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 Luann.

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

csbg-2022-advent-calendar-16

RELATED: Blondie and Dagwood Have Gone Through a Lot of Christmases In Their 79-Year Marriage

WHAT IS LUANN?

Luann is a comic strip that was launched by Greg Evans in 1985, following the life of Luann DeGroot and her friends and family. Luann was about 13 years old when the strip began. The strips followed just sort of general 13-year-old girl plots, involving her crushes, her big brother picking on her, her parents trying to get her to clean up her room, just pretty universal things.

However, after 14 years, Evans decided to mix things up, and began to allow Luann and everyone else in the strip age. So Luann graduated from high school in 2014, and currently, she is a young woman in community college. The biggest change in the strip, by far, has been her jerky older brother, Brad. Following 9/11, Brad was inspired to become a firefighter. He had to train to get into shape to do the job, and so his character, who was always a bit of a slacker, was now a fit guy. Evans began to devote a good deal of the strip to Brad (not that he didn't give Brad plots, of course, but now Brad was taking up a LOT of the plots). Brad eventually met and married Toni, a fellow firefighter. They currently raise her niece, Shannon.

The weird thing about the strip having everyone get older is that this necessarily means that Brad is now a full-fledged adult, and so suddenly, there are, like, sex jokes. I wouldn't say that there were LOTS of lingerie jokes out of nowhere, but, well, I wouldn't say that there WEREN'T a lot of lingerie jokes out of nowhere, either.

Evans' daughter, Karen, began to co-write the series with him in 2012. Another fascinating side effect of the aging of the characters is that, just like real life, some major long-term characters have been completely written out of the strip, like Delta James, one of Luann's oldest friends. She went to Howard University and has basically vanished from the strip. Even earlier, Aaron Hill, the guy that Luann had been crushing on for YEARS in the strip, moved to Hawaii and has been out of the strip for nearly 20 years.

So for readers who haven't checked the strip out in a while, it's kind of odd to see Luann now basically an adult woman, and well past her gawky young teen years.

RELATED: Pogo Created Its Own Classic Christmas Carol That Resonated With Generations

HOW DID LUANN TACKLE CHRISTMAS?

As noted, the strips early on were often about the sibling rivalry between Luann and her older brother, Brad. Here, from the strip's first year, in 1985, is a wacky joke about Luann getting a much bigger Christmas stocking than Brad because she's much better than him (which, to be fair, she really was. Brad kind of sucked)...

luann-christmas-2

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Here's an interesting early one that also plays on their sibling rivalry, where Brad gives her a chest to keep her secret diaries and stuff in, but he has the combination for the padlock. A. That's kind of creepy, Brad and, B. Couldn't Luann just easily go get another pad lock? What a weird "score" over her.

luann-christmas-3

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Luann's parents, Nancy and Frank, are regular characters, as well. Frank is kind of the stereotypical out of touch sitcom dad, while Nancy is a lot more on the ball. However, it is nice that Evans is allowed to give them personalities of their own, like this cute strip where Nancy wants to buy a popular doll for Christmas, even though she can't think of anyone to give it to because every girl she knows is too old for it, so she has a "clever" solution...

luann-christmas-4

Click here to enlarge the strip.

A recurring Christmas gag is Frank getting Christmas photos (it's why I went with that as the header image)...

luann-christmas-6

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Parodies of Christmas carols are a common thing in comic strips, but I don't know if I've seen a more strained parody than this one. It's kind of painful, honestly...

luann-christmas-7

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Amusingly, a few years later, Evans actually had Luann take that approach at Christmas, so, well, I guess credit to him for actually having a character just try to give "love" as a gift...

luann-christmas-11

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Here's Brad and Toni and, well, see what I mean about the lingerie jokes? Doesn't it feel so out of place?

luann-christmas-12

Click here to enlarge the strip.

What I really do admire about Evans' strip is how willing he is to show how selfish Luann can be, as, come on, she's growing up, and young people often CAN be selfish, ya know? But it's still pretty funny when the lead of your strip is just kind of a jerk to her family at Christmas...

luann-christmas-14

Click here to enlarge the strip.

Like this very recent strip where Luann and Bernice are out shopping and Bernice even gets in a good dig of how oddly selfish her buddy is being...

luann-christmas-1

Click here to enlarge the strip.