateurs try to shame women who are full-time students or workers for neglecting their minor children; it takes a true master to try that on someone who’s kid is, like, 28 years old, at minimum.

The Phantom, 8/28/16

The Phantom runs separate storylines during the week and on Sunday, and the current Sunday plot, which I haven’t discussed here, involves the intertwined Chicago and Chinese mobs, representatives of whom arrived in Bangalla via plane crash. Someone over at Phantom central seems to have a hate-on for the People’s Republic of China for some reason, maybe because of their failure to uphold human rights! [gets to last panel of today’s strip, shifts in chair uncomfortably]

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/28/16

The parson is right to be worried! One more accidental pregnancy this weekend, and he’s in danger of infringing on the intellectual property of Polygram Filmed Entertainment, and those guys play rough.

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Probably she shouldn’t be surveying any Barlow property, just in case

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/19/16

You know, what with Hootin’ Holler being a largely lawless place, with a rugged landscape and local knowledge about property holdings more likely to be passed down through generations by word of mouth than delineated on any map, bringing in surveyors isn’t the worst idea in the world! It could be a real growth industry, and could probably help cut down on the endless, violent clan feuds whose flareups can often be blamed on property line disputes, even if control of moonshine smuggling turf is ultimately the root cause. And, let’s be real, it’d be pretty useful for someone in the Smif family to have a job.

Dennis the Menace, 8/19/16

If you want to create a portrait of a child as a low-key but effective menace to everything you think about yourself as a person who heads a civilized family, this is a good start: he stares at your guest with dead eyes and shows unfamiliarity with basic concepts, all while drooling freely onto his own dinner.

Beetle Bailey and Crock, 8/19/16

Hey kids, did you know that some of America’s longest-running comic strips take place in the military during actual violent conflicts? Beetle Bailey is stateside, for the most part, but its soldiers must know that they could be deployed at any time; in today’s strip, their nighttime anxieties escalate, from right to left, climaxing with Beetle, who, panicked but clear-eyed, can only think of massive, world-obliterating explosions. Meanwhile, today’s Crock reminds us that most of the main characters are occupation troops in a grinding, brutal colonial war. Happy Friday!

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Eros and thanatos

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Judge Parker, 7/31/16

Finally, everyone Sam and Abbey live with is gone for the night, having sex responsibly somewhere, so now they can have sex, responsibly! Remember, the Spencer-Drivers live a palatial horse-breeding compound and everyone’s bedroom is at least a half a mile away from everyone else’s, so obviously thre is a lot of special pleading going on here on the importance of having everyone out of their hair. I think they’re worried about the last time they tried to have sex, when this horror-nightmare happened, and they want to make sure it never happens again.

Crankshaft, 7/31/16

I like the vigorous wink Crankshaft is giving Pam in the final panel here. He knows he’s making a little joke! He knows this jersey is an inanimate object, and can’t actually collect Social Security! Since this is the first time I’ve ever seen him do this, I have to assume that with every other mangled wordplay-chunk he comes up with — the punchlines of about 75% of Crankshaft strips, in other words — he has no idea how dumb he sounds.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/16

The first row of throwaway panels at the top of the strip, which don’t appear in every newspaper depending on how they lay out their Sunday comics, completely change the content here. Without them, we just have a harmless, sappy series of nicknames. With them, we have Loweezy stalling a Barlow, the hated enemy of her clan in a feud that’s stained the hills with blood for generations, until her husband can show up with his shotgun.