Barney Google

''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith'', originally ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance'', is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appearing in 900 newspapers in 21 countries. The initial appeal of the strip led to its adaptation to film, animation, popular song, and television. It added several terms and phrases to the English language and inspired the 1923 hit tune "Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)" with lyrics by Billy Rose, as well as the 1923 record "Come On, Spark Plug!"

Barney Google himself, once the star of the strip and a very popular character in his own right, was at one point almost entirely phased out of the feature. An increasingly peripheral player in his own strip beginning in the late 1930s, Barney was officially "written out" in 1954, although he occasionally returned for cameo appearances, often years apart. During a period between 1997 and 2012, Barney Google was not seen in the strip at all. Barney was reintroduced to the strip in 2012, and has slowly returned to being a semi-regular character.

Snuffy Smith, who was initially introduced as a supporting player in 1934, has now been the comic strip's central character for over 60 years. Nevertheless, the feature is still titled ''Barney Google and Snuffy Smith''.

As of June 17, 2019, ''Barney Google'' has run for an entire century, making it the third-longest running and uninterrupted comics series of all time, after Rudolph Dirks' ''The Katzenjammer Kids's ''Gasoline Alley''. After ''Gasoline Alley'', it is the second-longest running newspaper comic still in syndication and producing new episodes as of 2021.

Characters and story

Barney Google

Like ''Mutt and Jeff'', ''Barney Google'' started out on the sports page. First appearing as a daily strip in the sports sections of the '' Chicago Herald'' and ''Examiner'' in 1919, it was originally titled ''Take Barney Google, F'rinstance''. The title character, a little fellow (although he shrank in stature even more after the first year) with big "banjo" eyes, was an avid sportsman and ne'er-do-well involved in poker, horse racing, and prize fights.

The "goggle-eyed, moustached, gloved and top-hatted, bulbous-nosed, cigar-chomping shrimp" (according to comics historian Bill Blackbeard) was relentlessly henpecked by "a wife three times his size" (as the song lyric goes). The formidable Mrs. Lizzie Google, or "the sweet woman", sued Barney for divorce and thereafter virtually disappeared from the strip. By October 1919, the strip was distributed by King Features Syndicate and was published in newspapers across the country.

His name might have been an inspiration for the large number name googol, which in turn inspired the company name Google.

Spark Plug

Beginning on July 17, 1922, the strip took a momentous turn in popularity with the seemingly innocuous introduction of an endearing race horse named "Spark Plug". Barney's beloved "brown-eyed baby" was a bow-legged nag that seldom raced, and was typically seen almost totally covered by his trademark patched blanket with his name scrawled on the side. ''Peanuts'' creator Charles M. Schulz was known to his friends as Sparky, a lifelong nickname given to him by his uncle as a diminutive of ''Barney Googles Spark Plug. Comics historian Don Markstein noted:

In deference to his enormous popularity during this period, the strip was retitled ''Barney Google and Spark Plug''. DeBeck's strip hit its peak of popularity with Spark Plug about the same time the song "Barney Google (Foxtrot)" by Billy Rose and Con Conrad was sweeping the country. It became one of the best known, most iconic novelty records of the 1920s, and has been recorded by such famous artists as Eddie Cantor and The Happiness Boys, The Andrews Sisters, and Spike Jones:

Other popular characters and concepts introduced in the strip about this time include "Sunshine", Barney's black jockey, a troublesome ostrich named "Rudy", "Sully", a monocled champion wrestler, and the mysterious hooded fraternity "The Order of the Brotherhood of Billy Goats", a parody of mystic secret societies. (There was also a "Sisterhood of Nanny Goats" for the ladies.) Their password was "O-K-M-N-X" which, deciphered, stood for a standard breakfast order ("Okay, ham and eggs"). Barney was elected "Exalted Angora" in 1928.

Transition to "Barney Google & Snuffy Smith"

In 1934, an even greater change took place when Barney and his horse visited the North Carolina mountains and met a volatile, equally diminutive moonshiner named Snuffy Smith. Hillbilly humor was popular at the time (as Al Capp was proving with ''Li'l Abner''). The strip increasingly focused on the southern Appalachian hamlet of "Hootin' Holler", with Snuffy as the main character. The mountaineer locals are suspicious of any outsiders, referred to as "flatlanders" or even worse, "revenooers" (Federal Revenue agents).

