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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Best Makeup and Hairstyling goes to the comic strip Blondie for somehow doing [gestures vaguely at Dagwood] that

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/12/23

Barney Google more or less vanished from his namesake strip in the 1930s as it pivoted to cruel jokes about hillbillies full time, but he started making regular appearances again in the early 2010s. I’ve always been a bit curious about why that decision was made — was it just to mix things up in a strip that had gone stale? Was it to ensure that the valuable Barney and Spark Plug IP didn’t fall into the public domain? But today we learn the awful truth: Barney has returned to Hootin’ Holler because this impoverished, isolated community is at risk of catastrophe due to its limited gene pool, and the women of the town are eager for Barney’s flatlander seed.

Blondie, 3/12/23

This is, frankly, a pretty weak showing in the cluttered genre of Blondie strips that latch onto whatever current event has popped up on the calendar; I’m particularly unimpressed that they didn’t even try to fit into actual Oscar categories, instead making up a bunch of vaguely Oscar-esque ones. Still, my biggest concern arises from the very first panel, in which we learn that Dagwood doesn’t know the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn.

Six Chix, 3/12/23

Ha ha, remember Pizza Rat, the beloved internet sensation from 2015? Well, rats typically live about two years, and even the best treated pet rats five or six, so Pizza Rat is definitely dead now. Don’t let Six Chix fool you into believing that he’s lived a long and happy life in the New York Subway somewhere, he’s 100% dead. RIP Pizza Rat, c. 2014-c. 2016, you will be missed.

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Dagwood’s making direct eye contact with the reader, daring you to imagine his awful clothing line

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Blondie, 3/8/23

I’m intrigued here by the transition from light to dark between panels two and three — how much time has elapsed, and what conversation, if any, filled it? I’d like to believe that Blondie lay there in silence as Dagwood nattered on about his fantasy fashion empire, only to let loose this sick burn as she was dozing off, just in time to ruin her husband’s whole night.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/8/23

I recently learned that only a few specialized cells actually survive the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, with the entire rest of its body dissolved into goo within the cocoon to serve as food for the growing adult insect. Anyway, just in case you thought you had handle on the kind of awful body horror that would be required to effect Tater’s nightmare vision in reality, I’m here to tell you that you really don’t, actually.

Shoe, 3/8/23

“It was to protect them from the sun and the rain, as well as from all the dust the wagon kicked up as it moved over the plains. They may have lived in olden days, but they were no dummies!”

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Would genuinely love to see Snuffy go down the Sovereign Citizen route

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Crock, 3/4/23

Hmm, looks like Maggot has bailed on his marital counseling session and now it’s just Grossie pouring her heart out to some dude in a cave. Anyway, do you think when you’re writing a strip like today’s, you pause a moment and think “Wow, I really named a guy ‘Maggot,’ which is also a thing that in some cultures people actually eat, sometimes dipped in chocolate?” Or are you just very, very invested at this point in the idea that “Maggot” is literally a name that a person could have?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/4/23

Speaking of which, to what extent do the writers of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith think of themselves as writing an ongoing satire of poor people living in Appalachia and/or the Ozarks? Or have they mostly forgotten it and are just working with long-memorized character designs and orthographic conventions? Because in the former case today’s strip has the vibe of “Ha ha, I’m really sticking it to these hillbilly moochers” whereas in the latter case it seems like the much gentler and frankly accurate “Ha ha, people want government services but don’t want to pay the taxes that fund them, amiright people????”

Six Chix, 3/4/23

“I also carry them around with me, which forced me to eventually stop reading altogether. Books are very heavy!”