December 25, 1993
This wraps up “The Christmas Caller” sequence. We will continue to look at some older material the remainder of this “Summer of 35,” material that isn’t in the GoComics archive and isn’t in the book Beaucoup Arlo & Janis. That means much of it will have been unseen since it first appeared in newspapers. I suppose I know more about Arlo & Janis than almost anyone, but it’s interesting for me to look at this material from a distant perspective. For example, the above sequence was a marked transition, and an important one, for Gene. He went, within a week, from a little kid to a young adolescent. He still would be good for a lot of little-kid humor, but there would be other girlfriends and other adventures. He was never the same after “The Christmas Caller.” And, no, I neither planned that nor even suspected it at the time I drew it. (Cartoonist’s note: in the first panel, you can see where I botched the lettering. In those days, I had two choices, let it go or literally paste paper over the mistake and reletter it. I’m sure I was running short of time, so I chose the former. Today, I’d “cut and paste” the corrections digitally and easily. That, I like.)