Barney Google is the great vanishing comic strip character. Once the star of his own strip, the “cigar-smoking, sports-loving, poker-playing, girl-chasing ne’er-do-well” was gradually shoved aside for the antics of his country pal Snuffy Smith and family, although Barney’s name still heads the strip.
Barney used to make periodic visits to Hootin’ Holler just to keep things real. But I can’t remember how many years it has been since I last saw hide or hair of Barney. Did he and Spark Plug fall down some hillside and vanish?
My brother and I used to have a pony that he named Sparkplug. Grandma used to sing him some sort of song about Barney Google and Sparkplug, and he just loved it. I’ve never seen the comic strip, though, so I thought it was just some nonsense of Grandma’s.
Barney vanished as Snuffy Smith became the main character. He’s showed up once or twice since then, but is pretty much phased out.
The story can be found at http://www.toonopedia.com/snuffy.htm Briefly, Barney was losing readership, so when Fred Lasswell took over the strip, he phased him out. Lasswell had been instrumental in creating Snuffy Smith in the strip, so he used Barney to launch that. It was a bigger success that the failing Barney, so Barney was dropped.
Last I heard, Barney had married Madame la Mousse and settled down with her tigers and leopards in a villa in Florence, and together they’re raising up a flock of bubble-eyed babies. Senator Schnopps is the godfather!
Back in 1995, the U.S. postal service issued a group of Comic Strip Classics stamps, and one was for Barney Google and Spark Plug. To commemorate the occasion, one of the Sunday Snuffy Smith strips featured Ma excitedly showing Snuffy an oversized version of the stamp. Snuffy immediately grabbed a shotgun and fired – not out of anger, but in order to give the stamp perforations. That is the only time I ever remember Barney and Spark Plug (or their stamp equivalents) appearing in the strip.