Stripper's Guide

[from "The Cartoonist", fall 1957 issue]

In the annals of American cartoon­ing few men have risen to nobler heights of pure foolishness than Wil­liam Holman. As if born with fun-house mirrors for corneas, everything Holman sees has a zany twist. He is a master nut in the tradition of such past masters as Goldberg, Gross and Herriman.

While Holman's Smoky Stover has delighted readers with outrageous gags for 22 years, Holman, the man, has provided a fascinating shower of anecdotes for his friends for most of his 54 years. Holman's foibles are leg­endary. Many Holmanisms refer to his parsimonious resemblance to Jack Benny. Holman, they say affection­ately, has spent 40 years working to the top of a hotly competitive pro­fession, inspired by a passionate devo­tion to money. Holman would be the last to quarrel with these observations.

Although Holman is not considered a lavish spender (his money is com­pletely tied up in cash), John Pierotti recalls at least one exception: "I roomed with Bill on one European tour with Wilson McCoy, Hilda Terry, and Bill de la Torre. On our last night in Germany we drank and ate it up real good. Came the bill, we discov­ered we were broke because we had spent our last marks on shopping sprees. But Holman, as usual, had hoarded his. It was the only time I saw Bill stuck with a check."

In seeming contradiction to the leg­end, more than one artist in distress could tell of considerable Holman fi­nancial help. One close friend ob­served that both pictures are true and Holman is a man with conflicting im­pulses. His nature, generous and out­going, is restrained by a conservative midwest rearing and early years of financial insecurity.

It was while tending a popcorn ma­chine in a dime store that Holman, age 16, abandoned his early ambition to be a fireman and went to Chicago to study cartooning under Carl Ed at the Academy of Fine Arts. He started his career that year as a copy boy for the Chicago Tribune for $6 a week. Among his new cronies were Garret Price and Harold Gray.

For $35 a week Holman moved on to Cleveland to draw a strip called "Billville Birds". It was here that he met two men who became his life­long friends: a fellow wearing a fur collar, named J. R. Williams, and a tall, skinny blond (with whom he was to swipe gags from the local vaude­ville house) named Chic Young.

At 21, Holman felt prepared to move to the big time and New York. "Holman was a success right from the start in New York", says Reamer Keller. "He got a job at Hubert's Flea Circus. He'd lay down every evening at five and let the fleas feed on his head. The job kept Bill in scratch for a long time." This episode is not fully documented, but it is certain that Holman's itch to become a top car­toonist was unrelieved.

He started a strip, "G. Whizz Jr." [make that "Gee Whiz Jr." - Allan], with the Herald Tribune. The Trib­une syndicate office in the 1920's was a colorful rallying place and Holman was completely at home. The great Winsor McCay, smoke curling under his straw hat, presided over an India ink court of cartoonists and assorted actors and publicists who came to roost. It was here that W. C. Fields taught Holman to juggle. He can still bounce a few off the walls with fi­nesse. Will Rogers often dropped by. Also on view were Charles Voight, Clare Briggs and Frank Fogarty.

Frank recalls the then 26 year old Holman. "He held second base on the 'Syndicate Indoor Baseball Team' which played outdoors against 'Ward Morehouse's Editorials' in the rooftop league, atop the Tribune building. Once Bill hit a tremendous wallop into 40th Street. Gathering up speed on its ten story descent, the ball tore through a woman's umbrella and completely destroyed it. The lady sued the Tribune and Bill was the first baseball player benched for hit­ting."

Holman's early concern of cash ex­penditures was not limited to his own. Listen to Dave Gerard: "In the early 30's, Holman lived two stories above me on East 39th Street. Bandel Linn and I had been up on the newly com­pleted Empire State Building. We called Holman from the top to stick his head out of the window and wave a towel so we could see him through the telescope, which he did. One day later Linn was in my room and called Holman's room. "Holman", he said, "Gerard and I are on top of the Em­pire State again. Wave the towel!" We watched Holman wave his towel frantically two stories above. We re­peated the gag ten days running with Holman just as energetically waving his towel. Finally he exploded, "Look, for God's sake! You guys are always broke! What's the idea of paying a dollar-ten to go up on the Empire State Building every afternoon to see me wave my towel!"

