Barney Google

Billy DeBeck's *Barney Google* exemplifies the visual innovation of 1920s newspaper comics. This strip demonstrates the formal grammar that shaped modern comics: sequential panels progressing narrative action, speech balloons conveying dialogue and sound effects, and recurring characters in escalating situations. The four-panel sequence traces Barney's misadventure at a jockey club through physical comedy—mistaken identity, collision, and property damage—rendered in DeBeck's energetic pen work. The strip's rapid-fire gags and slapstick humor made it a popular Sunday feature that helped establish the newspaper comic as a distinct medium, bridging vaudeville entertainment with visual storytelling and laying groundwork for the comic book industry that would follow.