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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, 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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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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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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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 one to take, especially since you don't have to smoke even if you're wearing a smoking jacket. I guess it'll be fine, though, as long as he keeps to his word. I can imagine him continuing to smoke and using the jacket as an excuse. Guess I'll have to look back at Gasoline Alley strips from 1953 to find out if he did or not.

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Off the Record was a pretty standard single panel comic without any recurring characters that ran for quite a long time, from 1935 to 1984. I haven't been able to find that much information on it. The Lambiek Comiclopedia says the comic was started by Carl Kuhn, and taken over later by the artist of the strip you see here, Ed Reed. Lambiek has no page for Kuhn, however. Wikipedia has no page dedicated to the strip or either of those artists, but it is in the list of newspaper comic strips and also mentions Kuhn. Allan Holtz's encyclopedic reference guide American Newspaper Comics lists Ed Reed as the original creator and has no mention of Kuhn. He also says he has strips in his collection from the early 40's, presumably signed only by Reed, so even if Kuhn had started the strip he wasn't the main producer of it for the majority of its run. The rest of the internet is fairly silent on the matter, especially on the existence of a cartoonist named Carl Kuhn. I do know of Charles Kuhn, who created the comic strip Grandma, but I haven't been able to find any Carls with that last name. I wonder where Lambiek got that information from. A mystery for another time.

I have much less to say about this particular strip than I do its creators. I just like it and think it's cute. Happy Boxing Day, everybody.

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I hope no one was woken up too early today, and I hope that if they were they will learn not to give a bass drum to a child for Christmas next year. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Little Jimmy, by Jimmy Swinnerton, was one of the very earliest comic features with recurring characters. The titular character Jimmy was often seen getting into trouble, as well as causing it. Jimmy doesn't appear in this particular strip, however, and all the trouble is caused by Mrs. Perkins' dog Violet. Of course, one could say that the Major has actually caused the trouble himself by kicking Violet in the first place. I'm sure the real Santa is always very kind to animals.

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Virgil Partch, creator of Big George, was more well-known for his single panel magazine cartoons, but due to the prodding of his friend Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace, he eventually made it into the newspaper. He had to tone down his humor a bit from his magazine work, as his gags weren't always family friendly material. Still, he clearly didn't have trouble coming up with enough gags for the papers to run, because the strip ran for 30 years. In fact, Partch was able to work extremely far in advance of his deadlines, so he actually had years' worth of strips backlogged. This came in handy for the syndicate after his death in 1984, as they had enough material to continue printing new strips for another 6 years!

Here we see Big George himself, the bumbling husband and father wearing the Christmas stocking. With how early some kids get up on Christmas morning, and with how stressful the holiday season can be, I can completely understand somehow getting a sock on your foot that was never meant to be there. I do wonder, though, if only the candy cane was in there or if there were other treats and stocking stuffers that he's been stepping on this whole time. I hope there was no LEGO.

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Bobby Make-Believe was created by Frank King, who is better known as the creator of Gasoline Alley. Bobby only lasted from 1915 to 1919, and Gasoline Alley came along in 1918 and is most likely the reason why Bobby's strip was scrapped. Bobby seems like the type of kid that would fit right in with the Gasoline Alley folks, though, and the strip has a similar aesthetic and writing style to what King would write later.

Unlike yesterday's strip, Bobby isn't entirely selfless and says if he ever met Santa that he would ask him for things for himself as well as make sure the kids he doesn't like don't get anything. Still, he has a good heart and cares about his friends who are less fortunate, and would make sure Santa brings them something nice that they would like. I love that he mentions the kid on crutches who can't use toys, and asks Santa to bring him some books instead. It also seems to be implied that he has a bit of a crush on Virginia, given that he asks Santa to bring her all kinds of things. It's all make-believe, obviously, but I love how King is able to show who Bobby really through a simple fantasy.