Barney Google
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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Barney Google, is a long-running American comic strip. When the strip began in 1919 its title character, a little guy with big eyes, was a sportsman involved in horse racing and boxing. In 1922, the strip took a huge turn in popularity with the addition of a race horse named "Spark Plug", a nag who seldom raced and was typically seen almost totally covered by his horse blanket. In 1934, an even greater change took place when Barney and the horse visited the North Carolina mountains and met a moonshiner named Snuffy Smith. The strip increasingly focused on stereotypical humor about the hillbillies of southern Appalachia, with Snuffy as the main character. Locals in the strip are extremely suspicious of any outsiders, referred to as "flatlanders," or, even worse, "revenooers" (federal revenue agents). Snuffy was so popular that his name was added to the strip's title in the late 1930s, and Barney Google himself virtually disappeared after the 1950s.
The comic was created by Billy DeBeck in 1919, first appearing in the sports section of the Chicago Herald and Examiner as Take Barney Google, F'rinstance. By October 1919, the strip was syndicated by King Features, allowing it to appear in newspapers all across the country. Fred Lasswell, DeBeck's lifelong assistant, took over Barney Google in 1942. Lasswell drew the strip until his death on March 3, 2001. John Rose, who inked the strip for Lasswell, draws the comic today.
The strip won for Lasswell the National Cartoonist Society Humor Comic Strip Award and Reuben Award in 1963.
Barney Google appears in 21 countries and 11 languages. It is credited with introducing several slang phrases, including "sweet mama," "horsefeathers," "heebie-jeebies," and "hotsie-totsie."
The strip also inspired the popular 1920s song "Barney Google (With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)".
In 1995, the strip was one of twenty included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.
Barney Google's face is immortalized in the Polk County, Iowa courthouse (in Des Moines). Sometime between 1901 and 1906, an artist chiseling grotesques on the walls near the ceilings carved Barney Google's face as a gag. His boss was not impressed and ordered him to add some vines around his head and to call him a "Grecian God." The face is clearly Barney Google, and this story was reported in the Des Moines Register in 2005.
External links
- [Barney Google and Snuffy Smith] at King Features Syndicate
- [Barney Google entry at Toonopedia]
- [NCS Awards]
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