It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! This year, the theme is A Comic Strip Christmas! Each day will spotlight a notable comic strip, and at least three Christmas-themed comics from that strip. Today's comic is Gasoline Alley.

Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened, and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries.

The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Santa Claus giving out presents to comic strip kids (although instead of a present for Charlie Brown, his dog, Snoopy, gets a present instead), is by Nick Perks.

Day 22 is now opened (once opened, the door will feature an image from the featured comic strip)...

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WHAT IS GASOLINE ALLEY?

When you have a comic strip like Gasoline Alley, that debuted over a HUNDRED YEARS AGO, it is only natural for the world of comics to seem almost like a whole other world back then. Really, all in all, I think there is a great misunderstanding about the history of comic strips, because it took so long for comic strips to evolve into the format that we all know and love to this day, which is the "funny pages" format. You see, it wasn't until newspapers were able to do color supplements that there was really a call for a "funny pages" supplement, to cash in on that boldness of the colors that these comic strips had. That was around the late 19th Century. The issue with that, though, is just because that is when the format crystallized, it obviously doesn't mean that the format ORIGINATED then. There obviously had been comic strips for many, many years before the birth of the "funny pages." However, for our purposes, it was really when the funny pages debuted that comic strips, as we know them today, really began to blow up in popularity.

However, newspapers routinely had comic strips OUTSIDE of the standard "Funny pages," as comic strips and panel comics were often benefits to any number of sections of the newspaper. As a result, some early famous comics started off dealing with specific topics, as sort of a delivery system for the content, before evolving into a comic strip of its own. Mutt and Jeff, for instance, evolved from a comic strip in the sports section that would discuss local sports news, and horse races, and the like, and evolved into a serialized narrative. Similarly, Frank King was given a section of the Chicago Tribune which would be ultimately called The Rectangle, where he could just do whatever he felt like, a series of single panels or recurring bits, whatever he liked, and it was outside the purview of the official comics page, featuring syndicated strips. One of these bits became a section where a couple of guys discuss cars, based on King's own life, where he and some friends and family would often, you know, discuss cars.

The car discussion feature became so popular that in 2019, it graduated to its own official comic strip titled Gasoline Alley, about the good-natured (and a little plump) Walt Wallet, and his friends. It soon became a very popular strip, but the interesting thing is that as popular as it was getting, it was missing something. Enter Joseph Patterson, the head of King's syndicate, who came up with the idea of adding a baby to the strip to appeal to a wider audience (specifically women, in Patterson's view, as they'd be interested in following Walt raising a baby). King objected, since Walt wasn't even married. So instead, they came up with the idea Walt finding an abandoned child and raising him as a single father. The baby was named Skeezix and, well, what WAS a popular comic soon became one of the most popular strips in the world. King became a millionaire in the 1920s due to the popularity of the strip and merchandising of the strip.

King also developed a novel concept, which was that the characters would age in real time. Walt got married and had other kids, and Skeezix eventually got married and had HIS own children, as well. King retired from the Sunday strip in 1951, leaving it to his assistant, Bill Perry. He then left the daily strips in 1959, as well, to Dick Moores, who he had hired to replace Perry as his assistant, in 1956. In 1975, Perry retired, and Moores took over the strip entirely. Moores then paused the aging of the characters, as it was now over 50 years in, and characters were obviously getting really old. In 1986, Mooores passed away, as well, and HIS assistant, Jim Scancarelli, took over. Scancarelli returned the aging to the strip again, and he still does the strip to this day (he's now in his 80s himself). The "problem" with that is that Walt is now around 120 years old, and Skeezix is over 100 years old himself. Scancarelli has slowly but surely killed off older characters off-panel, and the third and fourth generation of characters are taking on a major part of the series, but Walt and Skeezix are still important parts of the story, despite being insanely old. In the real world, the last World War I veteran died 11 years ago (at 110), and yet Walt is still alive and kicking! But hey, if you can buy that, then the strip is still a lot of fun. Scancarelli is a very talented artist.

RELATED: Milton Caniff Had a Special Appreciation for Soldiers at Christmastime

HOW DID GASOLINE ALLEY HANDLE CHRISTMAS?

King was a brilliant and creative artist, and in this Sunday strip from 1921, he takes Skeezix (in Skeezix's first Christmas) on a trip to the North Pole. It's fascinating to see that the popular idea of what Santa Claus looked like hadn't really fully formed just yet...

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Click here to enlarge the comic strip.

A week later, Walt adorably celebrates Skeezix's first Christmas by giving presents to the less fortunate kids in the neighborhood (SO ADORABLE)...

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Click here to enlarge the comic strip.

A few years later, Walt is now married, and Skeezix is old enough to celebrate Christmas with his own radio...

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A decade later, we see Walt's biological kids get a kick out of a visit from "Santa" (Walt's bumling is so cute)...

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Click here to enlarge the comic strip.

Fast-forward a couple more decades, here's a Bill Perry Sunday strip, trying to capture some of that Frank King's creativeness...

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Jim Scancarelli's Christmas comics tend to be a bit more religious in nature...

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But he does plenty of other strips, as well, and here's a cute one for the 100th anniversary Christmas strip....

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Click here to enlarge the comic strip.