Cow & Boy is this year’s NEA holiday strip

This year’s Newspaper Enterprise Association’s holiday comic strip will be Mark Leiknes‘ Cow & Boy. The series entitled Cow & Boy and the Quest for Santa will run Monday through Saturday beginning on November 7 and run through Christmas day. 

Describing the feature:

“Millions of young kids are brought up believing in Santa, and it always bothers me when one of
those kids who is in such a hurry to grow up tries to ruin the mystery of Santa Claus for the
others,” says Leiknes. That thought inspired this special holiday series. 

In the comic strip, “Cow & Boy,” Billy and Cow sometimes deal with existential issues. In this special series Leiknes wrote for Christmas, Billy and Cow deal with the ultimate existential issue, the existence of Santa Claus. Billy and Cow’s belief system is rattled by a comment from Billy’s sister Tracy. In order to prove to her that Santa does in fact exist, they start out on a quest for the only tangible evidence that no skeptic could ever argue with, Santa’s magical beard. So, armed with an automatic beard trimmer, Billy and Cow head out on their mission and along the way they discover a little bit about themselves, Santa Claus, and something Leiknes likes to call Christmas magic.

This is the 79th year that NEA has provided a holiday series to their clients.