Richard's Poor Almanac by Richard Thompson for May 14, 2015

Transcript:

in barney google, billy debeck created a comic strip that stands as the finest example of high bigfoot cartooning. barney: bigfoot was the dominant style in american comic strips of the first third of the 20th century. as its name suggests, bigfoot is a clownish style. the lumpen everyman it des-scribed is a antic stumblebum in baggy pants and tailcoat, all polka dots and window-pane checks. his fortunes are ever-shifting: he's a hobo then a toff, but always a buffoon. and usually a fool and a patsy. barney google and the bigfoot style by richard thompson barney: such masters as opper, herriman, goldberf and segar all worked in the bigfoot style to varying egree. but in debeck's picaresque tales of big-eyed barney and knock-kneed sparkplug, bigfoot reached its finest, most grotesque flowering. like all art styles, big foot divided and evolved. it became a path back to naturalism in the great adventure strips of roy crane. by the 1950s, mort walker et al had simplified it into bigfoot moderne. in the 60s r. crumb launched a bigfoot renaissance and philip guston began to paint big anxious feet. today bigfoot has spread far, its footrints leading to both the loving parodies of patrick mcdonnell and the more doltish of homer simpson's exploits.