Christmas Strips and Other Pleasures
 Do you feel like Captain Hook this time of year? Well, to bolster your Holiday spirit, here’s the first week’s worth of the Disney Christmas strip from 1960:
 Sorry I don’t have the exact dates, but the Post-Dispatch deleted them. I always thought that Mr. Smee and Doc of the seven dwarfs had a strong resemblance facially, and here the comic strip artists make a story point out of it. I have no idea who drew these, but they are not bad. I’ll try to post the rest of the story before Christmas, it has three more weeks to go.
  Krazy, this time from 2-9 to 2-14-1942, features the Kat’s Kuriosity for the whole week. I love Offissa Pupp’s reaction (in the 2-14)  to Krazy’s admission that Ignatz’s square package contained a brick!
 Felix finally beats the nasty mice who played havoc with the Christmas toys in the strips from 1-29 to 2-4-1934, and succeeds in getting Danny’s toy plane restored to him. In the Sunday, Felix’s balloon ascension rises close to the Sun. Felix roasts a passing bird, but the Sun’s heat burns it to a cinder.
 In Myrtle this time, from 11-2 to to 11-8-1947, there is no real continuity. Myrtle experiments with making her skirt longer in the 11-5, but it restricts her football kick, so she shortens it up again. Myrtle does an extremely cartoony rise in the air in the 11-8, as she anticipates a raise in allowance from her Pop. I’ve included the Sunday from 11-2 this time. It features the great 3/4 downshot layout that Dudley Fisher did so well. It spreads out the storytelling, and you can read the dialog in the large panels in any order you want and it still makes sense. I love the back of the garage busting out in the second panel.
Seems my big mouth has got me in a lot of hot water over at Cartoon Research. I wrote a review of the new Mouse short, “Get A Horse!” that picked a few design nits, and managed to annoy a few folks. Now I’m an official Disney naysayer and someone is using the negative parts of my review to support yet more negative arguments! If you read the review, it’s really not that much of a slam. I really like the cartoon in a lot of ways, not just whole hog. That’s the trouble with criticism on the Internet, it’s repeated by other posters and blown up all out of proportion. I also made a comment on Animation Scoop about President Obama’s visit to Dreamworks. I likened the quick demo of the CG animation process that Dreamworks showed to Obama, to a digest tooled for an ADD person. I’ll never forget when I visited the Disney Studio in 1963, a gentleman named Bob Youngquist spent nearly 45 minutes showing me how he drew a wolf character from “The Sword In The Stone”, and then ran the scene on his Moviola for me! I was really impressed with Mr. Youngquist’s dedication to his painstaking craft, and his patience with a 15 year old cartoon fan. I was just wondering aloud if President Obama was similarly impressed with the painstaking efforts of the Dreamworks CG animators, or if they just made it look like a three-ring circus with actors posing for the Mo-Cap. For that comment, I was labelled a Nazi by an Internet troll. Seems I insulted persons with ADD syndrome, for that I apologize as well. I ain’t no stinkin’ Nazi, and I probably won’t do much opining on the ‘Net for the forseeable future. See you very soon.
D.D.Degg says:
Peter Pan’s Christmas Story ran from November 28 to December 24, 1960. Written by Frank Reilly and drawn by Manuel Gonzales.
http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=YC+6001
Looks like you got week three above.
Charlie Judkins says:
Hi Mark!
I really enjoyed your review of “Get a Horse!”. Naturally if you post an opinion online, chances are someone will disagree and possibly even try to get into it with you. Please don’t let that stop you from speaking your mind though, because myself and many others really enjoying hearing what you have to say. Anyways, have a happy holiday!
joe c says:
Oh, to heck with those internet twits; “Haters gonna hate,” as they say. You keep on reviewing.
Thad Komorowski says:
Mark: anyone who calls YOU a Nazi is a Nazi. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. I loved your review and wish you’d post more of them, because you know more about animation than literally anyone else. I think I know which site you were referring to, but I hope my using your review as a springboard for the problems I had with GET A HORSE! on my own modest blog didn’t cause you disquiet.
Mark says:
No, Thad, I don’t think it was you. Cartoon Brew referred to some negative review or other that quoted mine, but I don’t think it was yours.
Thanks for all the nice comments gang, but in a larger sense I wasn’t really trying to cry in my beer as much as lament that discourse on a sensitive topic seems to be limited to “nice” and “making nice” on the Internet. It’s not easy to figure out how to give a dissenting opinion without getting the hornets all stirred up.
joe c says:
True, but you practically have to accept those hornets as an inevitability. And as the reviewer, you have more skin in the game as any commenter ever could. I just don’t want you censoring yourself from here on out because of it.
Charles Brubaker says:
Having been on the internet as long as I’ve lived, I learned that it’s best to ignore any “Nazi” comments that people will throw at you. There’s actually a term for that, called “Godwin’s Law”.
I haven’t seen “Get a Horse”, so I can’t say what I think. But I think your review was fair, despite the complaints you got.
Mark says:
Reply to D. D. Degg. My computer corrected the Peter Pan Christmas strip to the first six dailies, it just took it upon itself to do this! These computers are out of contol, that’s why I hate and fear them!
Happy Christmas!