Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/4/22

This strip has honestly sent me into a tailspin trying to figure out what the relationship is supposed to be between actually existing Appalachia and the faux-hillbilly cultural biome of Snuffy Smith. The fact that Snuffy is obviously envious of the level of infrastructural development in West Virginia ought to make that state’s inhabitants feel something approaching pride, or maybe relief. It’s also sad to see that Hootin’ Holler does not share real-world Appalachia’s rich heritage of songcraft, because these lyrics do not scan at all.

Slylock Fox, 4/4/22

The operation of law enforcement and the court system in the Forest Kingdom, and where Slylock stands in relationship to either, is always something of a mystery to me, but today’s strip seems to imply that Sly can just drag anyone into court on a whim, and will there serve simultaneously as prosecutor and sole witness. I sincerely hope that he spotted Slick Smitty’s little trick and then immediately arrested him, and that his date is still sitting at the restaurant waiting for the check while this sham of a trial rushes towards its pre-ordained conclusion.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 4/4/22

Absolutely loving the spit-take in the final panel here. This woman is shocked, shocked to learn that women can have jobs now! What’s next, voting?

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Family Circus, 3/27/22

I actually think this is a pretty clever strip, though I would argue that, just as the strip sometime updates old art to acknowledge that flatscreen TVs exist, it could’ve improved things by maybe updating some of the fashion choices on these imaginary old people, since those constitute a pretty important aspect of what you think an old person looks like and how others perceive how old they are! But the funniest thing to me is the quip from Big Daddy Keane that sets this off. Can you imagine someone bringing up a mutual acquaintance and your first reaction is “That guy? Oh yeah, he’s old. He’s old as shit. Doddering motherfucker with one foot in the grave. Wears adult diapers, probably.” Anyway, I would type out more terms of abuse here, but then it occurred to me that the typical person whose oldest child is 7 is probably younger than I am by as much as a decade so I’m gonna go have a nice lie down for a few hours.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/22

And I’m back! With this one I mainly want to point out the “I still don’t know what this is!” in the right panel in the second row. That’s called an author’s signature, Sarah! It’s how you know who drew this comic! I can’t believe after all you’ve been through you’re still sneering at people’s attempts to establish their ownership of their intellectual property!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/27/22

Kind of surprised it’s taken almost two years for the comics to engage with the “30-50 feral hogs” meme, but the specific strip that was the first to do so is not a surprise at all.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/12/22

Oh my GOD she wasn’t talking about Lisa at all, she was talking about LES, this is a million times funnier than I could’ve possibly imagined! I had been joking that it was weird that the guy who wrote the script based on his own graphic novel/life didn’t get invited to the Oscar ceremony when his movie was up for an award, but then I remembered that Les was only the screenwriter for the original version of the movie, which was a cable TV version that Les killed when he stalked off the set in disgust, and then Mason revived the project years later with a promise that he’d do it “the right way” and also Les wouldn’t have to do any work. I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of the WGA credit process, which is quite byzantine, but you’d think that Les would have still gotten his name on the movie, since I can’t imagine his original screenplay was that different from the final product. But the important thing is that he’s the real winner here, not the performer who apparently made this boring glurge-fest that nobody liked marginally bearable to watch, and he will soon have the Best Actress Oscar that he earned.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/12/22

I don’t buy this: the denizens of Hootin’ Holler don’t have access to complex machinery like “clocks,” so they wouldn’t get this joke. Instead, they tell time from the position of the sun. This is also why Snuffy wouldn’t be so casual with the phrase “daylight savings time,” which he by right ought to see as a form of mind control imposed by the tyrannical United Nations.

Beetle Bailey, 3/12/22

It’s absolutely true that the average Beetle Bailey reader is of an age that they find cell phones in general and emojis in particular extremely “mysterious.”