Blog: christmas 2020

Winnie Winkle, December 31, 1952

Winnie Winkle, December 31, 1952

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Winnie Winkle has had a number of suitors over her decades long run. She married one of them, Bill Wright, in 1937, but that didn't stop others from cropping up. While Bill was around, her suitors' advances generally ended in fisticuffs, but the writers worked around this by having Bill "disappear" for years at a time. He was in World War II and supposedly died, but turned up alive years later. There were a couple times where he also was "killed" in mining accidents, though it turned out each time he just went missing for a few years.

During one of these intervals, a man named Tootsie Rocket appeared to try to woo Winnie. Tootsie was a star baseball player, but wasn't too bright, and Winnie was never interested in him in any way. We see him here begrudgingly helping Winnie out by watching her twins, Billy and Wendy. It seems his baseball exploits are not as exciting as he thinks they are.

Happy New Year, everybody!

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Corky, December 30, 1937

Corky, December 30, 1937

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Corky, the comic strip, was the topper strip to Gasoline Alley, and both were written and drawn by Frank King. Corky, the character, was the first son born to Gasoline Alley main character Walt Wallet and his wife Nina. Walt had previously adopted a son, Skeezix, but that was before he and Nina met. Corky not only had his own topper strip, but he was also the subject of the two movies based on Gasoline Alley, which I mentioned in a previous post.

Here, we see Corky take down the Christmas tree in a quite unorthodox way. I've never seen it done this way before, but I'm sure someone must have tried it at least once. I imagine anyone who would do that would take the decorations off of the tree first, though.

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The Wizard of Id, December 25, 1967

The Wizard of Id, December 25, 1967

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Fun fact: Mick and Mason Mastroianni, grandsons of Wizard of Id creator Johnny Hart and current Wizard of Id creative team, were born after the first Garfield comic strip was published. That seems very weird to me, but probably only to me.

Anyway, what do you get the man who not only has everything but owns everything in the country? A new torture device, it looks like. I wonder if he'll actually deign to enter the dungeon to use it himself or if he'll have one of his minions do it.

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Winnie Winkle, December 26, 1952

Winnie Winkle, December 26, 1952

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Early on, the strip Winnie Winkle was titled Winnie Winkle, the Breadwinner, because she was a woman working to support her parents. Here we see she and her mother hinting that perhaps her father should assist with this arrangement. I imagine the work he would do would be around the house, because I can't fathom anyone would want to hire a grouchy old man like that.

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Gasoline Alley, December 30, 1952

Gasoline Alley, December 30, 1952

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Frank King drew Gasoline Alley for a little over 40 years, until the strip was taken over by his assistants Bill Perry and Dick Moores. This strip was published near the end of his run. Perry had already taken over the Sunday strip at this point. Also, a year before, two movies based on the strip had been released, one simply called Gasoline Alley, and the other called Corky of Gasoline Alley. I watched the first one (you can, too, if you want, courtesy of The Film Detective). It's a perfectly fine, fairly uninteresting, but inoffensive movie. I wanted to watch the second one, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere to watch, either to stream or to purchase. Still, it was released the same year as the first and has the same cast, so I imagine it's just about as perfectly fine but not great as the first one is.

This particular strip is great, because it's about a Christmas gift but also looks forward to the new year. I don't think Tops's approach is the best o…

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