Ho-Ho-Hogan, Part II: “The Quints’ Christmas” (1940)

And since you’ve all been such good boys and girls this year, here’s another holiday treat: the NEA Christmas strip sequence from 1940, “The Quints’ Christmas” by Brandon Walsh. (Special thanks to cartooning spelunker extraordinaire–and Hogan’s Alley contributor–Allan Holtz.) This sequence was the 1940 edition of the Newspaper Enterprise Association’s annual short-run Christmas strip, and this one was by Brandon Walsh, perhaps best known for his work on “Little Annie Rooney.” (This sequence is complete: the missing dates are Sundays; the NEA Christmas package was a daily-only affair.) The strip focuses on the Dionne quintuplets, who became global icons and were relentlessly exploited by the Canadian government (and, in this case, NEA). Today, they would have a reality show and a line of consumer products. We’ll content ourselves with the charms of this comic strip.

Now that you’ve read this year’s Christmas treat from Hogan’s Alley, it’s an excellent to visit (or revisit) past years’ offerings: the Christmas card art of Dik Browne, the Christmas card art of Arnold Roth, the Christmas card art of Roy Doty, a smorgasbord of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, another set of various cartoonists’ Christmas cards, and our first Christmas treat, the Christmas card art of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Gray.