With this volume, Crockett Johnson steps back from the daily grind of the comic strip for a while, bringing on writer Ted Ferro and artist Jack Morley to take over the strip. The reduction in quality is fairly slight as Barnaby and O'Malley keep on keeping on. Many of the topics touched on in the post-World War II era of the strip are still relevant today, with storylines about housing shortages, school board activists, nuclear brinkmanship, and border disputes. But there are also some lighter bits with baseball, a dog show, and a romantic courtship à la Cyrano de Bergerac.

I'm looking forward to the next volume where Johnson gets more involved with the strip again. ( )

As Crockett Johnson became more and more involved in other projects in 1946 and 1947, he entrusted the reins of "Barnaby" (one of the great under-appreciated comic strips) to ghostwriter (heh) Ted Ferro and ghost-illustrator Jack Morley. Two unusual aspects of this common device with popular comic strips was that (a) the substitute team was allowed to sign their work, and (b) there was very little alteration in style, either in writing or in art. At most there was a lean toward Barnaby and Mr. O'Malley getting involved in current politics more than before. This is still a delightful and charming work of comic genius, which was an obvious inspiration for many elements of "Pogo" and "Calvin and Hobbes". ( )