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I wonder about Michael's question in the first panel. Does he think that his grandpa is so old that he's actually older than Santa? How old does he think Santa is? Does he suspect that his grandpa might be Santa? Has he already figured out that Santa is a myth, and is trying to find out about its origins?
Or has he just not thought about it at all (which is far more likely)?
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I never went to see Santa Claus at the mall when I was a kid. It wasn't because my parents wouldn't take me, or because the lines were too long, but because I didn't really want to. My parents offered to take me, but I always declined. I don't really remember why. I think maybe I was just shy and didn't want to talk to a strange man in a red suit, or maybe it was because I didn't think meeting him in person to tell him what I wanted would really make much difference in what I got. Plus, who wants to wait in that kind of line?
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Is it December already? That must mean it's time for some Christmas related comic strips on the blog (or anything on the blog, really).
We begin this year with For Better or For Worse, a strip that, as of this writing, is still running in newspapers. These days it's only in reruns, and has been since 2008 when the story started back from the very beginning, though many of the rerun strips do have alterations and updates. It's one that I never thought of as a favorite, but that I always admired, for following the lives of so many characters as they grow and change in almost real-time. The strip is equal parts funny, dramatic, and poignant, and certainly never boring.
This particular strip is definitely relatable. Going to get a Christmas tree is always an adventure, at least as far as real ones go. Fake trees are, I imagine, much less exciting when you first get them, but they can get more and more exciting over time as they degrade and fall apart. The excitement is always worth the trouble, though, and makes for some wonderful stories, to say the least.
Sometimes researching a creator is difficult, not because of the lack of information, but because of the overwhelming wealth of it. Over his lifetime, Jack Kirby produced an incredibly large body of work, which includes co-creating most of the well-known Marvel Comics characters, such as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the X-Men, as well as quite a few not nearly as well known DC Comics characters, including The Guardian, the Newsboy Legion, The Demon, and all the New Gods characters of the Fourth World. Because of this, there has been quite a bit written over the years about the man and his work, and it takes quite a long time to sort through. It's especially difficult when what you're looking for is information about his lesser-known work in newspaper comic strips, and when much of that was work for an obscure syndicate called Lincoln Newspaper Features that we'd probably know absolutely nothing about had Kirby not worked for them. This information is important, however, because his work in newspapers directly led to him meeting people he would co-create the aforementioned famous characters with, as well as dictating who he would create those characters for.
Read more…
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Here's another Polly and Her Pals, with wonderful art by Cliff Sterrett. Carrie learns a valuable lesson here about the true meaning of Christmas and about giving and sharing, or almost does. Of course, Angel doesn't seem too happy with either her or Paw giving her cookies to the birds. To be honest, I think the birds would be happier with seeds than with cookies. Either way, the lesson is not that it's okay to take cookies from children at Christmas, though I don't think it's wrong to ask them if they'd share one with you.
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Here we have a Christmas Eve in the Nebb household, with Junior falling asleep and dreaming of Santa's visit. Santa seems like an old grouch in it, though I'd imagine Junior is merely projecting his own fears of inadequacy onto him, and that Santa wouldn't be that way in real life. Junior clearly believes he's been bad and doesn't deserve toys, and is afraid that even though he sneaks out of bed to see Santa, the experience may not turn out the way he'd hoped. Thankfully, though, he believes his father will stick up for him despite his failings. It's interesting that Junior thinks so highly of his father that he turns out to be a better presence in his dream than even Santa Claus.
Who knew a silly Christmas comic strip could be so deep?
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Here we have an example of Mutt having a ridiculous idea and nearly pulling it off, but instead giving in to his vices and messing everything up. It's a surprise that all Jeff got was a face full of soot, and didn't catch on fire. Why are these guys still friends, exactly?
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I like this particular strip, because it shows who Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace really is: not a menace by intention, but just a kid who is inadvertently always causing trouble. After all, he's here having a tea party with a girl, and the only trouble he causes is upsetting Joey over the presents he might not get. I mean, I'm sure Joey believes he's been good, but who knows what his mother thinks about it, and what she's been telling Santa.
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It's not entirely clear why Bugs is spending Christmas at Porky's house, but I guess to get a visit from Santa you have to have a chimney, and I don't think Bugs' rabbit hole has one.
Of course, the most upsetting part about this strip is that when Santa crashes on Porky's roof, the reindeer just keep going without him. I guess they're very concerned with keeping to the schedule. It is quite a hectic night, after all.
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Ah, the indoor ski jump. Definitely seems like the type of ridiculous thing that would appear in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but could never actually exist in real life. At the very least, they wouldn't put it right next to the Santa Claus display and endanger the large amounts of children lining up to see him.
Again, this is very different from what one would expect to see Bugs do in a cartoon. A cartoon would be more likely to give Bugs a clever quip to say to Santa at the end instead of turning to the audience and saying something cliche. Also, I really wish Roger Armstrong was given more space for the artwork. With the size of the panels he was able to use, it all feels very cramped and spare. I imagine he could have shown us something much more interesting with larger panels. Due to financial concerns, however, the 40s were the time when newspapers really began shrinking the comics considerably, so this kind of thing was happening more and more.