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These are the first two pages of a short-run Christmas series commissioned by King Feature Syndicate in 1948. It's been a common tradition over the years for syndicates to order these kinds of Christmas series, though it's become less common more recently. The themes of these series vary, and while some of them are of the Santa Claus, elves, and reindeer variety, there were many that took the religious approach. This series was done by Hal Foster, who was a devout Christian himself and therefore quite comfortable with the material. It's unusual, though, as it was a large format with only one illustration each day and a caption which told the story as contained in the Bible. It's definitely the best format for Foster's beautiful and striking images, though.

Hal Foster is best known for creating the Prince Valiant comic strip, though he never sought out a career in cartooning. He was originally an illustrator, and doing quite well at it. He was asked to draw some illustrations for the Tarzan comics, and caught the eye of William Randolph Hearst, who wanted him to do a comic strip for his King Features Syndicate. Foster came up with Prince Valiant, and began writing and drawing it in 1937, at the age of 44. The strip still runs as of this writing, and has been done by a succession of writers and artists. In my opinion, though, the art has never been as good as Foster's. He had an amazingly clean and crisp style that is a joy to look at, and this Christmas Story series is another great example of his work.

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Nancy demonstrates an impulse that I think we've all had at one time or another. Some actors seem to always play a certain type of person, and we come to expect that of most of them, so it's a bit jarring at times when we see one playing against type. I've certainly had that experience before. It would definitely be difficult if you recognized the person playing Santa Claus as someone who had not been so kind and jolly in a different role. It seems like the Santa outfit would only be a disguise and a way to sneak into and rob the toy store.

Interestingly, this is a joke that Bushmiller had used previously, in a strip that was published 12 years earlier:

He just updated it to be used with Santa Claus. It still works, though, in my opinion, and it isn't a very surprising thing to see. Cartoonists who have been doing their comic strips for quite a while do tend to reuse many jokes they had used before. In fact, legacy cartoonists drawing a comic strip created by someone else will often dig back into the creator's archives to resurrect an old joke for a new audience. They obviously hope that people won't notice, and most people don't.

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Here's Major Hoople again, doing as he does and telling young Alvin a number of obviously untrue stories of his life. I guess it must get pretty boring around the boarding house, because Major Hoople has to invent stories to keep everyone entertained. Either that, or he makes up the stories in order to hide the real truth of his criminal past. Who was Major Hoople, really? What has he done? Who is he running from? We'll never hear it from his own mouth, I guess.

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Our Boarding House, created by Gene Ahern, centered around the residents of a boarding house belonging to Martha Hoople. Here, we see her husband Major Amos B. Hoople attempting to procure some holiday money with as little work as possible. As someone with no money for the holidays myself, I quite understand his predicament. It's probably a bit too late to try to get a job as a guy in a Santa Claus suit now, though.

Major Hoople was fond of telling outlandish stories to all who would listen, so I hope he listens to the kids who speak to him instead of talking their ears off. Interestingly, just as many people these days refer to the Peanuts comic strip as "Charlie Brown," Major Hoople was so popular in his day that most people just called the strip after him. The strip was popular enough that a rival newspaper syndicate paid Ahern to create a comic strip called Room and Board with nearly identical characters, but with different names. Oddly, it wasn't as popular as the original.

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Here's another Nancy, this time about going to see Santa Claus at the mall. I can imagine a kid saying something like that, though, because he can't think of anything due to being excited or nervous to see Santa. As a kid, I was always too scared, even though my parents took me to the mall to see him. My memories consist entirely of looking at the line of people while standing outside the area and telling my mom I didn't want to. I don't even remember ever seeing the guy in the Santa suit from far away. I was a very shy child. I don't think I've changed much. Guys in Santa suits still make me nervous.

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Frederick Opper created Happy Hooligan in 1900, and he was one of the first comic strip characters to become popular, at least in the United States. Hooligan was an Irish-American bum who wore a can on his head, smoked a cigar, and got into trouble on a regular basis. Despite this, he's a good man and is mainly just a victim of circumstance.

