New Old Comics

Where has he

been? My local paper recently started running a new old comic strip. It’s my favorite again. Newspaper comics have always been popular, but the year 1919 saw the start of “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (Smif).”

Barney headlined the strip but was passively written out decades ago. Even being absent didn’t mean his character disappeared from American legacy.

He was drawn as a formally dressed, wide-eyed, bulb nosed, cigar smokin’, top hat wearing guy who owned a bench legged flop of a race horse named “Sparkplug.”

The character didn’t go easily. In the 1920’s the song “Barney Google (with his goo-goo-googly eyes, Barney Google with a wife three times his size)” became a hit.

Some phrases that came from the strip, “tetched in the haid;” “Hootin’ Holler;” “Jug Haid” Smith, Snuffy’s nephew. He called Maw “Loweezy,” reflected by Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson calling his wife (actress Isabel Sanford) “Weezy.”

Loweezy wore a head scarf and a white apron.

Snuffy’s principal occupations are making corn likker, stealing chickens and playing cards. If he has a regular job, I have forgotten it.

The strip shares similarities with the more complicated “Li’l Abner” without a connection. That strip gave birth to movies and even a Broadway show in which Tina Louise appeared.

While I watched “Dukes of Hazzard,” I could almost smell the influence of those strips.

My father read the Sunday comics to me. His favorite strip started in the 1800’s, “The Katzenjammer Kids,” and mine became “The Phantom.”

“The Phantom,” known as “The Ghost who walks” was a multi-generational character and similar to Tarzan without the diaper. They both lived in the jungle.

Dick Tracy relied on technology that didn’t exist when he was drawn. His “Two-way wrist radio” could not have existed when it was featured, but today people have gizmos they wear to connect them to their mobile radio.

His two-way wrist radio became his wrist “Geenee,” a mobile computer.

There was also “Peter Pain,” a character in strips sponsored by Ben-Gay, an ointment considered a “general analgesique.” It was invented, named and spelled by a French man.

You really can’t use the comics to get away from life. Even the strip writers have points of view as perpetually demonstrated by “Dunsbury.”

Newspaper comics are synoptic stories without having to build characters or background. You immediately know who the characters are by their appearance.

joenphillips@yahoo.com