Holman's romantic escapades of that era are largely unrecorded. Otto Soglow supplies one, however, that re­veals Holman as the Great Lover. "One day Bill found himself at Coney Island and ventured into the Tunnel of Love and discovered a female sit­ting on one of the painted rocks. She explained that she was left there by some guy who was getting too familiar. Bill saw a lot of the girl and senti­mentally recalls her in his strip to this day. She was a Lithuanian; Notary Sojac was her name." No Holmanisms are more inspired than Soglow's.

Holman is almost as well known as a performer as he is a cartoonist. He has appeared in movies and worked on radio and TV. Abner Dean, who was on a panel show with Holman, Gus Edson and Soglow, says of Holman the performer, "Bill has the rare quality of being able to switch from comic to straight man. He becomes a stimulant. His essential zanyism lifts others out of any rut."

The effect of Holman upon his au­diences is unique. He instantly estab­lishes rapport as he strides on stage dressed in a dark blue suit, dotted bow tie and perhaps a light blue sweater. His mouth clamps a lit cigar and his bald head is topped incon­gruously by a bright red fireman's hat. Before the audience can quite absorb the initial visual onslaught, Holman barks in deadpan, "Cut out that laugh­ing, you idiots!" or "Shut up, you crazy screwballs!" The effect is elec­tric. They howl.


This approach has also provided his fellow performers with some queasy moments. Al Posen, long time friend and associate, had this experience: "We were putting on a show at the military hospital at Northport, L. I. The doctor in charge cau­tioned us not to make any reference to the mental condition of the patients as the audience would be made up of G.I.'s from the psychiatric ward. Bill evidently missed the briefing be­cause as soon as he came on he began referring to the patients as a bunch of nuts and screwballs — and they loved it. Bill was probably the only man in the world who could get away with it. Obviously, the audience recog­nized him as one of their own."

Holman cavorts overseas as if Europe were his home town of Crawfordsville, Indiana, where everybody knows him. He assumes that everyone from an obscure Arab in Morocco to a barmaid in a remote French village is a rabid Smoky Stover fan. This blithe assumption is incredible to his traveling companions only until they find it more often than not to be true. Gus Edson was one. "We were flying 7000 feet over the stormy North Atlantic when the pilot turned to Bill and said, 'There's a Norwegian weather ship right below us,' and with that the pilot radioed the ship and told them, 'I have Bill Holman aboard, famous American cartoonist who draws Smoky Stover.' The ship radioed back, 'Ask that crazy guy what Notary Sojac means!' "

After almost 40 years of cartoon­ing Holman retains all his youthful enthusiasm for his work. He takes pride in his craftsmanship. His gentle nature is always masked in a jest. He is incapable of a mean intention. His head is a jackpot of puns. His comedy fuse never stops sputtering. Holman looks and acts like an operator newly in from promoting P. T. Bamum's latest oddities.

Marty Branner wrote this "Owed to Bill Holman", dedicated to Mrs. Hol­man.


Dolores, the best Holman authority of all, has this to say: "Life with Bill certainly isn't dull. I never know if on a week's notice I will be heading for Paris, the middlewest or Timbuktu. He does have a faculty for not hearing at times (when I want something) but then, aren't most husbands like that? To use that old cliche, I'd do it again. You just gotta love that guy."
We all do, Dolores, we all do.

Labels: News of Yore

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

These cartoons were published on December 3, 4, 6 and 7 1906. The first and third apparently have to do with Herny Huntington proposing some sort of perpetual franchise for his railroad interests in Los Angeles -- an issue that seems to have gone nowhere.

The final cartoon finds Herriman stealing one of Opper's recurrent titles (Opper's cartoons were often featured on the back page of the Exminer when Herriman wasn't there). This is Herriman's first cartoon about the newly elected Mayor Harper who would have a very stormy few years in office. Apparently the others up for the post were considered pretty unsavory as well. Could the gent at the drawing-board in the first panel be a self-caricature?

