Bugfeathers

Barney Google August 1923

2011-09-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

More Barney Google from 1923. I've just realised I can make the pictures bigger. Only been doing this for a decade or so...

Barney Google July 1923

2011-07-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

More Google from 1923, including a few scanned from actual tearsheets, hooray!

Barney Google June 1923

2011-06-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

Been a while since the last update, sorry! Here's Barney Google from June 1923 - most of these are taken from online newspaper archives, which in turn are scanned from microfilm I believe, so it's kind of surprising that the quality is as good as it is. Except of course where it isn't. Anyway, enjoy.

Barney Google May 1923

2011-03-05T03:21:00.000-08:00

Barney Google April 1923

2011-02-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

Barney Google March 1923

2010-11-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

More from 1923. After the first few, the quality goes up drastically - those strips are scanned from the Cupples & Leon collections, which (as far as I can make out) used either syndicate proofs or the actual originals as their source material; the reproduction is significantly better than that of the newspapers (and the reproduction in the papers in them days wasn't too shabby either, because the strips had the luxury of size). Anyway, have a wallow.

Barney Google February 1923

2010-11-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

Some more from 1923 - February, to be precise - continuing the story from last week. The quality is a bit ropey - the source material is low-res Google News screen grabs in many cases - but don't fret, it's going to pick up dramatically next week, as we start to run scans from the 1923 Cupples and Leon Barney Google collections.

Barney Google January 1923

2010-11-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Craig Yoe's wonderful Barney Google book from IDW a month or two back, which reprinted the dailies from 1922, I thought I'd pick up where Craig left off and start posting 1923. These strips have been obtained from the online archive of microfiche scans at NewspaperArchive.com, so the quality is a bit patchy. If we get as far as 1925, I'll be posting strips scanned from newspaper tearsheets; until then, I hope this is better than nothing.

Bughouse Fables

2009-11-05T01:34:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of Billy DeBeck's great comic strip, Barney Google (if you're not familiar with it, I recommend you check it out)... but DeBeck did a one-panel gag feature for a while as well, called Bughouse Fables. The central conceit was that the scenario would be something wildly unlikely, something only a lunatic could actually think might happen (hence the name - "Bughouse" being contemporary slang for an insane asylum). Here are a few examples from between 1921 and 1926, dug up from online newspaper archives with the help of Charles Thompson (thanks Charlie!) and other old-time strip afficionados of my virtual acquaintance, heroes all.

You'll notice the very last one here is by a hand other than DeBeck's - a bit of research leads me to believe that it's by Paul Fung (big F, small U, small N, small G), who was DeBeck's assistant, and who took the panel over eventually.