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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Kelly is the new Vestal for our new ruler-cult?

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Gasoline Alley, 12/9/14

YES YES YES THE BELOVED “MILDLY RUDE SALESMAN WITH A PENCIL MUSTACHE” GUY FROM THE SKEEZIX RETURNS A DVD PLAYER STORYLINE IS BACK, BABY! That’s how you know we’re in for some high-quality verbal jousts over the next three to seven weeks. Today we get some important background on this character’s motivation: his “Marx brothers” reference is a veiled description of his political orientation. He’s not a dick to his customers just for fun, but rather as part of the long political struggle of class against class that Marx described so presciently. I see big things for this guy when the revolution comes.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/9/14

After an absence from the strip that bears his name that lasted literally decades, Barney Google has made a number of trips to Hootin’ Holler over the past few years, bringing news of strange big-city mores to the isolated inhabitants there. For instance, today we learn that the horse modeling industry is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rife with horsefuckers! Look at these two creeps laughing it up at poor Spark Plug’s distress. “You don’t understand! Being a horse-model was my lifelong dream … and in one brief moment it became a nightmare.”

Spider-Man, 12/9/14

Wow, that’s a pretty rude way to talk to your film’s high-profile leading lady, Rory! You might wonder how he gets away with that kind of sass. Well, it’s simple: he’s got the only combo flattop/mullet/rat-tail in the business. You don’t fire that haircut. You just don’t.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/9/14

Having successfully convinced Rex that Sarah is the one foretold in prophecy, Rene is now talking Rex into allowing Kelly to continue on as her lackey, as long as she submits to the stringent conditions that any acolyte must accept. Rex is clearly intrigued. “Hmm, a teenage girl consecrating her body and mind to purity and swearing to lie down her own worthless life in order to protect my daughter? Tell me more!”

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Hootin’ Holler has definitely been “left behind”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/5/14

I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the eschatological beliefs of the residents of Hootin’ Holler trend towards Christian futurism. Loweezy isn’t sure whether the Great Tribulation will happen before the Rapture, or after, or if one will happen in the midst of the other, but one thing’s for certain: it’s best to stock up on detergent now.

Apartment 3-G, 12/5/14

The first three times I read this strip, I thought Baldy McPresumptious said “Ah, yes — you’re with Ms. Magee,” presumably because my brain is desperately trying to make things interesting. Anyway, the strip is still noteworthy for the narration box in panel one, which seems like a grudging workaround for the fact that no A3G character is going to have anything other than an expressionless rubber mask for a face anytime soon.

Gasoline Alley, 12/5/14

As you know, I routinely ignore Gasoline Alley for months at a time. But clearly I need to tune back in for the thrills and twists of our latest plotline, “Skeezix buys a phone charger,” which promises to reach the heights of “Skeezix returns a DVD player.” Elderly characters grappling with mundane tasks involving modern technology are the core of this strip’s brand!

Mary Worth, 12/5/14

“It’ll be a good way for you to see them interact,” said one completely normal human to another! If you had “alien anthropologist studying Earthling behavior” in the “What exactly is the deal with Mary Worth” pool, you’ve gotta be pretty psyched today.

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Pluggers sleep away the sadness

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/2/14

Parson Tuttle is a well-known fraud: he’s largely ignorant of spiritual and theological matters and presumably came to Hootin’ Holler, a community abandoned by actual clergy, to bilk its inhabitants out of their meager savings. But today we learn that this long-term grift has managed to trouble even this con-man’s conscience. What right does he, as a fraud and bearer of false witness, have to tell his parishioner-marks that their minor transgressions mark them out for eternal damnation? As an unbeliever himself, how dare he fill these poor souls’ minds with awful visions of Hell? Can the slim, ill-gotten rewards of this life he’s chosen really be worth it?

Pluggers, 12/2/14

Boy, today’s Pluggers caption is really pretty long, huh? Usually they’re short and sweet, but I’d be down with seeing the walls of text expanding to show us what’s really going on beneath the down-home folksy surface of a typical Pluggers panel. “You’re a plugger if you get your ladder out of the garage in the morning to clean out your gutters and it’s still leaning against the house at dusk, because what’s the point, really? It’s just a task you’re going to have to do year after year, again and again. Maybe your gutters will clog up if you don’t do it, boo fuckin’ hoo, it’s not like the roof doesn’t already have three leaks in it, it’s not like the storm windows really shut properly. The whole rotten place is drafty all winter. It’s not like you know how to fix any of that stuff, or can afford to pay someone who does know. You remember the last time you cleaned out the gutters, when your friend Hank was there to help. Hank’s job transferred him to another city eight months ago. You haven’t talked to him much. Men don’t spend all day gabbing on the phone, the way your wife does with who knows what. Sure would make it more fun if Hank were here, though.”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/14

Haha, it’s funny because women in service jobs often need to perform “emotional labor” to maintain their tip income, leading to blurred emotional boundaries with customers!

Dennis the Menace, 12/2/14

“OH MY GOD,” thinks Alice, “MY SECRET REVEALED: I POOP OUT MY BUTTHOLE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN DOES”