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Following on from yesterday, just as Vi isn't very good at keeping a secret from Joe, Joe is equally bad at keeping a secret from Vi. I think it might have been better for Joe to meet this German (I guess) gentleman somewhere else outside of his home in order to be more discreet, but I guess he hasn't really thought that far.

I'm not entirely clear on why the salesman is German, or at least has some kind of German accent going on. Do the best pearls come from Germany? Or possibly the best knock-off ones?

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Here we have another Mr. and Mrs., and as we see Joe and Vi find it very difficult to hide things from one another. I chose this one mostly because of the first two panels. Comic strips can often be interesting cultural time capsules. It's strange to think that at one point owning a mahjong set was part of being "up to date." I wonder how many people in the United States would even know what a mahjong set was if they saw one.

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Mr. and Mrs. was a comic strip created by Clare Briggs, which involved the constantly bickering couple Joe and Vi and their young son Roscoe. Roscoe's role was diminished over the years, especially after Briggs died and other cartoonists took over. Here, and in many strips, he serves as an attempt to remind Joe or Vi that they are married and ought to love each other. Joe seems to always have good intentions in his conversations with his wife, but he never really gets it right. In this case he just wants the conversation to be over so he can get back to his radio program. I'm sure he'll care a bit more about the cards after the program is over. Personally, I'd love to send out a card that said "We wish you a comparatively merry Christmas and a happy new year, with certain reservations, and peace on earth such as it is." I wonder what people would think.

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I grew up in a house with very high ceilings, so we had some pretty big Christmas trees over the years. I do remember, though, that there were several marks on the ceiling from when we overestimated its height and the top of the tree trunk scratched it. Speaking from experience, I would advise Nancy not to be so quick to advocate for a taller tree, because it simply means that it will take much longer to decorate. I've always enjoyed a well-decorated tree when it was finished, but actually getting everything on the tree has always been very boring and tedious for me.

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This is the Thornton Burgess and Harrison Cady version of Peter Rabbit, also known as Peter Cottontail (renamed as such so as not to be confused with the Beatrix Potter version).

Until recently I lived in an apartment that was out in the woods, and every kind of insect, arachnid, and other arthropod (beetles, giant roaches, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, and various kinds of fly) somehow found its way inside. Thankfully, however, I never had to deal with them throwing snowballs at me. I think Peter's wish to live somewhere that it's always summer wouldn't help him in this case, because although the bugs wouldn't use snowballs, they'd probably find some other way to bother him.

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Little Iodine has a history similar to, but not exactly like, another strip I posted a few days ago, Elswroth. Jimmy Hatlo had been drawing his single panel gag strip They'll Do It Every Time for a couple decades, when he and the syndicate realized that one of the recurring characters in particular was becoming the most popular. The strip didn't necessarily have any ongoing continuity or characters, but some characters did appear quite often. The most popular ones revolved around Henry and Cora Tremblechin, as well as their daughter Iodine, who appeared now and again. After Hatlo began featuring Iodine more frequently, it became clear that she was what the readers kept coming back for. Iodine got her own strip in 1943, though unlike Elsworth, it wasn't just a change in title. Hatlo continued the single panel strip and simply moved the exploits of the Tremblechin family over to the multi-panel strip Little Iodine. Hatlo continued doing both strips until his death in 1963. They'll Do It Every Time continued under Al Scaduto and Bob Dunn all the way to 2008, but Little Iodine, continued by Bob Dunn and Hy Eisman, only lasted until 1987.

I only really have one thing to say about this particular Iodine example that I've posted, which is this: next time try a tarp instead.

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I posted a few Clyde Lamb Herman strips last year, but it's clearly been a long year because I completely forgot about that. So here's another one.

It reminds me of my time living in Jefferson City, MO. It's the capital of Missouri, but there isn't really much there except for a bunch of lawyers and politicians, who need to get where they're going as quickly as possible. As it snows there quite a bit in the winter, there were plenty of plows to take care of all of the snow. They got the job done quickly, too. I remember coming home from work once, and noticing a single snowflake falling from the sky. Immediately afterwards, I looked behind me and there was a snowplow going down the street, clearly ready for what was about to happen. Kind of strange, but I appreciated never having to worry about snow on the roads.

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Archie was, of course, a long running series of comic books which started back in 1942, drawn by Bob Montana. Five years after the comic books began, Montana also began the newspaper comic that would run all the way until 2011 (though as it's a King Features property, reprints still continue). After Montana's death in 1975, Dan DeCarlo, who had been responsible for developing the house style for Archie Comics in the late 50's, took over full artist duties on both the main Archie comic book as well as the comic strip.

In this particular strip, we have Coach Kleats looking to get some hot chocolate from a near empty jug. Buck's method seems sound, though I'd probably just open up the top and pour it out from there. I just hope they don't mix up the jugs after they win the game and pour the hot chocolate all over the coach.

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It's December again, which means I'm reviving my blog to bring you more comic strips about wintertime and Christmastime. I also have some blog ideas that don't have Christmas or winter themes that I plan to do starting next month.

For now, though, we have a reminder to bundle up from Elsworth, or at least from his mother. He was created by Bernard Segal, who went by the pen name Seeg. His first comic strips appeared in the army newspaper 10-SHUN during World War II, but he would later have a syndicated feature named Honey and Hank. The strip featured the title characters as well as their son Elsworth, and as often happens, the kid became the most popular character and the strip was renamed. It didn't run for too much longer after this particular strip was published, ending in 1958. Segal would not have another comic strip after that, but instead shifted his focus to fine art, becoming a fairly successful abstract expressionist painter.