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Archive: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith

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Dark legacies

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/16/21

Sorry for spending so much time on the Li’l Sparky subplot in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith this week! In my defense, it’s the most interesting thing to happen in this strip in years, even if that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting in some absolute, objective sense. Anyway, one effect of this whole thing is that we’re learning that the animals in this strip, including the chickens, are sapient, which really adds a layer of horror to all the jokes about Snuffy stealing chickens, to murder and eat. Today we see that the chickens are attempting to teach themselves the STEM skills necessary to rise up against their human oppressors, only for Li’l Sparky, who probably doesn’t worry too much about being eaten and is thus happy to cape for the H. sapiens regime, to bust up their revolutionary education project.

Blondie, 1/16/21

Man, when the police start investigating who in the neighborhood knew Elmo planned to run off and join the “hobo lifestyle,” there are going to be some awkward questions for Dagwood, huh?

Beetle Bailey, 1/16/21

WELP IT’S NOW OFFICIAL BEETLE BAILEY CANON THAT GENERAL HALFTRACK PISSES AND/OR SHITS HIMSELF ON THE REGULAR, I DON’T LIKE THE BURDEN OF THIS KNOWLEDGE ANY MORE THAN YOU DO BUT WE ALL HAVE IT NOW AND WILL HAVE TO LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT

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Cranky (but Crankshaft-free) Tuesday

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Dustin, 1/12/21

You know, I’ve griped about Dustin slamming on millennials (as represented by the strip’s title character), but I haven’t put that much effort into it because, enh, millennials, probably they have it coming. But when you decide to come after librarians? When you say that librarians don’t want people eating and drinking in the library (which literally ruins books that cost money to replace that they’d have to pay out of their shrinking budget) and they don’t want people reshelving books (which patrons aren’t trained to do and if they screw it up it makes books difficult or impossible to find) and they don’t want people talking on their cell phones in the library (this is literally annoying to everybody, who could possibly object to idiots talking loudly on their cell phones in the library being asked to leave) because they’re frumpy martinets who love rules? That’s when I declare that you’re garbage person and I swear a sacred oath to destroy you. Be warned!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/21

So it looks like Barney Google and Snuffy Smith has decided on what the defining feature of its hot new character, Li’l Sparky, is going to be: it’s going to be puns based on noises horses make. As we can tell today, a key aspect of this bit is that Li’l Sparky is going to really insist that everyone acknowledge that he’s doing it, until all the other horses (and, I assume, eventually the non-horse characters) come to dislike him. Can’t wait!

Mary Worth, 1/12/21

“Greta, our friend Eve started weeping openly in public but doesn’t want to talk about it. Is there some way I can make this about me?”

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Sunday sadness and/or marketing opportunities

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Family Circus, 1/10/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because kids instinctively know that adults long ago lost their capacity for make believe and are trapped in the dull, grey prison of everyday life!

Crankshaft, 1/10/21

Ha ha, it’s funny because Crankshaft desperately needs to hold onto some small specific joy in life or else he gets terribly depressed!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/21

Well, that got … too grim, probably! Anyway, let’s talk about horses. You wouldn’t know it now, but back before Snuffy Smith was ever dreamed up, Barney Google was a wildly popular media property, and that popularity was almost entirely driven by Spark Plug, Barney’s universally beloved horse, to the extent that for a while the strip was called Barney Google and Spark Plug. And yeah, it’s been a while — like, literally 99 years — but surely King Features Syndicate and Hearst Communications, the current owners of the Spark Plug intellectual property, can capture lightning in a bottle here again, right? Spark Plug may have had his day, but Li’l Sparky will be the character whose ancillary marketing products every child will be asking for this summer, probably! Kids like horses still, right? Horses and wordplay? Horses and … newspaper comic strips?