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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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He just wants someone, anyone, to say something nice about his book, and I get it

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Shoe, 2/27/21

Huh, I’ve been reading Shoe for years and I don’t think I ever knew that the Perfesser, in addition to being a newspaper reporter and columnist, is also a novelist! I guess that’s probably because his books are so bad that his coworkers aren’t even minimally polite about them, so it probably doesn’t come up much.

Sam and Silo, 2/27/21

Today, outside Sam’s (or maybe Silo’s? I long ago wisely declined to spend precious brain real estate remembering which one is which) window, a werewolf’s time of torment is ending and he’s transforming back into a person again, celebrating the blessed event by shouting out the human names of the friends who will no longer run away from his monstrous visage in fear — until the full moon comes again, of course.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/27/21

“Y’see, jedge, between my feckless lack o’ motivation and my r’fusal to develop any honest marketable skills, I’m in a prison of m’own design!”

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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.