Comicon Advent Calendar Day 6: It’s ‘A Patty Cake Christmas’!
by Richard Bruton
Welcome once more to the Comicon Advent Calendar, 24 days of Christmas comic treats for your delights!
Today, we head back in time a little for a comic I used to love back in the 90s, where this sort of black and white comic really did thrive – The Patty Cake Christmas Special by Scott Roberts from 1996.
Roberts was pretty prolific back then, something like 40+ issues of Patty Cake, the Rugrats comic strip, colouring Prince Valiant, and Miep & Patches, Comic Book Defenders, which ran in the Comics Buyer’s Guide. But it’s Patty Cake I remember him for – created, I just found out, back in 1965, at the age of nine. Just shows, sometimes it takes a little while to turn a dream into an Eisner-Nominated comic book.
Anyway, the Christmas special from 1996 has Patty Cake in a lovely, and very funny, Christmas adventure that all starts off with something you young ‘uns wouldn’t understand – the arrival of the christmas catalog. Here in the UK, it was always the Argos catalog that would come out and us kids would spend hours and hours perusing the toy sections, figuring just what to put on the Christmas lists to Santa. For Patty Cake, it’s the Sel-More catalog, and all of a sudden, Patty knows EXACTLY what she wants for Christmas…
But, as we all know, what we want and what we get are two different things.
Especially when the cheap plastic tat is anything but cheap. And anyway, dad has his own present in mind…
Sure, we can see exactly where this is going – heck, many of us have been there, as kids or as parents. But just because you know where it’s going doesn’t make the pay off in Patty Cake any less sweet and lovely.
Well, the big day rolls around and Patty’s all excited for the big present under the tree… only to have the world come crashing down on her…
After that, well… I’ll just let you read on as there’s a little bit of water in my eye. Must be my allergies or something…
Oh, and just to really get you in the Christmas moments, Roberts adds this little coda. Remember everyone, life is short, your loved ones aren’t always going to be there. Make the most of the time.
