Christmas Covers

Well, the weatherperson says it's now meteorological winter — and we can argue about just how much meteorology is affected by flipping to the last page of the calendar — so it's time for cartoonists great and small to crank out those holiday cartoons.

And that includes, somewhere on the scale, yours truly. If you've been following this here blog, you know that I've already drawn a Lauren Boebert Christmas card and Mike Lee on Santa's lap — and it was still meteorological autumn when I drew those.

Since it's Saturday, I've dug into the box of treasured holiday ornaments and to see what cartoons may be found, and I'm happy to report that there are some beloved old baubles in there. Chief among them are the full-page cartoons for the university newspapers for which I drew 30 and 40 years ago.

in UW-P Ranger, Dec. 9, 1982

This front page cartoon for the Ranger at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside was a great deal of fun to draw. All that lettering was considerably less fun (ditto for Mike Lee's wish list in this week's syndicated cartoon).

This was my second Christmas cover for the Ranger; the first, a parody of "Deck the Halls" the year before, didn't have quite as much calligraphy, or, for that matter, cross hatching.

in UWM Post, Nov. 23, 1992

Ten years thence, I drew the occasional cover illustration for the Post at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Their Holiday Shopper issues came out in November rather than December, but who needs to rush the season, eh?

I've discussed before how any color in these Ranger and Post cartoons back in the pre-Photoshop stone ages was achieved with separate overlays for each color. In this case, some Post staffer, not me, cut acetate sheets to the shapes of the red and green spaces (and another for the gray tone in the little girl's hair; I'd have suggested a red halftone to keep things relatively simple). Kudos to whomever that person was for leaving the mortar between the bricks uncolored, and I've come to appreciate what a pain colorizing evergreen trees can be.

But that's some heavy lipstick on The King.

🎄

Normally, I'd continue here to post at least one cartoon each from Decembers of 2002 and 2012, but I don't have anything to continue today's theme. I didn't happen to have any commissions for holiday covers in those years.

Here's a regular-sized cartoon from 2002 anyway — even if, like that UWM Post cover, it was actually drawn in November.

Some of my clients only publish monthly, you know.