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I guess now we know the only thing that's going to go on all those blank Christmas lists that Herby's parents have been hiding everywhere. I guess their plan backfired. Instead of going all those other places and causing mischief, he's always underfoot asking for a bike.

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I posted an Elsworth strip previously, and was hoping to find a bit more information on the strip to share along with this one, but it seems there really isn't any. Despite running for 12 years in many high profile papers, no one on the internet seems to care much about it (either that or my search engine skills aren't as good as I think they are).

This particular one is odd, because it appears that a panel is missing. The dialogue at the beginning seems to start in the middle of a conversation. Either there was a panel or two cut in order to save space, or the first and the second panels were mixed up somehow, or something. Also, the top and the bottom row of panels seem like they're from two separate strips, because there's no connection between them. Very odd.

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I've posted some Christmas Bill Holman art before, but this is the strip he's the most known for, Smokey Stover. It was a popular comic that ran for roughly 40 years, and featured a firefighter, the titular Smokey, as its main character. Hollman was known to put various side gags in the background of each panel which were usually plays on words, as can be seen in several panels here. At Christmas time there would always be a sign somewhere saying "notary sojac." According to Holman, this was a reference to the Gaelic phrase "Nodlaig Sodhach," which means "Merry Christmas." Others in this particular strip include the valet Forge, a foreign policy, and hoss scents. This may be what made the strip so popular; even if you didn't laugh at the final punchline, there was at least something in one of the panels that might make you grin.

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Emily and Mabel started out as a single panel gag strip by Mike Angelo called Funny Angles. While the strip didn't start out with any recurring characters, Angelo started featuring the twin older ladies Emily and Mabel more and more as the years went on, and eventually renamed the panel after them. The strip centered around the titular characters doing their best to woo various men, usually unsuccessfully. They are always shown together, and I'm not sure if it's ever made clear which is Emily and which is Mabel, but I guess it doesn't really make a difference.

Here we see Emily or Mabel on an impromptu date with a mall Santa. It's interesting to note that often in the strips there is only one man that's the object of the ladies' affection, which makes me wonder whether they just happen to go everywhere together, even dates, or if they are competing with each other for the same man, or if there's some kind of bigamy thing going on. I'm not sure. Hopefully Mabel or Emily also has a Santa at a different mall that she plans to visit at work later.

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I posted some Mr. and Mrs. strips last year, from when Clare Briggs was doing it. Here we have one from the later, Arthur Folwell and Kin Platt years. I find it interesting that the art here focuses mainly on the faces of the two main characters and the new friends that they meet, without doing anything to establish a sense of place or position relative to anything else. However, in doing so it captures the feeling of cramped discomfort that you would have while carrying a bunch of packages through the big city while trying to find your car. It's amazing what you can do with some snappy dialogue and facial expressions.

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I've posted Smitty Christmas comics twice before, but those were from some of his earlier days and focused on Smitty himself. Here we see Smitty's younger brother Herby trying his best to be a Dennis the Menace, but being foiled by his own desire for Christmas presents. It's a clever way to get Herby to be good, but I wonder if they'll stay blank the whole month or not. It would kind of spoil the surprise, but it would be interesting to slowly add things to the "hidden" lists to give Herby some extra incentive. Maybe some of the things could get crossed out, too, to really make him wonder.

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Penny, created by Harry Haenigsen, was a fairly long running comic strip about a teenage girl, the eponymous Penny. Haenigsen created the strip in 1943 at the suggestion of the wife of the New York Herald Tribune's publisher. It seemed she was tired of seeing so many comic strips about boys, and asked for one about a girl. Haenigsen was already drawing a comic strip about a teenage boy, called Our Bill, so he did something similar, but with a girl. Both strips are about as authentically mid-century teenager as you can get, and Haenigsen did his level best to keep them that way. To make sure the slang terms he used in the strip were current, he hung out at soda fountains and often invited groups of neighborhood kids to his house on weekends. He even invented some of his own slang terms rather than use ones that he knew were out of date. He was assisted on art duties by Bill Hoest, who took up a majority of the workload after Haenigsen sustained a serious injury in 1965. The strip unfortunately ended in 1970 after Hoest left to start his own strip, The Lockhorns.

This particular strip highlights some Haenigsen's wonderful art style. He's clearly trying to imitate the style of various Christmas cards, but it still has the dynamic look of his regular panels, so you're not quite sure what's going on until you reach the last panel. My only criticism of the strip is that Penny doesn't necessarily look like a teenage girl as much as an adult woman playing a teenage girl in a 1950's movie. Much like those movies, though, there's enough charm to it that you don't really think about it too much.

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Leo the Little Leaguer, or in this case just Leo, was a single panel comic created by Walt Lardner that ran for a fairly short time, though it did get picked up by a few high profile newspapers. It was, as its name suggests, about a kid who plays Little League baseball, and generally had jokes revolving around that and other sports. From what I could find, it started in March of 1966, and most client newspapers didn't carry it past October, but at least one stuck it out until the end of the year. Lardner's art style was delightful, and the gags weren't too bad, so it's a shame that it didn't last longer than it did.

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I begin my annual tradition of posting winter and Christmas themed comic strips in December with a new personal favorite, The Timid Soul. I wrote about Caspar Milquetoast earlier this year, and here he is in a situation that I could definitely empathize with. While I'm not quite as milquetoast as Caspar, I'm pretty close. I think my personal approach would be a bit different, though. I'd probably just close my eyes and root around in the drawer or closet until I found what I was looking for. Sure, there is the risk of feeling something unfamiliar and wondering if it's a gift, but it would still allow for some kind of surprise. Besides, if she's smart she'll hide it in the drawer where I put all the shirts that I don't like and never wear, so there's no chance I'll ever look in it.