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Dream of the Rarebit Fiend - The Saturdays
Checker Books 2006
Hardcover $29.95
Softcover $19.95
192 pages, 12.25" x 9.25"
ISBN not listed

Little Sammy Sneeze - The Complete Color Sunday Comics 1904-1905
Sunday Press Books 2007
Hardcover $55.00
96 pages, 16" x 11"
ISBN not listed

The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend 1904-1913
Ulrich Merkl 2007
Hardcover $114.00
464 pages with CD-ROM, 17" x 12"
ISBN 978-3-00-020751-8

Once again Christmas Day has come and gone, and we comic strip fans are left with a little touch of melancholy. Whether your Christmas swag consisted of tube socks or a nice new yacht to replace last year's model, you didn't get what you really wanted, which is, of course, comic strips. Oh sure, maybe some well-meaning relation who thinks they 'get' you wrapped up a couple of Archie comic digests and you had to thank them for their thoughtfulness. Do they really think you're twelve years old?

But Christmas is all about giving, not receiving. So feel free to twist that sentiment to your advantage and give yourself the sort of Christmas gift you're really pining for (better late than never, right?). And what better Christmas gift could there be for the comic strip aficionado than a heapin' helpin' of that master of the form, Winsor McCay. The past year has seen a trio of McCay books hit the market. With prices ranging from Ramen noodle level all the way up to champagne and caviar, there's one to fit every wallet.

At the low end we have the latest entry in the Checker Books McCay reprint series, this one reprinting a large batch of McCay's Saturday Rarebit Fiend strips. McCay produced two to three episodes of this strip per week for much of its run. On weekdays the strip was typically a ten panel affair while Saturday episodes were expanded to 15-20 panels. This book prints a large batch of these larger Saturday strips. According to the minimal front matter the strips are from March-October 1906, but a strip about President Taft (page 128) shows that claim to be off base. The strips are undated in the book, and that's a shame since McCay's subjects were often oblique commentaries on current events and it would have been fun to see if I was correct in my guesses about the veiled subjects of certain strips.

The reproduction quality in this book varies widely, right along with the source material which was the microfilm of the New York Evening Telegram. I've seen (and indexed) the Telegram microfilm and I have to hand it to these guys for putting a lot of work into restoration - the film I've seen isn't very good. The quality of that restoration work varies quite a bit, though, and some strips are pretty hard on the eyes. The worst quality strips tend to be hidden in the latter third of the book -- I guess they figured we'd tire of reading by then. Because of McCay's sloppy lettering these strips are hard to read even when the restoration is better than normal. It never ceases to amaze me how McCay, truly a wizard with the pen, and a fantastic letterer when he put in the effort, could stand to see these masterpiece strips go out with such sloppy lettering. The strips are reproduced at a perfectly reasonable size, but the lettering issue makes me wish it were a bit bigger, or that the restoration folks had, in some of the worst cases of sloppy lettering, relettered it so that it could be read more easily.

After reading nearly 200 Rarebit Fiend episodes I am left gasping over McCay's graphic virtuosity, but that's no surprise at all. What really did surprise me were two aspects of his work. First, that these strips are an incredible snapshot of the human condition in that long-gone time. Through a distorted comedic lens, of course, but still remarkably telling. Despite all my reading about this era, through comic strips and otherwise, I'm left feeling that I don't have a true gut feel for the way these people thought and lived. McCay affords us a deep and meaningful look rarely found in other sources. Odd, isn't it, that a book about bizarre dreams would give such insight into the reality of those days?

That was the positive surprise. The other isn't nearly so complimentary. The more I read of McCay's strip the more I found his dialogue intensely grating. McCay seemed obsessed with having speech balloons in every panel of his strip. There are many strips in this book that would have been perfectly understandable (and far funnier) with much curtailed dialogue. Instead McCay has his characters chattering along for no discernible reason. Was the guy being paid by the word? Worse yet, his characters often spend their time describing a scene that is perfectly obvious from the drawing. How could such a master graphic artist as McCay have had such a mental blindspot that he couldn't see he was shooting himself in the foot?

