BUNKY of "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" by Billy DeBeck

If you know your classic comic strip artists, you know who Billy DeBeck is. DeBeck created BARNEY GOOGLE and SNUFFY SMITH. With a vibrant, sketchy cartoon line, DeBeck was one of the most popular cartoonists of his day.

And every Sunday, millions of newspaper readers would read the BARNEY GOOGLE comic -- and the topper strip was another DeBeck creation titled PARLOR, BEDROOM AND BATH or, later on, it was called by its main character, BUNKY.

An offbeat strip about a big nosed baby who gets into these melodramatic adventures.

Ron Goulart writes the story of BUNKY in the comics magazine NEMO, with scans of the strips provided by Mr. Goulart and Rick Marschall. Blogger Jeff Overturf has scans here.

Above and below are scans from my BUNKY book from 1935. It's precursor to those Big Little Books, with text on one page and a drawing on the other.

This is part of my eBay sale today.

Yeah, a baby with a big schnoz getting into scrapes. That was the format!

Below: Fagan! He was Bunky's nemesis. An "unrepentant bad guy,"similar to Segar's Bluto cites Mr. Goulart.

Bunky would reply to Fagan, "Youse a viper!" and Fagan would laugh derisively. The phrase caught on and there was for a time a Sunday side-feature with the same title.