Today, as we catch up on the calendar, we see how Christmas was such a wonderful time of year that BD even forgave Zonker for missing the championship game before Christmas earlier than foreseen. Doonesbury scenario.
It’s our annual Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day’s Advent calendar post, and it will display the Advent calendar with that given day’s door open, and you can see which will be the “gift” for this day! You can click here to see previous Advent calendar entries. This year, the theme is Christmas Stories in Comics! Each day will highlight a Christmas story from a notable comic strip (some strips will be featured here more than once. Some will appear as many as four or five times).
This year’s Advent calendar design, depicting Santa Claus handing out presents to the children in the cartoon (although instead of a present for Charlie Brown, his dog, Snoopy, receives a present instead ), is Nick Benefits.He made it for the 2022 Advent Calendar, but since it also works for this year, I’m keeping it.
And now Day 6 will be opened (once opened, the door will present an image of the comic presented)…
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What was the significance of the group in the early Doonesbury comics?
As I noted a while ago, in 1966 Yale University welcomed two new members to its Bulldogs football team, prized prospects Calvin Hill and Brian Dowling. Dowling was recruited by every major football college, but his father wanted him to attend Yale, so Dowling went to Yale. Hill wanted to attend Yale after attending a football game in a crowded stadium. He also wanted to be Yale’s first black quarterback. However, once they were both at Yale, Dowling was named quarterback and Hill became halfback. They led Yale to an undefeated season in the 1968 football season. As you can imagine, these guys were LEGENDS at Yale back in the day. They both became NFL players, with Hill having the more distinguished career (his son, Grant Hill, also became an NBA icon).
The main thing to remember is that these guys were HUGE on campus. So big that one of their classmates, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, decided to make a comic strip called Bull Taleshighlighting the mythological life of Brian Dowling, while talking about local events with a group of fictional Yale students. After graduating in 1970, Trudeau was signed by Universal Press Syndicate to take Bull Tales and turn it into a syndicated comic strip. He had to come up with a new name, however, so he took the term “Doone” (a slang term for a dunce) and the last part of his Yale roommate Charles Pillsbury’s last name to form Doonesbury.
Initially, the comic simply continued to tell the stories of the same students from Bull Talesonly now at the fictional Walden University (with Dowling now BD and a star on his quarterback helmet instead of a Y). The original cast was Mike Doonesbury, Mark Slackmeyer, BD, and hippie Zonker Harris (Zonker’s Uncle Duke, based on Hunter S. Thompson, also became a major character). Eventually the group formed a commune in which they lived together. The characters have not aged for many years.
BD, the character based on Dowling, was the star quarterback of the fictional Walden College and always wore his football helmet. He regularly found himself in the middle of huddles trying to lead his hapless college team, and huddles became a regular fixture on the Strip.
The group became part of a major story in December 1971.
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Garfield gave his own version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’
The Garfield comic strip’s first-ever extended Christmas story saw the famous feline give his own version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
How did Christmas get BD to forgive Zonker for missing the big game?
Okay, so in December 1971, shortly before Christmas, the Walden football team was in the championship game and the team was trailing late in the game. BD explains in the huddle that the final play will involve a pass to Zonker, which he knows no one will cover because no one will think he would ever throw it to him in a big point. The problem is that Zonker ALSO thought he would never throw it to him in a big spot, so Zonker got drunk during the match. BD is unhappy, and as we see in the next strip, Zonker is now on the run, and is being chased by BD because he actually missed the pass, and they lost the big game…
However, before Zonker returns home for Christmas vacation, he apologizes to BD (the team captain, so Zonker always called him “Cap’n”) and gives him a Christmas present. BD realizes that the gift is a six-pack of beer (BD drank a lot of beer at the time), and he is so overcome by the Christmas spirit that he forgave his friend and wished him a merry Noel, while making sure to maintain that he still thinks Zonker is a monster (and, again, Zonker really IS a monster, you know?)…
This is a surprisingly sweet Christmas comic from Trudeau, and it’s nice to see BD not acting like a jerk all the time.
If you have a suggestion for a good Christmas story from a daily newspaper strip, please let me know at brianc@cbr.com, and maybe I’ll use that strip as an example future for one of the others. 18 strips incoming!