Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/26/21

I'm a big believer that most comic-strip level gags should include exactly the amount of information they need to make the joke work and no more, which is why it drives me up the wall that this strip includes the name of Loweezy's sister. It would be bad enough that she just named her sister (whom we've never see in the strip) for no reason, since it creates the nagging suspicion that this sister, as opposed to some other sister, is important to make the punchline work for some reason. But then they go and name her "Zoney!" "Loweezy" is the post-apocalyptic Hootin' Holler newspeak for "Louisa," but what the hell is "Zoney" derived from? Arizona? Does the vague memory of distant Arizona live on in Holler-adjacent onomastics? Gah, the fact that they added this name to her word balloon means that we ended up with two exclamation points alone on their own line! GAH!!!

Blondie, 8/26/21