Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/31/20

It would take too long for me to explain in detail and it would be boring if I bothered to try, but this week’s Funky Winkerbean began with Mopey Pete learning about the existence of Hoagy Carmichael and then going through a series of free associations that passed through this before producing the inspiration for a new Atomic Komix title. Most I’m posting this because I think it would be very, very funny if Pete did in fact credit Hoagy Carmichael, and then Hoagy Carmichael’s estate sued Atomic Komix into bankruptcy.

Shoe, 5/31/20

“I mean, I guess you could say he’s a coworker … I’m a bird, he’s a dog, we’re both cops, there’s no real hierarchy there. ‘Pet’ is more of a sex thing, really (we’re also lovers).”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/31/20

It’s funny because Snuffy and Loweezy are very poor and seeking even basic medical care is ruinous to them financially! Ha … ha?

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/27/20

As you may know (and if you don’t buckle up because you are about to find out), I love etymologies. So, here’s a fun fact! In German, the word for “prince” (in the sense of “a sovereign ruler regardless of other title” rather than the sense of “the son of a king”) is “fürst.” Etymologically, this word means, quite literally, “the first,” as in the foremost person in the state; “fürst” and “first” also have the same etymological root, and are basically pronounced the same way, but because English always has to be fancy, we imported our word for the noble title from French, which in turn got it from the Latin word “princeps,” which also literally means “first.”

Anyway, I’m pointing this out mostly because of Jughaid’s “furst” in panel two, which is a prime example of the eye dialect used in this strip, designed to make the characters look like they’re speaking non-standard English even though the difference between “furst” and how anyone would pronounce “first” is negligible. And honestly, I’d like to believe that Jughaid is announcing that the Holy Roman Emperor had invested him in a small alpine principality with the status of imperial immediacy, and that he’ll be leaving the Holler behind to take possession of his new realm post-haste.

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/20

I woman I dated briefly years ago once said that it always made her cringe to see a couple both sitting on the same side of a table at a restaurant because she took it as a sign that the passion had gone out of their relationship, and while I definitely think that’s a sweeping overgeneralization, I admit I always think about it whenever I see people sitting like that. Anyway, I wonder what she’d think about a couple who’s sitting together on one side of the table at a restaurant and also one of them has fallen asleep face first onto their plate.

Gil Thorp, 5/27/20

Good news, everyone! Mike “The Mayor” has resigned himself to having his life destroyed for no good reason and has now come on down to see his old friends continue to play team sports, like he used to do. Anyway, would it be an appropriate response if he just whipped out a butter knife and started stabbling everyone to death with it? Well, no, no it wouldn’t. But would it work as narrative? Yeah, sure, probably.

The Lockhorns, 5/27/20

I know this isn’t the intended reading, but I am absolutely cackling at the thought of Leroy diligently printing out the “How To Fake Your Own Death” WikiHow article, which he’s now studying with more determination than we’ve ever seen him demonstrate in his entire life to this point.

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Mary Worth, 5/8/20

Floatin heads are, of course, a beloved Mary Worth tradition, so well established that they have their own category in the annual Worthy Awards. Today’s is a particular delight. Dawn’s fantasy Jared isn’t contained in a thought balloon, but is rather emerging from a cloud bank as she flies back from the East Coast, and while it’s always hard to judge the relative size of cloud formations, I think we have to assume that this Jared is hundreds of feet tall and regarding Dawn’s plane serenely while floating thousands of feet in the air. Since she has such an active imagination, it’s no surprise Dawn hasn’t bothered to, say, pay for in-flight wi-fi, which she could’ve used to get in touch with Jared and let him know the she isn’t going to dump him or anything.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/8/20

Parson Tuttle is, as longtime readers of this blog know, a phony who’s wholly unlearned in Christian theology and philosophy and is only acting as a clergyman as a grift. Today’s he taking the day off from the scam, so he can relax, ignore the bogus Christian god, and commune with his true objects of worship: the uncanny scaly mer-deities who live beneath the waters, sleeping dreamless for eons, waiting for the day when they’ll rise up and annihilate us.