Barney Google & Snuffy Smith: 75 Years of an American Legend [Paperback]

Billy De Beck (Author), Brian Walker (Author), Fred Lasswell (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Kitchen Sink Pr (Nrt); 1st edition (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878162836
• ISBN-13: 978-0878162833
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,839,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent condensation of a classic comic strip, November 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith: 75 Years of an American Legend (Paperback)

Billy DeBeck began,with Barney Google,a chronicle of American lifestyle in the 1920s-which was marked by daring,willingness to take risks and cheerful optomism.Barney Google had some times at the race track,with Sparky doing his best at races-and even winning them on occasion.There were some fascinating stories well-worth reprinting in their entirty.DeBeck's Bughouse Fables and Bunky are also represented.(Learn what OKMNX means.) As time went on,especialy during the Depression, the stories took a different slant.Barney speant much time out of America,either in the Mideast or in the Carribean.When he did return to America,it was to inherited property in the Ozarks.Then he befriended Snuffy Smith,who took center-stage more and more as time went on. Although Billy DeBeck never completely forgot Barney Google,his assistant and successor,country boy Fred Laswell,found it much easier to concentrate on Snuffy an' his kin an' pals.As a result Barney Google became an occasional visitor in what is now Snuffy's territory.Yet it is because of Laswell's own brand of country-charm that the strip has lasted this long. It is easy to think of Billy DeBeck's Barney Google(1919-1934),DeBeck and Laswell's Barney Google and Snuffy Smith(1935-1942)and Fred Laswell's Snuffy Smith(1943-present)as seperate strips unto themselves.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fact: There Are 153 Pages of Comics and/or Photographs Found in this 176 Page Book, October 19, 2010

By 

PHILIP S WOLF (SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CA. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith: 75 Years of an American Legend (Paperback)

Well, I spotted a review here that just wasn't being very truthful, so I got my fingers out and started counting. Of the 176 pages of this book 153 of them have either a comic image, comic strip, poster image, photographs and/or combinations of all of those visuals to be found on the same page. No, not all of those 153 pages are about the one character that this reviewer wants this book to be based around, but this is a history of 75 years of a great American comic strip, and it's Barney and Snuffy's name that appear on the cover of this book.

I received this book by mail order from the legendary Kitchen Sink Catalog way back in 1994. And it was the very first book that I had seen that was concerning the histories of Barney Google & Snuffy Smith. At this time (1994) the comic strip was 75 years old, and that is an enormous life span for a newspaper comic strip. And what is even more amazing is that two cartoonists had shared duties for that seven and 1/2 decades of history. Billy DeBeck, created Barney Google in 1919. In 1934 Billy hired an assistant, this young fellow was named Fred Lasswell. At seventeen years of age Fred has been onboard with Barney and Snuffy (brief periods during World War II others wrote and drew dailies and Sunday pages) ever since.

This is the story of Barney & Snuffy and it is also about the live of Billy DeBeck & Fred Lasswell. Barney, had his good times in the wild days of flappers and bootleggers in the Roaring Twenties. Snuffy was introduced in the mountains of Appalachia in November of 1934. The comic strip evolved and changed with the times and Snuffy within a few years was as popular as the great Barney Google had been for the previous decade and a half.

When this book was published Snuffy was the big star, and Barney Google wasn't seen in the strip very often, and how that did occur is explained well in the text provided to tell this tale of American Folk Lore. The Lives of Billy & Fred are as interesting to read as the adventures of the characters they created. There is almost 90% visual images to just over 10% of text found on these 176 pages, and it's a wealth of information and entertainment than spans almost almost the entire 20th century.

There are many biographies of great American comics, and this book is one of the very best of all of them. There is a lot of ground covered here in the pages of this book. Twenty pages of comics devoted to Spark Plug ....Give me a break!

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Neigh, December 30, 2007

By 

Stephen Demay "like movies" (Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith: 75 Years of an American Legend (Paperback)

All of about twenty pages feature Spark Plug, lots of dull biographical stuff. The only point in its favor is the complete , sort of , (eight page story) in which Sparky first appeared.