Wally Wood's Bucky's Christmas Caper is becoming a Christmas blog tradition -- like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story on television. See Steve Thompson, Mr. Door Tree and Pete Doree.

Short-run Christmas strips were once popular with the syndicates. Notice the dates on the strips, and you can see that this ran in 1967 from December 5 to December 23. As Woody explained it to me, NEA promised he could continue to do these characters in a regular Bucky Ruckus comic strip -- on one condition. If the Christmas strip had a favorable reaction and was picked up by hundreds of newspapers, then it would be syndicated as a permanent feature. However, to gain that many papers in only three weeks was NEA's Catch 22. They knew and Wood knew that such was a feat was impossible.

However, as Eric Idle puts it, always look at the bright side of life. The line quality is fine because the strip exists in slick proof sheets. And there are more than 50 panels, so one day this will no doubt be formatted as a colorful children's book.