Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Mark Trail, 10/2/09

I just did a quick look-see over the past couple of weeks of Mark Trail and have confirmed my suspicions: other than some vague, shifty talk from Morally Conflicted Bob about “poachers in the area,” nobody has offered Mark any explanation as to how he came to be suddenly unconscious, nor has he attempted to rationalize up one himself. And yet there he is with his classic smug Trailian grin, assuring Rusty that everything’s going to be great. “Rusty, maybe you’ll go to the Dark Place like I did earlier this evening! It’s just like when you go to bed, except sleepier and ouchier! Don’t worry, if it happens to you I won’t let the alligators eat you, probably!”

Mary Worth, 10/2/09

Kudos to faithful readers P and sarahtheawesome for pointing out that “Dr. Good” is almost certainly Dr. Brian Good, star of a rather repulsive Mary Worth plotline from some years back. That story, in a nutshell: Mary urges girl to pursue boy, who is an old and currently married flame, at high school reunion; boy turns out to be divorced; boy and girl make out in parking lot; boy and girl get married, have sex; girl had been convinced of her infertility even before marrying boy, though she didn’t mention it; girl vomits; girl turns out not be infertile, just stupid; girl and boy gaze lovingly into each others eyes forever and ever. As that recap demonstrated, Dr. Brian was very interested in spawning a li’l Good from the get-go, so by “vital areas” he obviously means Scott’s baby-making parts; still, “we did what we could” sounds kind of like an excuse for some awful result. “I mean, I know you love Scott, but it’s never really been the face part of Scott you’re most attached to, right?”

Adrian, meanwhile, is keeping a solid grip on the only thing that can keep her grounded in this troubling time: her chin.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/09

Aw, come on, fellers, let’s give up this charade: we all know that Snuffy is illit’rit! He just swiped that newspaper from one of the packing crates down at the store, and is using it in a half-hearted attempt to hide the fact that he’s engagin’ in the Sin of Onan.

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Hi everybody! I am back and EXTREMELY grateful to all of you who gave so generously in the fall fundraiser! Many of you have already received your What Would Margo Do bracelets (I promise a bevy of pics tomorrow), and hopefully the rest will arrive soon; you’ll all be getting email thanks from me as well. And huge thanks go to Uncle Lumpy both for his money-soliciting and comics-mocking prowess, though really he got a reward of his own … with the greatest week in Mary Worth history! Oh, how I envy the man who got first crack at this panel:

Instead, I’m just left with the aftermath:

Mary Worth, 9/27/09

Scott has been shot in violent shoot-out … the best kind, as any aficionado of shoot-outs will tell you. Is he in serious condition, or is he the one who didn’t make it? More importantly, are the seriously wounded cop and the corpse of the other cop just sort of flopping around in the back of this paddy wagon, which appears neither to be an ambulance nor to be staffed by actual paramedics? Will Adrian be able to tell the living from the dead, amid the carnage? STAY TUNED!

Apartment 3-G, 9/27/09

Apartment 3-G, meanwhile, is taking a much sexier path, assuming that you find it sexy when pill fiends offer up their sweet middle-aged bodies to head-shrinking quacks in exchange for pills, which Dr. Papagoras obviously does. Ruby finds the whole thing just plain tawdry, even if it is happening at the Ritz-Carlton, which just goes to show that she’ll never be a real New Yorker.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/27/09

And Rex Morgan managed to combine impending doom and sexytimes with a sly aside out of this bespectacled lothario! “I’m a lover, Becka, not a violent person! Specifically, I’m an extremely skilled lover. Say, you know, I just thought of a clever way we can track down my mother. When I was a teenager, she always had this uncanny knack for coming home right when my girlfriend and I were starting to fool around. What if…” Remember, Becka, it’s not cheating if your husband’s infidelity, or your suspicions thereof, are tearing you up inside!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/27/09

Ha ha, it’s funny because Snuffy is an unletter’d heathen! Wait, those actually are his most appealing qualities.

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Oddly coincident with my stewardship here at The Comics Curmudgeon, the Sunday comics are rolling out their B-Teams. Let’s take a look.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/09

OK, Rex Morgan, M.D. usually disappoints by dishing out endless observational chit-chat between Rex and June followed by a lot of talking on phones, and then, once everyone has lost interest, annihilating some minor character in a hail of gunfire or whatnot. Josh cites this as one factor in The Rex Morgan Problem, and I will not say him nay. But here’s a new and disturbing development — after weeks of observational chit-chat between secondary character Becka and assorted walk-ons, one of them (wildlife writer Tim Howard, and there’s fifteen minutes of my life I won’t get back) flies into an incandescent rage over a minor procedural issue in the organization of search parties. By the time we reach the final panel, we envy poor, wet, demented Pearl and Henry (oh God why me), feeling that the story that’s tormented us since June is fresh and new.

Also: “A@#SS“!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/20/09

Passing by the fact that Snuffy is himself a replacement for long-departed Barney Google, what’s with poor Micah? This is the first we hear of him — yet, as the only gainfully-employed resident of Hootin’ Holler, he must’ve been the centerpiece of the Gazette‘s business section for years. I mean, it’s not like violence and murder are going to crowd him out of the paper — the Gazette puts the Police Blotter, casualty list, and obits in agate type behind the classifieds.

Apartment 3-G, 9/20/09

Oh, and here’s Aristotle Papagoras, newly emblondened and ready for his closeup. This charlatan pusher absent-mindedly bilks disease-addled Dr. “Skully” Bryant out of his lucrative Upper East Side psychiatric practice, while thought-babbling obsessively about his junkie skank “patient.” This better end in murder, and I don’t much care who.

Crock, 9/20/09

Yes, for quite a few years now, as a matter of fact!

— Uncle Lumpy