Blog: christmas 2015

Gasoline Alley

Frank King, Gasoline Alley Sunday

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I really tried to find the date for this strip, but couldn't find it anywhere. If anyone happens to know, feel free to comment.

Gasoline Alley is, I think, unique among comic strips in that all of its characters have aged over the years in real time over its entire run. It's had quite a long run, too. It began in 1918, and new strips are still produced to this day. It began with the main character, Walt Wallet, finding a baby on his doorstep, who is nicknamed "Skeezix." Walt, Skeezix, and most of the rest of the characters (there are some "timeless" ones) are now quite old in the comic, and there are now five generations of Wallets. Walt is now 115 years old (!) and Skeezix is over 90.

The strip has also had some great artists working on it over the years. Frank King, the original creator, always kept the artwork fairly simple, but still managed to create amazing environments and evoke plenty of feeling and emotion. The strip you see here is a Frank King creation…

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Buster Brown, December 1903

Buster Brown, December 1903, top half Buster Brown, December 1903, bottom half

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Here's another one with Buster Brown. This one is more along the lines of what Buster normally gets into. Of course, this time he has the help of all the neighborhood boys. I kind of think the parents were asking for it, though, given that they put swords and guns underneath the Christmas tree. Those were different times, I guess.

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Buster Brown, December 1905

Buster Brown, December 1905, top half Buster Brown, December 1905, bottom half

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Buster Brown was created by by R.F. Outcault, who also created The Yellow Kid, often cited as the first recurring comic strip character (which he wasn't really, but that's a different blog post). The interesting thing about Buster Brown was that he was very heavily marketed and licensed. While some may think that marketing comic characters is a more recent development, the New York Herald company and later the Hearst newspapers pushed out a ton of licensed products, many of which are featured in this particular strip. Buster Brown is apparently receiving all of his licensed products as Christmas presents, though given his usual antics I don't think he really deserves them. Buster's dog Tige appeared on just as many products as he did, and just three years after the strip's debut the cartoonist is obviously aware of the ridiculous amount of licensing that was going on.

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Rube Goldberg - Extra Finger

Rube Goldberg - Extra finger

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Here's a device for all of those times that you were wrapping a present and needed an extra finger to put on tape, ribbon, or whatever. I'm horrible at wrapping presents, so this would be quite useful for me. I'd probably need to practice with it a bit, but I could see myself using this every year.

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Sing with King - Disney characters

Sing With King - Away in a Manger

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King Features Syndicate distributed a number of comic strips featuring Disney characters, and some characters that first appeared in those strips went on to become very popular in other media. Most notably of these are Huey, Louie, and Dewey, the three nephews of Donald Duck. They originally appeared in a Donald Duck Sunday comic in 1937. Here we find them singing with other Disney characters who all first appeared in animation. It's unfortunate that their uncle Scrooge doesn't appear here, but not only does he hate Christmas, he had only been created two years prior to this booklet being released.

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