Since it’s still near the start of school, let’s go with another comic with that standard barefoot trope. This one is from October 5, 1948. It’s from the strip Out Our Way by J. R. Williams.
Out Our Way, October 5, 1948
I still find it odd that growing feet are blamed on going barefoot. It’s as if they’ve never see a puppy before; at that point of adolescence, the feet grow first (and then the kid/puppy grows into them).
This disdain for feet seems so deep in the collective unconscious, so past comprehension, I cannot fathom it out. We need a new Freud to explain and eradicate it. In this case: boys’ hands grow too, but nobody makes hackneyed jokes about them.
I want to reach back seventy years and smack the artist. 😛