Barney Google — The Washington Times, February 13, 1921

Billy DeBeck's Barney Google runs twelve panels across four tiers on this Sunday page. The gag follows Barney—short, bug-eyed, wearing a stovepipe hat—as he schemes to break a $15,000-a-year apartment lease by throwing a rowdy party, only to wake and find the furniture and silverware gone. DeBeck's draftsmanship is loose and kinetic: thick ink outlines, exaggerated reaction takes, speech balloons that crowd the frame with vernacular dialogue ('Leggo the bread before I poke ya in the eye'). Launched in 1919, Barney Google was syndicated nationally by King Features, reaching millions of Sunday readers whose folded broadsheet pages were the direct precursor to the comic book format—same panels, same balloons, same recurring cast, same week-to-week continuity that defined the medium.