Here's a sample. A man's bed turns into a racing car and goes roaring across the landscape in an auto race. Our dreamer gives this soliloquy in the course of his adventure:

"Oh! Eh! Ah! Where am I? Oh? Huh!"
"Ah! Now I know! Gosh!! I thought..."
"...I was in bed. Wow! But that was..."
"...a narrow escape! I must have..."
"...fallen asleep! How lucky I was..."
"...not to have ran into some thing. This..."
"...machine going 98 miles an hour and me..."
"...asleep. I must not..."
"...fall asleep again if I expect to win this..."
"...race! I wonder if I lost..."
"...any laps! I wonder how long I was..."
"asleep! I might have not been, eh."
"I might not have been asleep long and..."
"...then again I might have been..."
"...asleep a long while. At any rate I am..."
"not going to go to sleep again..."
"...If I can help it!"

Clam up already! Such verbose prattling might seem quaint in small doses, but I was ready to throttle McCay long before I finished the book. Granted the strips weren't meant to be read one after another, but the dialogue so often serves no purpose other than to fill up the panels that it's hard to believe -- could McCay not sense that he was hampering his strip's effectiveness with all the senseless blathering?

The second McCay book is from Peter Maresca's Sunday Press imprint. It may seem a little on the expensive side for its page count, but the book is in full color throughout (which can't even be said of the twice as expensive Merkl book). Little Sammy Sneeze reprints the McCay Sunday strips of that title from 1904-05. This doesn't constitute the entire series (according to Ken Barker's New York Herald index the final episodes appeared in 1907) but its more than enough episodes of this one-joke strip to sate most any fan's appetite. The strip is very much an exemplar of its time, a one-note offering that was milked from every conceivable angle and then unceremoniously dropped in favor of the next gag mine. McCay starts the strip off with a bang when Sammy, a kid entirely devoid of personality, accompanies mama to the grocery store and proceeds to blow the whole place to smithereens with one of his superhuman schnoz siroccos. This turns out to be one of the best episodes in the series -- McCay lovingly draws every little detail of the store's well-stocked shelves, and then interprets the apres-sneeze flotsam and jetsam as if he were drawing the scene directly from life. Not only do we get an intimate almost photographic look at the interior of a 1904 grocery store, interesting in itself, but Sammy gives his most entertainingly destructive sneeze ever. It's odd - after that bravura episode Sammy's sneezes for the most part become quite a bit weaker -- he blows some water in the maid's face, he knocks over some circus tumblers, etc. Rarely does the boy's dynamic beak ever fire off another real tornado-class shot.

Maresca must have sensed that he was dealing with somewhat weak material here in Sammy (weak by McCay standards, anyway), and he came up with an absolutely brilliant solution to the problem. Rather than filling the book with page after page of Sammy, he breaks it up on each page reverse by including another comic strip from the same funnies section of the New York Herald. How cool is that! Not only do we get Sammy, we also get several episodes of The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffarroo, that infamous Gustave Verbeek reversible strip. Then there's some episodes of The Woozlebeasts, a static but fantastical strip about mythical creatures. The star of the reverses, though, is a complete reprinting of McCay's The Story of Hungry Henrietta.

The Henrietta strip is not among McCay's more graphically interesting works, and the few episodes I'd seen before didn't seem particularly memorable. But reading the series all together is an entirely different experience. McCay has produced a remarkably melancholy and moving story about a little girl with an eating disorder. Poor little Henrietta is a quiet, introspective child and simply can't handle the constant fussing and fawning from her parents and relatives. Each strip finds Henrietta, whose age advances three months between each epsiode, being beset by her overzealous elders. At first, as an infant, the attentions result in her crying, which prompts the adults to shut her up with offers of food. The child, looking utterly pathetic, ends up alone in the final panel, drowning her sorrows in the proffered treats, a large tear always rolling down her face. As she gets older her parents no longer need to offer her the treats -- she knows how to assuage her insecurities, and when beset by the adults sneaks off to steal food from the kitchen. Unlike Sammy, who is an overblown caricature, Henrietta is an all too real little girl. Her food addiction doesn't play out as a slapstick gag -- there's no punchline where she eats a side of beef or polishes off a barrel of cider. No, little Henrietta just slinks off to a dark corner to indulge in her perfectly realistic addiction. There's no ridicule, no gag, just an empathetic McCay telling parents a cautionary tale, but one without a saccharine moral delivered on a scroll after the last panel. The reader is left to their own devices, free to understand or miss the point.

