The final strip in the race sequence, from November 28, 1931, starts out with a dramatic rendition of all the serious contenders in the race slipping on banana peels and falling into a great pile of the horses and riders who had, up until then, been way out in front of Sunshine on Pony Boy - so far ahead that they were already entering their second lap, even before Pony Boy finished his first one. Of course, only in a two lap race would the favored horses ever have encountered Sunshine's discarded banana peels, since these faster horses would never end up behind Sunshine had the race ended after a single lap. After losing so much ground due to their collective fall, there is no way that the one-time leaders could ever catch up with Sunshine, who looks back in amazement as he continues to eat his bananas. By the final panel, the race has ended, and both Sunshine and Pony boy look a little perplexed as they are shown with their victory wreath in the winner's circle. Barney Google's horses only seem to win races when blessed with incredible luck or very well timed banana peels.
Not only is the story line rather cleverly handled by DeBeck,, but his artwork in the series shows most of the innovative techniques the artist used to enliven his strips visually. DeBeck rarely used so many contrasting areas of light and darkness, and he increases the visual variety with his heavy use of half tones, both through the use of cross-hatched ink lines and half tones added through the printing process. Dramatic movement was emphasized by DeBeck's use of a razor blade to scratch very fine white lines out of the black backgrounds or his use of fine ink lines in the light areas. And he not only includes a number of panels with great masses of multiple figures, but these panels, when the strips are viewed together and in order, actually end up balancing with one another. This is probably just a fortuitous coincidence, unless DeBeck was looking ahead to how the strips might appear if reprinted in sequence in book form - the strips would originally have appeared in newspapers, individually, one day at a time, and would not have been viewed together unless there was some subsequent use of the group.
I have owned the first three originals of this group for about a decade, but the last strip, which is crucial in completing the race sequence, was only very recently obtained through a trade. The 2nd and 3rd strips together cost $4,750 at a Sotheby's sale when Google prices had pretty much peaked. Not long after, Joe Mannarino contacted me and told me he could get me the last strip for $10,000, which was an absurd price. I declined his offer! When that same strip finally appeared at auction, it sol for around $500, or about 1/20th what Mannarino had tried to get for it! Is it any wonder that I don't think so highly of Joe as those others who have recently been fawning over him? I want to publicly thank Jeff Singh for making it possible to bring this small but important group together after their having been separated for many years. This is one instance where the viewing of the strips together greatly exceeds the impression one gets by viewing them separately. Thanks again Jeff.
