At its best, no comic strip was more whimsically humorous than Crockett Johnson's Barnaby. The world of five-year-old Barnaby was peopled by such characters as McSnoyd, an invisible leprechaun who talked with a Bronx accent, Gorgon, a talking dog, Gus, a friendly ghost, and a rotund, urbane fairy godfather named J. J. O'Malley. O'Malley's cigar doubled as a magic wand and usually kept him and Barnaby at odds with the slow-witted real world around them.
The strip's gentle satire on mortal failings was never a big crowd-pleaser; at its peak in 1946, only 76 papers carried
Barnaby. Shortly after, Cartoonist Johnson himself tired...
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