CSotD: The rare merger of compulsion with inspiration
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I've mentioned a couple of times that Christmas sure brings out the hackwork in cartooning.
It's not surprising, really: Compulsory cartooning rarely results in anything very interesting. That is, after all, how we ended up with a kabillion editorial cartoons of a weeping Statue of Liberty on September 12, 2001 and why, on a considerably lesser scale, the death of a famous person touches off a flood of Pearly Gate tributes.
The difference being that, in the first example, you really, really couldn't avoid drawing something on the topic. Obituary cartoons, by contrast, are almost always optional, except in the sense that editors look for them and so, crappy as it may be, a cartoon of a famous dead person talking to St. Peter will get you picked up.
Comic strip artists don't have that excuse, however. You're either in the paper or you're not, and, unless a particular editor is right in the midst of making some changes, and happens (against all expectations and historical precedent) to look at what you are doing right now instead of the sales packet of samples you did back when your strip was new …
Okay, for comic strip artists, the Christmas stuff is optional, as is the Hannukah stuff, though in that case I can understand a little extra desire to wave the flag bravely from under a steaming heap of figgy pudding, mistletoe and reindeer poop.
The truth is this, however: It's hard to be funny on command, and it's more serendipity than genius when a compulsory cartoon is funny.
Or else it's a sign that someone is way too organized and, when inspiration strikes in mid-April, actually makes a note of the idea for development when the holiday looms.
But it does happen, so, just to prove I'm not a total Grinch, a little celebration today, not of the season so much as of the rare times when compulsion and inspiration happen to merge:
Mike Peters is not above silly jokes, and, since I'm not one of those humorless snobs who declares puns "the lowest form of humor," I've been getting a kick out of the Twelve Days of Christmas sequence, now in its third day at Mother Goose and Grimm:
And let me add to the praise for this ridiculous arc by noting that, while I am intellectually secure enough to enjoy a good pun, I'm so hostile to stupid Christmas takeoffs that, back in the days of listservs, I had a filter set up to kill any email containing the phrase "Twas the night before."
I also find the Associated Press's annual article on the cost of the 12 Day gifts as tiresome as the annual, execrable "How much worktime is wasted during March Madness?" piece. Especially since the fool who calculates it rarely seems to take into consideration that, by the Feast of the Epiphany, the True Love has amassed not one but twelve partridges in twelve pear trees, etc.
Wait. My jolly mood is starting to slip. Okay, check this out:
Now, the "cynical kid doesn't get into the true spirit" concept is hardly new; after all, that's the root of the much-despised (at least by me) "beartrap in the fireplace" cartoon.
But Deflocked has spent the week mourning the demise of the JC Penney Christmas catalog, and that's an example of how a shopworn concept can be freshened, particularly when a strip has already embraced wretched excess as a fundamental building block of humor.
And if you grab this story arc by its other end, it's an excellent choice: You could never flog "Who cares about phone books anymore?" for a whole week of good gags. But the equally venerable, equally obsolete "Wish Book" is part of Christmas and thus justifies several installments.
It is a part of holiday tradition to the point where several readers just grumbled, "Wish Book? The 'Wish Book' is the Sears catalog, not the JC Penney catalog!"
And the really old ones said "Sears, Roebuck" instead of just "Sears." The company was founded in 1893 and Alvah Roebuck left two years later, but his name stayed on the Wish Book for another 75 years or so.
Incidentally, if you'll click on this page from the 1918 Wish Book and stifle your anger over the sewing machine, mixer and other "Aids That Every Woman Appreciates," you'll find one about two-thirds down the middle column that might both fit the category and surprise you.
Anyway, having grown up in deep country, at least an hour's drive from anything more exotic than grocery stores, the Wish Book and other catalogs were very much a part of holiday shopping when I was a lad, and they were, if you think of it, the analog version of on-line shopping.
Which prompts this brief commercial message: If you are doing some holiday shopping (yeah, I know, I blew the Hannukah market), please consider using my widget to go through Amazon, and please consider cartoon books as a gift. I thank you and the artists thank you for your support.
And if you want to leaf through a digital "wish book" of suggestions for comic book, rather than comic strip, enthusiasts, here's Tom Spurgeon's quite comprehensive roundup of worthy candidates for gifting. Or self-gifting.
Speaking of ordering from catalogs, and of things that make me smile and go all nostalgic and non-Grinchy, here is, without a doubt, the finest animated cartoon on the topic ever created:
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