Barney Google: Gambling, Horse Races, and High-Toned Women

by Billy DeBeck, Craig Yoe (Editor)

Before there was Google the search engine, there was Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes! This lovable comic strip character was brilliantly drawn in absorbing and hilarious stories by master draftsman Billy DeBeck. Barney gambled, hung with high-toned women and hillbillies, and played the horses! This novel-length, thrilling, and laugh-packed story was about Google's racehorse Sparkplug and delighted a nation in the 1920s as they will you. Featuring a revealing introduction by renowned comics historian Craig Yoe, this strikingly designed hardbound book collects the most famous acclaimed adventures of Barney Google, complete with rare, unpublished art, photos, and ephemera in glorious color.

Genres: Comics

246 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2010

About the author

William Morgan "Billy" De Beck was a popular cartoonist and writer who was widely published. He created some of the memorable comic strip characters of the 1920s and 1930s, including Barney Google, Bunky, Snuffy Smith and the racehorse Spark Plug. He was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois, where he studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.

De Beck was drawing cartoons by 1910. His comic strip Barney Google and Spark Plug first ran in June 1919 in the Chicago Herald and Examiner. The main character, Barney, was initially a simple henpecked husband and avid follower of sports, but within ten years Barney morphed into an urban rascal and natty dresser. The bony and goofy racehorse, Spark Plug, trotted into the storyline in 1922. Barney met his hillbilly friend, Snuffy Smith, in 1934. Readers found the strip a comic relief from tragic conditions of the Great Depression.

De Beck’s style of drawing is considered to be in the classic "big-foot" tradition quite prominent in American comic strips (e.g., The Katzenjammer Kids, Hägar the Horrible, many of Robert Crumb's characters). After DeBeck's death on Veterans Day, 1942, the strip was continued by his assistant, Fred Lasswell.

The National Cartoonist Society's annual award was originally named "The Billy De Beck Memorial Award". However, it was renamed the Reuben Award (after Rube Goldberg's real first name) in 1954.

The expression "heebie jeebies" (a fit of intense nervousness) and "hotsy-totsy" were coined by Billy De Beck for dialogue in his comic strip.

Reviews

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billy DeBeck's Barney Google was a popular comic strip through the '20s and '30s featuring the titular ne'er-do-well character with a penchant for sports gambling. Barney Google is initially beleaguered by his imposing wife, Lizzie, until DeBeck suddenly writes out her character and replaces her with a race horse named Sparkplug, or Sparky for short. Barney's tamed home life is quickly swapped for raucous adventures where he chases money, women and other vices, with the rare occasional sign of trying to do the right thing. Craig Yoe's introduction makes an attempt to contextualize the shift in the tone of the strip with DeBeck's personal life, though I did find the explanation a little lacking since it mostly seemed like DeBeck was just having fun here. There's a lot of riffing on hillbilly culture here too, though DeBeck is never particularly leary about it. And to me, the real charm of Barney Google likes in the charming colloquialisms like "heebie-jeebies" and "time's a-wastin'" which adds to the spectacular legacy of this strip.

I do take issue with the presentation of the strips in this edition. DeBeck's signature scribbly lines keep the individual panels engaging, but the panels look best when presented in the horizontal fashion that the strip was originally printed as. Instead Yoe makes the choice to blow up individual panels to take up more room on the square sized pages, which is neither economical for delivering more strips nor does it really do DeBeck's work justice to enlarge it so. DeBeck's loose style is mesmerizing, but draftsmanship and design weren't his stronger suits. This edition needlessly wastes space on blowing up the artwork, when instead it could have printed more than just one year of Barney Google stories.

[Monty Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barney Google was an astonishingly popular comic strip, back when being a popular comic strip really meant something. These days, it limps on as "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith," which is entirely about Snuffy Smith. But back in 1922, it was about Barney Google, a short scrounger who's always coming up with scams and tricks. The big moment in 1922 is when he acquires a race horse named Spark Plug, who would go on to capture the country's imagination. Spark Plug wins just about every race he runs, at which point the game is to see how quickly Barney can lose the money he just won, resetting him to where he has to scrounge up the money to enter the next race. A year after the run this collection covers, the song "Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes" would catapult the strip into the stratosphere. Also, that's where "Googly Eyes" were named, so that's fun.