We approach the official Christmas holiday with this Sixth Part of our series featuring newspaper comics strips celebrating the holiday during the latter 20th Century. It began in 1944 (Part One) and leaped ahead, in ten year increments, through Parts Two through Five. This last decade-sized jump brings us to December 25th, 1994, and for the first time our landing place occurs on a Sunday.
It was a year when Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black President of South Africa and Michael Jackson married Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. The noteworthy figures who passed away included the comics’ Jack “King” Kirby, world figures Richard Nixon and Linus Pauling, musicians Kurt Cobain, Cab Calloway, and Henry Mancini, and actors Burt Lancaster, Jessica Tandy, Dinah Shore, and Joseph Cotton.
In the newspaper pages Gasoline Alley remained a representative of the heyday of comic strips, surrounded by comparative newcomers including Frank and Ernest, Ziggy, and Shoe, each marking the holiday in its own distinctive way.
Everyone here at The Library of American Comics thanks you for your patronage and wishes you the happiest of holidays!
