Barney Google Birthday Cameos

Barney Google meets Spark Plug, 1922.

Monday, June 17, 2019, marked the 100th anniversary of the comic strip character Barney Google. It was an odd anniversary to mark, and it was marked oddly.

Who was Barney Google?

"Take Barney Google F'instance" launched in 1919, written and drawn by Billy DeBeck. DeBeck was one of the developers of the "big foot" style of comic art (Robert Crumb paid homage to it).

The strip initially appeared in newspaper sports sections. Google was a sportsman of sorts -- a plunger who hung around boxing matches and horse races.

In 1922 he became the owner of a broken-down plug names Spark Plug. And that's when the strip took off. During the 1920s and 1930s "Barney Google" soared in popularity. The franchise spawned movie cartoons, toys, and even some Tin Pan Alley songs.

I think the 100th-anniversary celebrations would have made sense had the strip remained essentially unchanged. But it didn't.

One of the Barney Google-themed songs
to enter the Hit Parade.

In 1934 Barney Google visited his hillbilly cousin Snuffy Smith. Gradually Snuffy took over the strip. The title transitioned from "Barney Google" to "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" to just "Snuffy Smith" (only the Sunday strips retain the longer title).

Postwar readers of the strip have only seen Snuffy Smith, with rare appearances by Barney Google and Spark Plug. ( I suspect those appearances are only to keep the copyright current.)

So this anniversary celebrates the former star of the strip -- kind of an odd thing.

A strange collection of cameos

"Snuffy Smith" -- er, I mean "Barney Google" -- is distributed by King Features Syndicate. Some other King Features comics marked the anniversary with varying degrees of success.

I found the first and next-to-last examples especially odd.

I'm not sure what this one's all about. Where's Spark Plug?

Without a doubt, this is the oddest tribute. So Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
are in the same universe as Mark Trail!?