It is amazing that the Herald printed such a strip. In amongst the sneezing kids, the prank-pullers, the yokel farmers, the wacky animals and all the rest it's hard to imagine that McCay could convince an editor to give space to this profoundly heartbreaking story. I can't even say the strip is ahead of its time because it wouldn't be welcome in today's Sunday funnies. Who would have guessed that Winsor McCay, that graphic genius, immortalized for his carefree flights of fancy, would also be responsible for a story, coming so completely out of the blue, that stands utterly and truly alone in the vast field of newspaper comic art. There is nothing with which to compare it. Sheer genius. What more can I say.

Maresca decided not to attempt digital restoration of the material in the book, probably a good idea, so the pages are simply photographed/scanned in their existing state. That means we see the funnies just like readers did in 1904-05, complete with occasional bleed-through and off-register colors (both of which are minimal - Maresca worked from beautiful source material). Some specific pages do show their age but most are remarkably clean and bright. The strips are all presented at their original printed size. The book is nicely bound using a method I've not seen before. The guts of the book appear to be perfect-bound (meaning a glued spine) yet the pages will lay perfectly flat, which is unusual in that binding method. The hard covers are attached to the book in an odd way, sort of like a photo album. As odd a binding as it is, the result is a book that looks and feels substantial, strong and attractive. How Maresca can sell this labor of love, presumably made in a very short print run, for $55 is beyond me, but it's a bargain. Oh, and if you're on the fence throw into the plus column a Sammy Sneeze tissue box cover that comes with each copy.

The final book in our McCay threesome is the most ambitious and expensive, Ulrich Merkl's The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend 1904-1913. At $114 it's definitely fits in the major purchase category, but Merkl certainly serves up your money's worth. The book weighs in at an ungainly 10 pounds, and the opened size is so large that it's near impossible, at least in my household, to find a place to read it. I've had the book on hand for awhile now and it's been banned from the dining room, the office, and the king-size bed for taking up too much room. I'm now working through it on the only flat surface from which I haven't been evicted; the picnic table in the yard.

Although billed as complete, the rabid completist should be aware that only about a third of the Rarebit Fiend episodes are actually printed in the book. Merkl provides the complete comic strip series as high-resolution TIF files on a DVD attached to the inside back cover of the book. You should be glad that he doesn't put them all in the book -- I shudder to think how heavy it would have been. On the other hand, I really didn't appreciate having to rip holes in the endpaper to remove the DVD, which resisted all attempts to extract it through daintier methods.

All the strips that are reproduced in the book (which Merkl presumably chose as the best of the run) are displayed at full size as originally printed. This alone would make them far easier to read than in the Checker book, but in addition the strips have undergone much more thorough restoration. Many strips still bear the obvious ills of having come from microfilm, but at least they are crisp and clean despite the occasional loss of fine details. Where possible Merkl did work from original tearsheets and even occasionally from original art and these examples are particularly lovely. Each strip is annotated with background information and often supporting exhibits. For instance, along with a McCay strip about a Teddy bear Merkl not only explains the origin of the term but even reproduces classic Clifford Berryman cartoons from whence the craze got started. The annotations go on to cross-reference by subject matter, pointing the reader to other episodes that till the same soil. I can't tell you how much I appreciate such supporting documentation, and my fondest wish is that other reprint books would jump on this bandwagon. Although I fancy myself pretty well-informed about such subjects as Teddy bears, suffrage movements and shirtwaists, most readers are not immersed in such antique esoterica and it's important that they be given the opportunity to extract full enjoyment of these strips, which is sometimes only possible with a brief history lesson.

