by Billy DeBeck
REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
Launched in June 17, 1919, Barney Google was one of the first strips to tell stories that continued from day-to-day. Initially, the strip was merely another ne'er-do-well husband and over-bearing wife domestic comedy, but on July 17, 1922, creator Billy DeBeck (1890-1942) changed all that: Barney acquired a race course named Spark Plug, and the sad-faced nag, most of whose anatomy is hidden underneath a moth-eaten, shroud-like, horse blanket, became the Snoopy of the roaring '20s.
Barney entered the horse in a race, and DeBeck quickly discovered the potency of a continuing story for captivating readers: for most of the decade, drawing with a loose but confident line and intricately wispy shading. DeBeck kept his audience on tender-hooks by entering Spark Plug in a succession of hilarious albeit suspenseful contests, he outcomes of which were never certain (some of them, surprisingly, Spark Plug won).
The characters were relentlessly merchandised, and Billy Rose even wrote a song about the horse and his master, Barney Google With The Goo-Goo Googly Eyes, which even the characters in the strip sang.
DeBeck's cartooning genius was such that he seemed capable of renewing his creation again and again, each time with a more inventively comedic novelty than before, and in 1934, he sent Barney off into the hills of North Carolina, where he encountered bristly, pint-sized hillbilly named Snuffy Smith, who was so popular with readers that DeBeck stayed in the hills for the rest of the '30s, introducing into popular usage dozens of colourful expressions ("tetched in the hair", "bodacious").
By Word War II, the strip was called Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. Snuffy joined the army, and Barney enlisted in the Navy and almost disappeared from the strip forever. DeBeck's assistant Fred Lasswell inherited the strip, and it's still running.
FURTHER READING:
Billy DeBeck at The Library of American Comics
Billy DeBeck at The Library of American Comics
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