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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Love is … not really in the air, frankly, sorry to be the bearer of bad news

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Hi and Lois, 2/14/21

Longtime readers of this blog know I’m a big fan of Hi and Lois taking “Thirsty” Thurston back to his roots as a desperate alcoholic, and having the Thurstons’ marriage (strife-filled, loveless) serve as a foil to the Flagstons’ (basically fine, I guess, as near as anyone can tell), which is the theme of today’s special Valentine’s Day strip. The main thing here of interest is that Irma just calls her husband “Thurston”; it kind of works for a wife to sarcastically call her husband who she’s mad at by his last name, but I suspect that some toiler at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC realized they didn’t actually know Thirsty’s real first name, couldn’t find any answers on the strip’s official King Features page or in its Wikipedia article, and found the pressure of adding a canonical element to the strip’s lore too much, so they just punted.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/14/21

Say, what if Snuffy had been dealt a hand full of hearts? That certainly would’ve been a good trigger for remembering it was Valentine’s Day, plus he might have to briefly struggle between demonstrating affection to his wife and winning a hand with a flush! I don’t really have a joke here, I’m just workshopping ways to make this strip better.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/14/21

Frankly, I want to know a lot less about Harry Ape’s bank-robbing activities and a lot more about his career as an Instagram influencer — or should I say apefluencer?

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Mostly downers

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The Lockhorns, 2/10/21

Leroy has traditionally commuted to work by train, but it looks like he’s managed to make friends the acquaintance of some coworkers and weaseled his way into a carpool. I guess he thought that, unlike his experience on public transit, in a carpool he’d get a response when just threw out some unprompted ruminations about how depressing his marriage/life is? Based on how studiously that guy is looking at his phone, I’m going to have to say he’s wrong on that point.

Hi and Lois, 2/10/21

What really makes this strip for me is that Goldie does in fact look extremely depressed. This isn’t a typical joke about a little kid’s boundless empathy overestimating an animal’s unhappiness; nope, Trixie is like “wow, our goldfish never gets to go anywhere!” and the goldfish’s face absolutely confirms that it’s stuck in a hell-prison and hates every minute of it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/10/21

I’m not sure what about Jughaid’s statement reflects more misplaced optimism: that he thinks Hootin’ Holler’s economy will improve in the next eight years to the extent that it will be able support a movie theater, that the movie theater business will even still be around in eight years, or that, as someone living in an impoverished community where malnutrition and clan violence are endemic, he’ll survive to adulthood.

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Real grim stuff

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Pluggers, 2/2/20

There is a surprising amount to unpack in today’s Pluggers! Let’s start with the idea that Groundhog Day is some kind of national plugger holiday, like the Oscars is for us coastal elites, and they get up early to catch all the shadow-seeing action on TV — or, if they live in DuBois, PA, a mere thirty minutes from Punxsutawney, drive to see the event in person. Then you have a thought balloon from the poor groundhog, indicating that he’s capable of sapience, which reaffirms all our worst fears about the blurry lines between “humans” and “animals” in the world of Pluggers. Finally, there’s the content of that thought ballon: Punxsutawney Phil feels like he’s done this before, implying that he’s stuck in the same hellish time loop that ensnared Bill Murray in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, only he doesn’t have access to the possibility of the redemptive love that freed Murray’s character. Real grim stuff!

Dennis the Menace, 2/2/20

Not only does this panel feature Dennis engaging in actually menacing behavior — and with malice aforethought! it’s menace in the first degree! — but it also features a movie theater worker who isn’t some teenager who can laugh this off as a story to tell his buddies because fuck this stupid job anyway, but a man who looks like he’s in late middle age, probably lost his full-time job due to outsourcing or computers or apps, who can even keep track, and who took a minimum wage job to put food on the table, just while he’s looking for other work, just so he can keep a little dignity. But it’s hard, man. It’s hard to hold onto your dignity when they make you wear that hat, and it’s even hard when you have to deal with little shits like this. Real grim stuff!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/2/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Hootin’ Holler, economically impoverished and physically isolated, has only one medical professional serving the community, and it turns out he’s a fraud? And nobody cares? I’ve said it before, but: real grim stuff!