One aspect of the annotations that I did eventually find objectionable are Merkl's constant claims that various strips "may have inspired" all manner of later works. A guy whose ears grow "may have inspired" the film "Dumbo". A man whose body parts separate "may have inspired" Salvador Dali's "Madonna Corpusculaire". An elevator that ascends out the top of a building "may have inspired" a scene in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". A man arguing with his image in a mirror "may have inspired" a scene in the film "Mary Poppins". A man walking on the walls and ceiling "may have inspired" a Fred Astaire dance number. I find most of these claims highly improbable, but I can see how Merkl, who must have practically lost himself in this ambitious project, might begin to see parallels and inspirations everywhere. Over a span of more than 800 episodes plumbing all the nooks and crannies of McCay's fertile imagination he was bound to cover some of the same ground as other artists who work in the realms of fantasy.

The book doesn't by any means limit itself to page after page of Rarebit Fiend episodes. There are all sorts of goodies tucked away in these 464 pages. Lots of rare McCay works and ephemera are exhibited and discussed, and Alfredo Castelli contributes a wonderful section titled "Dream Travelers 1900-1947" in which we are treated to samples of both classic and obscure dream themed comic strips from other creators. The overall design of the book is definitely Chip Kidd-inspired (lots of blown-up art vignettes and giant swatches of color), not a plus in my opinion. I'll be glad when this particular fad plays itself out. Fortunately most of the overblown design work is confined to the front section of the book, leaving the reprint section blessedly plain and readable.

A few minor objections aside, Merkl's magnum opus (and I do mean magnum!) is a joy to behold, and will provide you with many hours of delight as soon as you find a large enough horizontal surface on which to peruse its treasures.

It's important to reward and encourage small-press publishers like Sunday Press, Ulrich Merkl, and Checker. If you have a decent interest in McCay (and what self-respecting comic strip lover doesn't?) purchase these books. Your reward, in addition to three fine volumes for your bookshelves, will be stimulating a wider variety to be published. So find the receipt for those unwanted Chia pets and neon-colored ties, send 'em back to Wal-Mart where they belong, and invest some Christmas booty in something of lasting value.

Labels: Bookshelf

Well it turns out that the Kansas City Star short-changed readers. D.D. Degg points out to me that Christmas in Toyland actually ran twenty-six episodes, ending on December 30. So here ya go with the rest of the series. Unfortunately these strips had to come from online sources and are thus in kinda rough shape. The final panel of the last strip, which is pretty much just mud here was meant to spell out "Happy New Year" in stars.

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Herriman Saturday rolls around once again, and our first entry is from November 24 1906. This cartoon illustrates a news story about some LA aristocrat type whose bulldog liked to bite people. Despite packing a court with his high muckety-muck friends the judge nevertheless sentences the dog to wear a muzzle.

Herriman then goes on vacation until December 1, with a Thanksgiving cartoon appearing on November 29th that he probably completed in advance. On December 1 Garge returns with a pair of cartoons, the first a portrait of one Judge Hamilton who, based on a little Googling, seems to have been in charge of the horse track at Ascot. The second, an editorial page cartoon, apparently heralds the entry of a rival gas company into the Los Angeles market. Good news for LA given the cartoon we printed last week.

Herriman fans be sure to check back in on Christmas Day if you have a moment -- a special treat will greet you.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Please excuse the next to last strip. The KC Star had a little technical SNAFU on that one, cutting off the tail end of the last panel.

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that the copyright notices are missing from the strips. This isn't my doing. The Kansas City Star, which is the origin of my tearsheet run of this strip, made it a policy to remove all syndicate stamps from their strips.

Starting another Christmas strip today, this one is from 1935 and titled Christmas in Toyland.

This was a King Features strip and featured art by Royal King Cole and story by Brandon Walsh. I think you'll find this one has quite a different tone than Santa's Secrets, it's quite witty and more than a bit goofy.

Order Jim Ivey's new book Cartoons I Liked at Lulu.com or order direct from Ivey and get the book autographed with a free original sketch.

Labels: Jim Ivey's Sunday Comics

Kind of pressed for time this Saturday, so just one Herriman today -- but it's a doozy. This cartoon ran a full page wide (8 columns) on November 25 1906. It's a fairly typical grumble for the day about the gas company, but exceedingly well-drawn.

