This December feature offers a latter-20th-Century look at winter holiday strips from America’s newspaper comics pages. Part One began eighty years in the past, with dailies from 1944, late in the War years. We shifted one decade forward in each of Parts Two, Three, and Four. For this Part Five, we now arrive at December 25th, 1984.
Much was made of the significance of this year before it even started. It formed the title of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, originally published in 1949; David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album contained a cautionary track built around both the year and the book (“Beware the savage jaw / Of 1984 …”), and director Ridley Scott used Orwellian themes in his 1984-themed commercial for Apple’s new Macintosh home computer. The year’s less ominous events included the arrival of Ghostbusters on cinema screens and the syndicated version of Jeopardy! on television (both franchises are, of course, still with us today). The brand-new game Tetris fascinated players of all ages, even as Geraldine Ferraro became America’s first woman to be nominated to run for Vice President, joining Presidential candidate Walter Mondale in an attempt to unseat Republican incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush that can best be labeled “unsuccessful” (Reagan/Bush won 49 of 50 states, earning a whopping five hundred twenty-five electoral college votes).
Newspaper comics still had its share of long-running features. Under cartoonist Leonard Starr’s guiding hand, Little Orphan Annie — rechristened Annie, reflecting the hugely popular stage play — — was the National Cartoonist Society’s choice for 1984 Story Strip of the Year. The Steve Canyon and Gasoline Alley sagas continued; Beetle Bailey celebrated its 35th year of publication. Yet a new generation of creators were flexing their muscles on the comics pages, with Mike Peters’s Mother Goose and Grimm debuting in October, while Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse and Jeff MacNelly’s satirical Shoe were among the series that had yet to celebrate their first decade of publication. As the daily installments shown below make clear, Graybeard and Young Turk strips alike were willing to pause and mark the holiday season.
How do strips from thirty years ago close out this look at comics’ 20th Century’s holiday celebrations? Join us back in this space by December 23rd to see our selections from 1994 …
