Camera-ready comic strip, entitled Barney Google and Snuffy Smith

This pen-and-ink drawing for the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith comic strip shows Aunt Loweezy telling Snuffy to punish Jughaid for using her prize-winning quilt and petticoat to make a tent and a kite. Snuffy can’t seem to understand why that’s a problem until he finds out what Jughaid did with his whittling knife.

Fred Lasswell (1916-2001) started his career in the 1920s as a sports cartoonist for the Tampa Daily Times. During the course of his work there he began assisting Billy DeBeck with Barney Google. After DeBeck’s death in 1942, Lasswell took over the strip entirely. During his service in World War II Lasswell also created a strip called Sgt. Hashmark. Lasswell continued to draw Barney Google and Snuffy Smith until his death in 2001.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1919- ) started out as a sports strip titled Take Barney Google, F'rinstance. The title character was portrayed as a very short man who was regularly seen at sporting events. The addition of a race horse named Spark Plug, in 1922, caught the nation's attention and prompted creator DeBeck to make the horse a regular cast member. Hillbilly Snuffy Smith, also very short in stature, joined the cast in 1934 and soon was added to the title of the strip. Since the 1950s, Snuffy Smith has been the central character of the strip.

Currently not on view