Intermittent gas outages were very dangerous, as the thought balloons on the right depict. If the gas went off you might well forget to close off all the fixtures. Then when it came back on the deadly fumes could easily overwhelm and kill sleepers and children.

Labels: Herriman's LA Examiner Cartoons

Last day of the Santa's Secrets run today. As an added bonus, and courtesy of D.D. Degg, a most likely complete history of all the NEA Christmas strips, based on research by himself, Merlin Haas and yours truly. (note to DD - I made a few more minor corrections in this version).

Year	NEA Christmas Strips Title & Dates (United Media 2010-on)	Creators
1936	A Visit From St. Nicholas (Nov. 23-Dec. 23)	George Scarbo (a)
1937	Sally Sailor & Meany Mo (Nov. 22-Dec. 25)	Hal Cochran (w) & Walt Scott (a)
1938	Bobby's Christmas Dream (Nov. 21-Dec. 24)	Hal Cochran (w) & Howard Boughner (a)
1939	Peter & Polly in Toyland (Nov. 27-Dec. 23)	Hal Cochran (w) & Howard Boughner (a)
1940	Santa's Secrets (Nov. 25-Dec. 24)	Hal Cochran (w) & Howard Boughner (a)
1941	Santa's Wonderland (Nov. 24-Dec. 24)	Hal Cochran (w) & Leo Nowak (a)
1942	Santa's Victory Christmas (Nov. 23-Dec. 24)	Hal Cochran (w) & Leo Nowak (a)
1943	First Aid for Santa (Nov. 22-Dec. 24)	Hal Cochran (w) & Les Carroll (a)
1944	The Spirit of Christmas (Nov. 27-Dec. 23)	Laurene Rose Diehl
1945	Unknown	not offered?
1946	Unknown	not offered?
1947	Unknown	not offered?
1948	Unknown	not offered?
1949	The Story of the Savior (Dec. 5-24)	William Gilroy (w) & Walt Scott (a)
1950	A Christmas Carol (Nov 20-Dec. 23)	Walt Scott
1951	Songs of Christmas (Dec. 3-22)	Walt Scott
1952	The Little People's Christmas (Dec 1-24)	Walt Scott
1953	The Little Tree That Talked (Nov. 30-Dec. 24)	Walt Scott
1954	A Christmas Carol (Nov. 22-Dec. 24)	reprint from 1950
1955	The Three Wishes (Dec. 5-24)	Walt Scott
1956	The Animals' Christmas aka The Animals' Yule (Dec 3-24)	Walt Scott
1957	The Music Box Trio (Dec. 4-24)	Walt Scott
1958	Jeremy Christmas (Dec. 1-Dec. 24)	Walt Scott
1959	Little Gabe & the Golden Stars (Dec. 7-24)	Walt Scott
1960	The Brightest Star (Dec. 5-24)	Jay Heavilin (w) & Walt Scott (a)
1961	Oleander's Christmas Eve (Dec. 4-23)	Jay Heavilin(w) & Walt Scott (a)
1962	Christmas on Marrow-Bone Ridge (Dec. 3-22)	Walt Scott
1963	Gifts of the Magi by O. Henry (Dec. 2-24)	Ralph Lane
1964	The First Christmas, A Story for Children (Dec. 7-24)	Ralph Lane
1965	Legends of Christmas (Dec. 6-24)	Kreigh Collins
1966	A Christmas Playhouse (Dec. 5-24)	Janet Henry (w) & John Lane (a)
1967	Bucky's Christmas Caper (Dec 4-23)	Wally Wood
1968	Why Christmas Almost Wasn't (Dec. 2-24)	Jack Kent (King Aroo)
1969	How Wyn Sock Saved Christmas (Dec. 1-24)	Paul Gringle
1970	Dreadful Dick's Dilemma or, Santa's Fright Before Christmas (Dec. 7-24)	Newton Pratt, Esq.
1971	Toys That Talked: A Christmas Fantasy (Dec. 6-24)	Phil Pastoret (w) & John Lane (a)
1972	How the Firefly Lost His Heat (Dec. 4-23)	Navarro (w) & Elmarine Hanratty (a)
