Happy Birthday Barney Google

Today is the 100th Anniversary of the first appearance of Barney Google, Billy DeBeck's wonderful comic strip. It was my great pleasure to write and draw a Barney Google adventure when I worked on IDW's Popeye comic a few years ago. (Other kids wanted to draw Batman when they grew up; I wanted to draw Barney Google. I was a strange kid.)

September Commissions XIII

Malta Sketches X

I liked the earlier version so much I did another one for myself.

Malta Sketches III

There was a gentleman who asked me to draw "my favourite comic character". This is what he got.

 

Aces Sketch Card III

The Discriminating Collector

A commission that hit a lot of sweet spots for me.

Barney Google Will Never Die

I found myself with an unexpected day free today while I wait for some stuff to be approved, so I (a) did some writing and (b) knocked up a reconstruction of this 1920 Barney Google advertisement. I sourced the original image from NewspaperArchive.com (they host thousands of scans of newspaper microfiche files, including many, many old strips – I used to have an account before they jacked their subscription fees up to an unmanageable level, and I gorged myself on Barney Google for a few years there) and, as a technical exercise, reconstructed the image in brush and ink. Here are the results.

Barney Google and Spark Plug

Just because.

Ol' Google-Eyes

In case you've somehow missed it, I bloody love Billy DeBeck's Barney Google.

It Speaks!

So, I did an interview with The Hourly Planet recently, and they've just put it up on their site here. Bit of a rambling one, not actively promoting anything for a change, so that was nice. And darned if they didn't find, to accompany the piece,  a Barney Google strip I don't have - after me bragging I had most of 'em!

I've Got the Pods

Here's a sketch of Barney Google I did for Mike Rhode at Heroes Con. Eye candy for all the octogenarians in the audience! My thanks to Mike for the scan.


May I draw your attention to a couple of recent podcast appearances? A Heroes Con panel I was on, Craft and Process in Comics, is up at the Dollar Bin website - one for the cartoonists there, I imagine. Also for the cartoonists is a guest appearance on Art and Story, the podcast about the craft of making comics - actually sitting in in person this time, as I'm in Michigan for Kids Read Comics. Thanks to Jerzy Drozd for making me welcome and for sharing his bourbon!

The Googlemeister Is In

I have been just a teensy bit obsessed with Billy DeBeck's great newspaper strip, Barney Google, lately - not so much the later Snuffy Smith-centred material, more the Early Funny Ones. Here's my one attempt to do a Billy DeBeck style, at which I think I totally failed.


The problem is that DeBeck was such a good artist - his cartooning decisions were 100% conscious and deliberate, based on a rock-solid underlying drawing ability (this is a guy who started out forging Charles Dana Gibson drawings for a living!). So his fluidity is really hard to imitate if you have a more awkward, laboured relationship with the pen and brush.

Here's an example of the real deal.


More Barney Google in print - that's what I want for Christmas.