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Caroling has always been one of those things that seems like a good idea when you see it in movies or on TV but never really works out the way you want in real life. I remember going caroling with my youth group when I was young, and while I enjoyed the singing, I felt like the visit and the gift we brought was more meaningful to the people than the songs we sang. Maybe they enjoyed it, but I feel like some people would rather skip the unsolicited singing and just invite people in for a chat. Then, if they asked for it you could leave them with a song, but if they didn't you could just leave them with a hug and a warm feeling. That said, maybe these days people would be more likely to just sing outside and not go in given certain safety concerns.

In this case, a visit from a nice dog on Christmas Eve is probably more enjoyable for the woman than hearing people sing, especially when you add in what I imagine is questionable guitar playing. Besides, given that Uncle Elby describes her as "that attractive widow" implies what he really wants is to win her affection more than to make the season brighter for her.

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Annibelle, created by Dorothy Urfer, was a comic strip that seemed to care more about its look and feel than its actual content. The jokes, as they were, generally centered around the social lives of women and how they appear to each other in society, and the gossip about other women in their social circles. These tended to be women on the upper crust of society, whose lives were not particularly relatable to the general public. Still, the artwork by Urfer, and later by Virginia Krausmann, was some of the best on the newspaper page. The women and their lives looked glamorous and exciting, so it didn't matter that what they talked about was vapid and uninteresting, and even though it may be a life you would never have it was a way to dream about having it.

This particular strip is a good example of the gossipy nature of the humor. The joke doesn't necessarily seem to be that Annibelle finished all her shopping early, but her cat messed up her handmade sweater, so she has to go buy her brother something at the last minute. It seems to matter more that her friend caught her shopping at the last minute and will probably tell all of her friends that Annibelle bragged about being so smart, but it turns out she's just like the rest of us and was putting up a front. How embarrassing!

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Mickey Finn by Lank Leonard is a comic strip that has been described by comic strip historian Allan Holtz as "so low-key as to be practically no key at all", but I think that was part of its appeal. The titular Mickey is an Irish-American policeman who does police work, but never really gets into anything too exciting or dangerous, and has family and romantic drama, but never anything too serious. It's one of those comfort strips that, were it still around, would be much like a Rex Morgan or Mary Worth, endlessly rehashing the same stories year after year and that people never actually read but appreciate that their local newspaper still carries them. Besides, Charles Schulz is reported to have said that it was his father's favorite comic strip. What more do you need?

So yes, the joke in this particular strip is old and tired (man refuses to give the same thing to his girlfriend for Christmas that he gets her every year, looks for something different, and finally settles on the same old thing), and it was probably already old by the time it was used in this strip in 1937, but that's okay. I think the dialogue between Mickey and Uncle Phil is great, and Mickey carrying around a bundle of presents with him as they go from store to store is a very fun visual. Plus, I just love the expression on the perfume lady's face. I imagine this is how all retail workers feel during Christmas shopping season.

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Harold Teen by Carl Ed was one of the first comic strips to feature a main character and cast who were all teenagers. Starting in 1919, long before characters like Archie and his Riverdale friends were around, Harold was showing people what it was like to be a teen in the early 20th century. Ed claims that there weren't any comic strips that were doing that at the time, and I'm inclined to believe him. At the very least there weren't any that reached the height of popularity that Harold Teen did, or spawn nearly as much merchandise as it did. Most comic strips at that time dealing with younger folk were centered around young children, but after Harold Teen the popularity of strips about teenagers grew quite rapidly. It was a pioneer to be sure, if not creating a genre of strip then at the very least popularizing it.

Here we see one of Harold's best friends, Shadow Smart, trying to think of a Christmas present to get the local girl all the guys have a crush on, Lillums Lovewell, and coming up with enterprising ways of getting the money to buy it. Much like Corky, although he does earn the money he needs, he unfortunately spends all of it on soda and never buys her anything. This will probably not be a big deal to her, as I imagine she has plenty of suitors and will be receiving a large number of gifts from them, and therefore won't really mind not getting a gift from Shadow. Still, one would hope that in the future Shadow, like Corky, would learn to budget his money better.

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Here we have Corky doing his Christmas shopping a year after the the comic I posted yesterday, and it looks like he has learned a thing or two from his past experience. This time, he didn't spend all of his money on candy and soda, but just enough that he didn't have enough to give to the Salvation Army Santa. Maybe in another year or two he'll learn how to budget everything properly.

