Above is the first Barney Google strip from June 17th, 1919.

This site is a work in progress. The intent is to make searchable the complete run of Billy DeBeck’s Barney Google, one of the funniest and most popular comic strips of it’s era. The scans provided here were accumulated by the Yahoo “GoogleGang”, who you can visit here. You can search for any date in our collection by searching for it in this format:

YYMMDD

So, for example, the above strip can be found searching for:

190617

and is located at the link:

https://www.webcomix.org/barneygoogle/bg190617_r-2/

As I read through the strips, I am also making them searchable by various categories that appear at the bottom.

Eventually you will also be able to read them all consecutively using the back and next buttons under the strips. Unfortunately, I have to date all the posts manually, so this will take a while.

Barney Google originally appeared in the Chicago Herald and Examiner. It appears that can be viewed behind a paywall here. It was originally titled Take Barney Google, F’rinstance

Here is a link to the Chicago Tribune for the day of the above strip. That paper is great for cultural context, although they did not run Barney Google, unfortunately. Many other great strips are included there, though.

The Library of Congress has some papers that carried Barney Google (although not from the first strip), including The South Bend News Times, and The Washington Times. These papers are not as easily browsed as The Chicago Tribune, unfortunately, and the collection only goes up to 1922.

These strips are provided for educational purposes, and I make no claims of ownership. It is a damned shame so many great strips are being lost to time and neglect. Hopefully this will help preserve this one.