Barney's Badges
   
                             
    Lucky Barney wore a jacket plastered hem to collar to
    sleeve tip with metal pin badges. These badges could
    spring into life, become operable or morph themselves
    into umpteen shapes or sizes in accordance with
    the images, or slogans, on the front of each badge....

    

    In WOW! #1 we see how Barney aquired this fantastic
    badge collection. Our boy arrives late for a local jumble sale,
    checks the contents of an old bag of jumble and gets his jacket
    shredded by a swarm of clothing-hungry moths. A creepy old
    stallholder then offers him a box of badges to hold the frayed
    remains together...

    Barney exits the jumble sale without seeing the stallholder
    vanishing into the ether behind him. Then, in the street, he has
    a nasty encounter with a badge-grabbing bully who steals his
    "Heavy Rock" badge, only to find he can't lift it! Barney finds the
    badge to be light as a feather. This angers the bully who makes
    to clout him with a tin can - but Barney's "Anti-Litter" badge
    suddenly expands and saves the day!

     

   Barney's Badges cashed in on the early eighties trend for
   collecting pin badges and gave artist Terry Bave freedom to
   create a myriad of relevant badges and mottos to use in a
   myriad of situations. But our Barney still looked fairly
   ridiculous, garbed in all those metal circles.

   I'm not sure when the strip ended, but I do know that it never
   made the leap from WOW! to Whoopee! when the titles were
   merged in July 1983. However, a decade later Barney resurfaced
   in Whoopee!'s 1993 Summer Special as a one-off appearance
   in full colour. Trivia Hounds will note that the artist's credit
   on this one reads: "Terry & Sheila Bave"...