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It's often hard to find information about topper strips (see my post from a couple days ago about Josie), but it's made a bit easier when the character in the topper is also a character in the main strip. Corky is the son of the main characters of the strip it's a topper for, Gasoline Alley, and regularly appeared in that strip as well as his own. In this way the topper became an extension of the main strip, rather than just an accessory for it. This didn't happen often with toppers, but Ernie Bushmiller also did it with Phil Fumble, and E.C. Segar did it with the various Thimble Theater characters that appeared in its toppers. There were probably others, but on the whole it wasn't really done, as the topper was seen as fairly disposable due to the fact that newspapers could just drop it if they wanted to save space.

I've written about Corky before, but Frank King's Gasoline Alley and its characters are always a great source for holiday cheer. Here we see Corky spending all of his money on candy and soda and not buying presents for his family, and then trying to use Santa Claus as a scapegoat. I don't know exactly how all the naughty or nice business works, but I have a sneaking suspicion that doing something like that is likely to get you a lump of coal in your stocking. I don't think Santa takes kindly to being used as a fall guy.

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Charles Addams is of course best known for his series of New Yorker cartoons, The Addams Family, but for a short while he also did a newspaper comic panel known as Out Of This World. It wasn't really that different from what people had come to expect from Addams, and had the same macabre humor as his magazine cartoons, although there are also some fantasy and science fiction elements mixed in. The panel unfortunately only ran from 1955-1957.

Here we have what appears to be a robot doing his Christmas shopping and looking to buy something for his... uh... father, I guess. There are many theories from various people about how we will know when an artificial intelligence is really sentient and thinks for itself, and isn't just parroting its programming. I think wanting to buy its creator a gift for an important holiday might qualify. Sure, the scientist could have just programmed the robot to go to the store and buy him a gift, but I like to think it was actually the robot's own idea.

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Dixie Dugan by J.P. McEvoy and J.H. Striebel is an interesting case of a comic strip adaptation transcending its source material. It was based on a novel by McEvoy that was serialized in Liberty Magazine in the late 20's about a Hollywood showgirl named Dixie, aptly titled "Show Girl." It had previously been adapted into a George Gershwin musical as well as two movies, all of which focused on the Hollywood aspect of Dixie's life. In 1929 Striebel, who had done the illustrations for Liberty Magazine when the novel was first serialized, was tasked by McEvoy with doing the artwork for the comic strip adaptation that McEvoy was writing. The comic strip began as a pretty straight adaptation of the novel, but as the Depression wore on the travails of a Hollywood showgirl who wanted to be a star were not quite as interesting to most people. Dixie's Hollywood career ended and she was more focused on finding any work she could to support her family. The strip took on a life of its own, and it wasn't long before Dixie and the other characters bore almost no resemblance to the source material. By the time the next Dixie Dugan movie adaptation came around in 1943, her Hollywood escapades were not even mentioned and it mainly shows her doing what she can to help the war effort by... being a cab driver?

Anyway, as can be seen here, Dixie doesn't seem to have much interest in Hollywood but more interest in doing a polar plunge with her swimming club. I've never understood the appeal of this myself, but then again I don't really swim at all. I was also not entirely sure why it would be considered a "modern" thing to do, but after some research I've come to find out that it wasn't really a thing until the 20th century. I guess people before then had a little more sense.

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Josie by Carl Ed was one of the toppers for Ed's comic strip Harold Teen, and appeared either on top or underneath it during the latter half of the 1930s. Although Harold Teen is a strip about high school teenagers, as its name suggests, Josie focuses more on younger children and their escapades. There is much to be found on the Internet about Harold, but not so much about Josie or her friends, unfortunately.

Here we see Butch trying to extort money out of Monty by "selling" him some snowballs that he's made. As with most comic strip bullies, Butch is not very smart, and doesn't realize that strong arming someone into purchasing a weapon generally incentivizes the buyer to use it against you. Butch should work on his salesmanship skills and in the future try to convince Monty to buy them due to their superior craftsmanship and use of artisanal snow.

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Happy December, everyone!

This is the magical time of year when Arkholt's blog comes back to life and I post winter and Christmas themed newspaper comics for all to enjoy, and it reminds me that I probably should post more substantive blog posts more often. That might happen next year. Who knows.

Anyway, we begin the month with a wintery, snowy themed comic from Clifford McBride. I shared a Napoleon strip five years ago so it was high time he made a comeback. I just love McBride's artwork so much. It's very dynamic, and you can really feel the movement of it. Napoleon himself doesn't really have much of a role in this strip except as moral support, but I guess that's what dogs are best at. This is also a reminder to always be aware of the structural integrity of every part of your hat before adhering it to your head.