01/03: Deco. the halls.
01/04: All it needs is a little love.
January 03: The rough publishing schedule of the newsletter "monotony" didn't make it necessary that the dates on the TAGS comics be timely, so I could happily extend Christmas themed story lines well into the new year. Here, Jeannie (swan) makes her first, yet unidentified, appearance to kick off a four-strip Christmas tree decorating contest line. As a warning, it abruptly ends unresolved.
The Christmas tree decorating contest storyline is based on a similar such contest held for the cast-members at Disneyland, with the exception of it being decorating doors. In 1991, the year that Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" premiered, I design an elaborate multi-paneled B&B stained-glass "window" made of paper and cardboard to be hung on the door to the department's scheduling office. It was back lit with a string of Christmas lights. The panels were designed to be removable to make replacing burnt out lights viable. In January, I had planned to change out the image with a new one, but that didn't end up working.
January 04: The first thing you need for a tree decorating contest is a tree, and Murray (cheetah) and Monster eagerly embark on the search. The general locale of TAGS is southern California whose winter doesn't require a full gear of parkas and mitts, but the props helps sell the idea of the season with traditional American iconography. True, So. Cal. does get seasonal snowfall in the mountains, but all the strip needs to communicate is "winter."
Panel 1 should be an obvious homage to the classic television special "A Charlie Brown Christmas." The panel 3 joke may have been funnier with a talking tree, instead of a guy in a cardboard tree costume.
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