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.

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!

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.