...there are a couple of stories whose plots don't really make sense.
You're not kidding. What some of them lack in logic or plotting, they make up for it in charm and Christmas cheer.
True enough, but Stromboli's other puppets being alive in the first Pinocchio story was just so off-putting and weird — just a handwave to explain it would have done, but as it stood, it just broke my immersion right there.
Right! So as planned, I got it for Christmas, and just started reading it; and it's very nice, although there are a couple of stories whose plots don't really make sense. I liked the Von Drake story best for the moment.
I love Ludwig's Christmas tree! Did you notice those ornaments he's hanging on it?
Out of the ones I've read so far, A Castle for Christmas is the strangest. Bambi and the Stork from Dumbo help two ghosts escape a castle that they were trapped in by a witch so that Santa can give them a new castle for Christmas. Just the thought that someone came up with this and someone else said "Yeah. That's a good story for our Christmas strip."
Out of the ones I've read so far, A Castle for Christmas is the strangest. Bambi and the Stork from Dumbo help two ghosts escape a castle that they were trapped in by a witch so that Santa can give them a new castle for Christmas. Just the thought that someone came up with this and someone else said "Yeah. That's a good story for our Christmas strip."
True, but that also makes it enormously entertaining at the same time. Although in the way of strange, Dumbo and the Christmas Mystery also has its fair share — the Christmas Spirit as a personified character who automatically makes everyone unhappy when she's locked up is a bit of a peculiar choice. “Christmas! That wonderful time of the year when you're happy and generous because a fairy mind-controlled you!”
It amuses/irks me that whenever the stories have to mention setting, it's just "the land", "the land" that includes the Three Little Pigs' house and Bambi's forest and Cinderella's abandoned Chateau. (For the record, it's kinda interesting how the latter becomes a recurring location in the strips!) Time periods are occasionally funky too — the Sleeping Beauty/Ludwig story does bother to include a time-travel element to explain hte crossover, but not the Robin Hood story, which apparently expects us to believe Dumbo exists in the same timeframe as Prince John's England. I guess I could lift the "Santa Claus has time-travel" idea from an Italian story I recall to explain it, but that's obviously not what they had in mind. I mean, it's pretty important in Dumbo that this is a circus with a train…
Something to note is that it seems a perenial element of these stories that Santa Claus/Kris Kringle hires the Seven Dwarfs, and occasionally Pinocchio, to help him make the toys every year. When the Dwarfs aren't there he's reduced to creating them himself. …What happened to the Christmas Elves, exactly? They first materialize in the 1985 101 Dalmatians strip.
I haven't had the time to read much of the book yet, but it's great to finally have all these Christmas strips collected in a book! But I too wish they had made it complete by including the 1986 serial A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Christmas!. The reason might be because it features Uncle Remus and the controversies with Song of the South. (we still haven't seen a proper American home media release of the movie). But the book does have the "Publishers note: bygone era" note, so I think it would have been safe to include the serial.
Most of the content in the book looks like are from high-quality sources, but according to the credits some restoration work is done too. And ex. "Snow White's Sinister Christmas Gift" (1987) is not of the best quality. So not being able to acquire good source material for 1986 might be a reason too.
You're probably aware of this, but: as it happens, A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Christmas! has just now been published in Norway. It turned up in this year's edition of the annual Christmas publication Walt Disney's julehefte, under the title Langøre - En heisvingende jul. The proofs they used seem pristine, logically enough for a strip serial produced as late as 1986. So I don't think there's much question about why it's missing in IDW's compilation, sadly.
You're probably aware of this, but: as it happens, A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Christmas! has just now been published in Norway. It turned up in this year's edition of the annual Christmas publication Walt Disney's julehefte, under the title Langøre - En heisvingende jul. The proofs they used seem pristine, logically enough for a strip serial produced as late as 1986. So I don't think there's much question about why it's missing in IDW's compilation, sadly.
You're probably aware of this, but: as it happens, A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Christmas! has just now been published in Norway. It turned up in this year's edition of the annual Christmas publication Walt Disney's julehefte, under the title Langøre - En heisvingende jul. The proofs they used seem pristine, logically enough for a strip serial produced as late as 1986. So I don't think there's much question about why it's missing in IDW's compilation, sadly.
…So is it a good story?
To be honest, I didn't find it very memorable. But I didn't expect to either, as I had read a number of these Christmas Classic serials in earlier Walt Disney's julehefte issues, and I found the majority of them quite mediocre. This one wasn't terrible, but it did nothing that hasn't been done better in numerous vintage Br'er Rabbit comics from the 40s and 50s.
That said, I still appreciate that editor David Gerstein got it included in this publication -- I actually bought it because I had learned from this thread that it was censored from IDW's American compilation for adult collectors. Here in Norway, on the other hand, it can get published in a saddle-stitched comic book purchased by families and kids.