While the strip was originally simply titled Happy Hooligan, its title changed as its focus changed. First, it was renamed Mr. Dough and Mr. Dubb, and focused on an appropriately named banker and a small man from the country. Mr. Dough was then removed from the title and it was simply called Mr. Dubb. Later, it was changed to Down In the Farm as the focus shifted to Mr. Dubb's life in the country. All three of them appear in this strip, as well as Hooligan's wife, Suzanne, and their children, who inexplicably also wear cans on their heads. Since this is Christmas, it also shows one of the few times Hooligan doesn't get in trouble at the end, though there is the one guy who says, "Swat 'em anyhow."

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Zippy the Pinhead, created by Bill Griffith, is probably the most surreal comic strip, if not ever, then certainly in publication today. It's notable for being one of very few strips that began and continue in college newspapers and alternative weeklies, but which is also syndicated to mainstream newspapers. The humor is obviously geared towards those who prefer something... outside the norm. I like it, and a lot of people seem to as well, as Zippy appears in quite a few newspapers. It's not for everyone, though.

This one is from fairly recently, but the basic premise and feel of the strip hasn't really changed much over the years. If you think, "This is just weird and dumb and makes no sense," and you feel yourself saying that in a negative tone of voice, then this comic is not for you. If you think that in a positive tone of voice, as I do, then you'll probably like it.

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Mark Trail is a comic strip that has always been about nature, ever since Ed Dodd created it in 1946. The Christmas strips have never tended to deviate from that too much, and generally include things about nature that are relevant to the season. This strip from a couple years ago, by current artist James Allen, continues that tradition. It also includes a hint of religious themes, as Dodd was also wont to do, most probably because his father was a Baptist minister.

Mark Trail as a comic has never really interested me that much, but Ed Dodd is from my home state of Georgia, and The Lost Forest where Mark Trail lives is apparently located in north Georgia as well, so I feel a bit of a connection.

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I posted about the Katzenjammer Kids last year when I shared a classic 1905 Rudolph Dirks strip. Dirks was the original creator of the Katzies, but this one is drawn by the replacement artist Harold Knerr. Knerr drew the strip for the Hearst papers after Dirks left to work for the rival Pulitzer papers. Dirks wanted to take entire strip with him, but the courts ruled that he couldn't use the same title. So, Knerr drew The Katzenjammer Kids for Hearst, and Dirks used the same characters under a new title, The Captain and the Kids. That meant there were two versions of the same strip drawn by two different artists running in different newspapers at the same time! The strip is already the longest running comic strip ever, but this means that there are more strips in the Katzenjammer archive than normally would be.

If you pay close attention, you can tell the difference in the art between Dirks and Knerr, but the casual observer probably wouldn't be able to. The humor is about the same, though. This particular one has Hans and Fritz getting into the usual trouble, and the captain getting himself into more trouble as a result. I'm not really sure why they're shooting a movie with Santa Claus, a monkey, and a lion, though. I guess I'd have to see the finished product to understand.

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Bringing Up Father is among the longest running comic strips in the United States, beginning in 1913 and running all the way to 2000. It revolved around an Irish family whose titular father, Jiggs, was everything one would expect from a stereotypical Irishman. Jiggs always had a cigar and loved to gamble and drink. George McManus, the creator, did not give Jiggs these qualities out of ignorance, however. Both of his parents were from Ireland, so he had a wealth of knowledge and experience in that area.

This strip (which just happens to be from the same day as yesterday's) is typical Jiggs behavior. The premise of Bringing Up Father as a whole is that Jiggs fell into a large amount of money by chance and moved to New York, but doesn't know how to deal with his fortunes and retains all of his working class attitudes. That's obvious here, as he gambles away all the money that he was supposed to spend on a Christmas gift for his wife. The upside is that he now knows how to play baccarat, though I'm not sure that's worth it.