Click the image to see a larger version.

Earlier this month I posted an Off The Record Sunday, noting that it was still a mystery to me why the Lambiek Comiclopedia listed the creator of the strip as Carl Kuhn, when I could find nothing about him drawing or writing the strip or even being a cartoonist.

The plot has thickened.

On December 23, Lambiek updated their page on Ed Reed, which is where it says Carl Kuhn created the strip, to say that Kuhn passed the strip to Reed in 1940. This is impossible, given that the strip I posted earlier in the month is from 1938 and has Reed's name on it. Since posting that strip, I had wanted to go back and find out for myself who really did start it, so I took today's strip as an opportunity to find out once and for all.

Allan Holtz in American Newspaper Comics lists the start date as November 19, 1934. So, I went to Newspapers.com, searched for Off the Record by Carl Kuhn on that date, and found nothing. I did the same search for Ed Reed, and found out two things: One, Ed Reed is credited for Off The Record on November 19 and Carl Kuhn is nowhere to be found, and two, Allan Holtz is wrong about the start date, because I found Off The Record running as far back as October 29 of that year. This means that both Holtz and Lambiek are wrong, and I still have no idea who this Carl Kuhn is. I guess I'd better contact Lambiek with my findings and see what they say.

Anyway, here's a Christmas comic strip that I thought was mildly funny.

Click the image to see a larger version.

A reminder to always write your gags and draw your comics far ahead of deadline so you don't end up working on Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Click the image to see a larger version.

Here's another pre-Family Circus era Billy on Bil Keane's first syndicated comic strip, Channel Chuckles. I know the theme of the strip is television, but I think this one is kind of a stretch. Stockings are hung over the fireplace so that Santa will see them when he emerges from going down the chimney, so I'm not sure how he would miss them if they were hung in their proper place. Plus, while Santa is delivering all the toys, does he stop to watch TV as he eats his cookies with milk? If he's going to get to all the children around the world, I'm not sure how he has time for that. Elf magic allows for it, I guess.

Click the image to see a larger version.

The Flibbertys (misspelled here as "The Fibbertys") was a comic strip created by Ray Helle in September 1954, and which ran until 1972. It concerned a family named the Flibbertys, consisting of mother and father Fran and Stan, children Wendy, Butch, and Sis, their dog Geddown, and their cat Preston. Geddown and Preston had dialogue balloons, but it didn't mean they could "talk." Any dialogue they had could only be understood by other animals, and not any of the human characters. Unlike a character like Snoopy or Garfield, these were not thought bubbles, but actual dialogue balloons, so it makes you imagine that they are actually speaking, just in a different language perhaps.

I find it interesting that in this strip the parents are looking for where the kids hid the presents, when usually it's the other way around. I think Butch has the right idea, too. You should set booby traps in your hiding places, especially if you can't find anywhere good and all of the places that are available are the really obvious ones.

Click the image to see a larger version.

This Funny World was an interesting strip. There was no consistent cartoonist, because it essentially reprinted single panel gag comics from various popular magazines. Due to it being copyrighted to Collier's Magazine, Allan Holtz surmises that rather than being reprints, the panels were potentially rejected magazine submissions. It's possible, but seeing as how it outlived Collier's, running from 1945 all the way to 1985, I'm skeptical of that explanation. It's an interesting idea for a newspaper comic nonetheless.

Not much to say about this one. It certainly looks like it could be in a magazine. I like the smug look the man has as he walks away. I wonder where he got a poster of that size.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Gasoline Alley has been featured several times on this blog before, but it just continues to be a wonderful source of Christmas themed strips, so I keep going back to it. While it was created by Frank King in 1918, after King's death in 1969 it was carried on by a succession of different cartoonists and continues to this day. In fact, in just three more years, when it reaches its 110th year of publication, it will surpass The Katzenjammer Kids as the longest running newspaper comic.