Snuffy Smith was so popular that his name was added to the strip's title in the late 1930s, while the top-billed Barney Google became an increasingly peripheral character in what once was his own comic. Eventually, Barney Google left Hootin' Holler in 1954 to return to the city, and was essentially written out of the strip except as a very occasional visitor. Barney has appeared rarely in the feature from the mid-1950s on, but returned to Hootin' Holler for a visit in a series of strips beginning on February 19, 2012. Prior to 2012, Barney had not appeared in the strip since January 5, 1997, a span of over 15 years. Barney Google—usually with Spark Plug in tow—made occasional return trips to Hootin' Holler from 2012 to 2020, and moved back permanently to Hootin' Holler in a series of strips run in May 2021. He still appears infrequently, but is now more of an occasional supporting player (as opposed to a very occasional guest).

Snuffy Smith and the townsfolk of Hootin' Holler

Snuffy Smith (whose last name is pronounced "Smif" by virtually all the characters in Hootin' Holler) is an ornery little cuss, sawed-off and shiftless. He lives in a shack, mangles the English language, and has a propensity to shoot at those who displease him. He makes "corn-likker" moonshine in a homemade still and is in constant trouble with the sheriff. He wears a broad-brimmed felt hat almost as tall as he is, has a scraggly mustache and a pair of tattered, poorly patched overalls. He constantly cheats at poker and checkers. He also has some proclivity toward stealing chickens, which led to a brief but effective use of his character in a marketing campaign by the Tyson Foods corporation in the early 1980s. In 1937, he held the post of "Royal Doodle Bug" in the "Varmints" lodge; during this period, the strip heavily employed the catchphrase, "What did the Doodle-Bug say?", an apparent homage to "What did the Woggle-Bug say?" in L. Frank Baum and Walt McDougall's ''Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz'' strip of 1904–1905.

Almost all of the characters in the strip (except the infrequently seen Barney Google and the occasional visiting "flatlander") are exaggerated hillbillies in the classic burlesque tradition: sharp-tongued gossipy women such as Snuffy's wife Loweezy; his baby Tater; his mischievous nephew Jughaid; his neighbors Elviney and LukeyKing Features: ''Snuffy Smith'' characters
(Lucas Ebenezer Hinks); the sanctimonious (but nonetheless ungrammatical) Parson; Silas, the ever-parsimonious owner of the General Store; the ostentatiously-badged Sheriff Tait, and others. Vehicles are rundown jalopies of a seeming 1920s vintage, even in the 1970s and beyond. The characters are drawn so that they appear to be talking out of the sides of their mouths.

Topper strips

''Bughouse Fables''

On December 24, 1920, DeBeck began a gag panel called ''Bughouse Fables'', featuring his observations of ordinary people doing foolish things, which he signed "Barney Google". This daily panel ran until November 13, 1937. DeBeck added ''Bughouse Fables'' as an accompanying topper strip to run with ''Barney Google'' on Sundays, from January 17 to May 9, 1926.

''Bunky''

On May 16, 1926, DeBeck began another topper strip, originally called ''Parlor, Bedroom and Sink''—but better known as ''Bunky''. ''Parlor Bedroom and Sink''—which evolved into ''Parlor Bedroom and Sink Starring Bunky'', and eventually simply ''Bunky''—is an over-the-top parody of stage melodramas and movie and radio serials that were popular at the time. The title character "" (short for Bunker Hill Jr.) was a hapless waif whose penniless parents, Bunker Hill Sr., and Bibsy, had given birth to the strangely erudite newborn with the enormous nose on November 13, 1927. The irresponsible Bunker Sr. eventually disappeared from the strip. From then on, pint-sized Bunky (still dressed in the baby bonnet and gown in which he was first seen) was the star, protector, and benefactor of the family. His vocabulary rivaled that of any educated adult.

Arch-nemesis Fagin, introduced in 1928, was as vile and despicable a villain as any Charles Dickens antagonist. He "would steal pennies from a blind man's cup and kick dogs that weren't even in his way. Robbing widows and orphans ... was routine for him", according to comics historian Don Markstein, who said the strip popularized the phrase, "Youse is a viper!"''Bunky''
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. from the original on April 13, 2012.

Fantasy author and ''Conan the Barbarian'' creator Robert E. Howard, a big fan of ''Bunky'', was fond of quoting from the strip, as noted by his friend, Tevis Clyde Smith. After DeBeck's death in 1942, ''Bunky'' continued for a time under Joe Musial (''The Katzenjammer Kids