Santa Claus Funnies #2
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSanta Claus Funnies #2 (December 1943) holds a specific structural landmark in Dell's holiday publishing history: it is the final issue of the series to carry its own sequential number, after which the title was absorbed into Dell's long-running Four Color anthology for its annual installments through 1961. The issue is also a document of Walt Kelly — then a rising force at Dell and already the creator of Pogo — contributing illustration work to a seasonal title during one of the most prolific stretches of his Golden Age career, making it a tangible early artifact of one of comics' most consequential careers. Its content, blending original comic stories, illustrated Christmas carols with piano notation, classic literary adaptations, and an inventive 'Santa in Wonderland' fantasy sequence, represents editor Oskar Lebeck's deliberate effort to give comic books the literary and illustrative texture of traditional children's books rather than simple superhero fare.
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The book was produced by Western Printing & Lithographing Company and published under the Dell imprint, with the copyright held by Oskar Lebeck — an unusual industry practice that Lebeck apparently received as recognition for building Dell's comic book division into a major enterprise. Lebeck, a former Bauhaus-influenced stage designer who had worked for Max Reinhardt and Broadway producers before pivoting to children's publishing, hired Walt Kelly out of the post-Disney freelance pool in 1941 and tasked him with seasonal and fantasy titles alongside the main Dell line; Kelly contributed art and logo design to Santa Claus Funnies as part of that broader seasonal assignment. Western Printing physically produced the 64-page, full-color issue, with an on-sale date verified in the 1943 Catalog of Copyright Entries.
Trivia · 9 facts
- Published December 1943 by Dell (Western Printing & Lithographing); cover price 10 cents; 64 pages, full color.
- This is the LAST issue of Santa Claus Funnies to carry its own series number — from the following year onward the title ran as annual entries within Dell's Four Color series (with a single anomalous exception in 1952).
- Walt Kelly — former Disney animator and creator of Pogo — contributed art to this issue, part of his broad seasonal work for Dell during 1942–1949.
- The copyright on the issue is held by Oskar Lebeck personally, reflecting the unusual arrangement he had with Western Printing whereby he held copyrights on non-licensed Dell titles he edited.
- The lead story, 'Santa in Wonderland,' has Santa Claus fall asleep and dream he visits Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, with the unknown artist drawing on Sir John Tenniel's classic Alice illustrations for the Wonderland characters.
- Additional contents include illustrated and notated sheet music for carols such as 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,' 'O Little Town of Bethlehem,' and 'O Come, All Ye Faithful,' plus a comics adaptation of 'The Night Before Christmas.'
- The issue also contains 'The Christmas Chimes,' a morality-tale story whose medieval folkloric origins could not be traced by at least one contemporary researcher.
- Characters listed in the issue include Santa Claus (also identified as St. Nicholas), Jack Frost, Mrs. Walden, and named reindeer Comet, Cupid, Dancer, Dasher, Prancer, and Vixen, reflecting the era's growing standardization of Santa mythology in popular media.
- A copy is held in the William E. Blake Collection at VCU Libraries, confirming its presence in at least one institutional archive.
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