Here we have an example of one of the later Frank King strips, and one that I can certainly relate to. I love making hand-made Christmas cards for my family, and in the past have actually considered doing either a wood block or linoleum block print for them. It would certainly make reproducing them multiple times for all my siblings easier. I may consider it again for next year. I did quite a lot of printmaking in college, so I'm familiar with the process that Skeezix shows off to Nina here. The only part that he forgot, of course, is that you have to carve the letters into the block backwards, so that they read forwards when you stamp it onto the paper. You have to retrain your brain a bit in order to make the letters wrong so they will be right later. I certainly made that mistake when I was first starting out. In fact, my senior art project included some woodblocks, and I even made that mistake on one of those pieces as well. There was someone yelling "AAAAAAAA!" and I put the exclamation point on the wrong side of the exclamation. I hope no one noticed.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Big Sister was created by Les Forgrave in 1928. Forgrave wrote and drew it until his death in 1953. It was taken over by his assistant, Jimmy McMenamy, who also died shortly thereafter, after which it passed to Bob Naylor. It ran until Naylor retired in 1972. The strip concerned a family of four, consisting of a father and three children. The father was a widower, so the titular big sister, Phoebe, took it upon herself to be the mother figure for her two younger brothers, Buddy and Donnie. Phoebe is mature beyond her years, and takes her role in the family very seriously (perhaps too seriously at times).

Today's example is from the Naylor years, and displays Phoebe's personality quite well. When I first read this while searching for strips to post this month, without even knowing the overall backstory, I could already tell the kind of relationship she was supposed to have with her brothers, and the role that she played. I wouldn't necessarily call her bossy, but she certainly acts with authority in the household, as we can see here.

I can understand how the boys feel here. A lot of preparation can go into a holiday or other important occasion, and often by the time the preparation's done you've had so much of the holiday already that you don't even feel like celebrating it. Still, I'm sure that after the boys have a break and then sleep on it, they'll be ready for some more Christmas the next day.

Click the image to see a larger version.

The Toodles was a domestic, family comic strip written by husband and wife team Stanley and Betsy Baer, and drawn by Rod Ruth. Betsy was the daughter of cartoonist Sol Hess, known for creating the comic strip The Nebbs. Betsy and her husband disagreed with Sol about the way he did things in his strip, and so to prove a point, they started a comic strip of their own. It started in 1941 and ran until 1961. Unfortunately, Sol Hess died the very month that the strip debuted, so they were unable to truly prove him wrong. The Bell Syndicate, who published The Nebbs, certainly took notice, though, and hired them on to continue writing the strip after Hess's death. Since they were writing two comic strips at once, they couldn't resist the temptation to have them cross over, and the Nebbs and the Toodles began visiting each other from time to time. Even when The Nebbs ended and The Toodles was still running, the Nebb family would still show up to visit the Toodle family occasionally.

Here we see the youngest members of the Toodle family, the twins Penny and Pat, who were probably the most popular characters in the strip. The way they imagine Santa Claus is very interesting. I don't think I've seen very many fantasies where Santa looks stressed and overworked. He has all those elves to help him, after all. He's also magical, which I imagine would make it easier to do at least some of the tasks that he has to do. Still, Pat's theory about Santa's beard could be correct. It seems Santa's elves are often depicted with beards, too, so they probably don't have a lot of time to shave either. Perhaps instead of leaving milk and cookies for Santa this year, leave him a razor.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Kayo once again needs to borrow money in order to buy a Christmas present, and Mamie is kind enough to be the first to contribute, even though the gift is for her. Perhaps she thought that the residents of the boarding house and the surrounding city would be as kind as the people that work in Smitty's office. As we see, this is not necessarily true.

For those unfamiliar with Moon Mullins, Willie and Mamie are Moon and Kayo's aunt and uncle, and Mamie works for the Plushbottoms, owners of the boarding house, as a washerwoman. Willie... doesn't work, and is portrayed as lazy and shiftless. He also seems to have a magnetic pull towards anyone with small amounts of cash. As soon as Kayo walked outside with that quarter, Willie pounced on him and convinced him to give it up. I guess he figured it would be easier than asking his wife.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Side Glances was a comic panel created by George Clark in 1928, which ran all the way up to 1985. Clark wrote and drew it up until 1939, when he started working for a different syndicate and continued writing and drawing a similar panel under the title The Neighbors. Side Glances was taken over by William Galbraith Crawford, who always signed his work with his middle name, as we see in this example. Crawford was an illustrator for magazines and movie posters, and had published cartoons in the New Yorker on many occasions, so he was a nice fit for the single panel format. I wasn't able to find much information about him on the Internet, but apparently his work is popular on art auction websites.

As for this particular panel, I think it's safe to say that this boy is going to be getting an electric train for Christmas whether he wants one or not. I've never had kids, but I imagine one of the joys of Christmas is giving them things that either you never had as a kid but wanted, or things that you want now that you can't justify buying for yourself otherwise. The kid might have fun with it, but when they stop having fun then you can take it. Or if they don't like it, you can have it for yourself immediately. It's a win-win situation.