1973	Amanda's Christmas in the Forest (Dec. 3-24)	Marcia Course (w) & Jack Millie (a)
1974	The First Christmas Toys (Dec. 2-24)	Phil Pastoret(w) & Don Baur (a)
1975	Mitten So Big (Dec. 1-24)	Dorothy M. Floreck(w) & Don Baur(a)
1976	America's First Christmas Candle (Dec. 6-24)	Barbara Craig(w) & Don Baur (a)
1977	Judy, Joe and the Ho-Ho-Ho (Dec. 5-24)	Phil Pastoret(w) & Don Baur (a)
1978	Why Christmas Almost Wasn't (Dec. 2-24)	Jack Kent (reprint from 1968)
1979	How to Make a Merry Christmas (Dec. 3-25)	Phil Pastoret (w), John Lane (pencils) & Bobby Miller (inks)
1980	Montague's Christmas (Dec. 1-25)	Mark Lasky
1981	Montague's Return (Dec. 7-25)	Mark Lasky
1982	A Christmas Carol (Dec. 6-25)	The Joe Kubert School
1983	Gifts of the Magi (Dec. 5-24)	The Joe Kubert School
1984	Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (Dec. 3-25)	The Joe Kubert School(signed Joe Kubert)
1985	The Nutcracker (Dec. 2-25)	The Joe Kubert School (signed Joe Kubert)
1986	Christmas Every Day (Dec. 1-25)	John Lane based on a story by William Dean Howells
1987	Elmore, the Too Tall Elf (Dec. 7-25)	Kevin Fagan
1988	Carlyle's Christmas (Dec. 5-24)	Larry Wright
1989	Amos & the Christmas Couch (Dec. 4-23)	Susan Seligson (w) & Howie Schneider (a)
1990	Alphonse, the Misguided Moose (Dec. 3-22)	Heidi Stetson
1991	How to Make a Merry Christmas (Dec. 2- 24)	reprint from 1979
1992	A Christmas Carol (Dec. 7-25)	reprint from 1982, one strip omitted?
1993	The Grizzwells Christmas (Dec. 6-25)	Bill Schorr
1994	A Christmas on Santa Street (Dec. 5-24)	Gary Delainey (w) & Gerry Rasmussen (a)
1995	Big Nate's Secret Santa (Dec. 4-23)	Lincoln Peirce
1996	St. Nick of Time (Dec. 2-25)	Jimmy Johnson
1997	A Time-Traveling Christmas (Dec. 1-25)	Carole Bender (w) & Jack Bender (a)
1998	A Very Drabble Christmas (Dec. 7-25)	Kevin Fagan
1999	A Puddles Christmas (Dec. 6-25) note: may have been titled "The Search for Santa"	Greg Evans
2000	Santa, Inc. (Dec. 4-23)	Dave Whamond
2001	A Fairy Merry Christmas (Dec. 3-25)	Brooke McEldowney
2002	Duncan's First Christmas (Dec. 2-25)	Chris Browne
2003	A Mall & the Right Visitor (Dec. 1-25)	Jef Mallett
2004	Spotting Santa (Nov. 29-Dec. 25)	Mark Heath
2005	Big Nate's Secret Santa (Dec. 5-24)	reprint from 1995
2006	Cow & Boy and The Quest For Santa (Nov. 27 - Dec. 25)	Mark Leiknes
2007	Roamin' Holiday: A Humble Stumble Christmas (Dec. 3-25)	Roy Schneider
2008	The Search for Santa (Dec. 8 - 25)	reprint from 1999 - 2 strips omitted
2009	Rip Haywire: Away in the Danger (Dec. 7 - 25)	Dan Thompson
2010	A Mall & the Right Visitor (Dec. 6 - 25)	reprint from 2003 with 5 strips omitted (now copyright United Media, not NEA)

A big Stripper's Guide tip o' the tam to Holmes at Barnacle Press who sleuthed out the problem with the table above that was inserting those acres of whitespace. Not only that, he sent me all the corrected HTML to fix the problem. Thank you, thank you, thank you! It's a Festivus miracle!

Thanks also to Alex Jay, who IDed "B. Craig" of the 1976 strip.