A Patty Cake Christmas

  

 If you're in your mid-30s or older, you'll probably remember the Sears Christmas catalog. It would arrive about mid-summer and be filled with a solid 100 pages of the stuff Christmas toy wishes were made of. There was also some really extravagant toy that everybody wanted that cost a couple of hundred bucks. For me, the big gift I wanted really bad but never got was the USS Hawk aircraft carrier from GI Joe. It was 7 feet long and came with several action figures and a plane (or was it a helicopter?) Anyway, my parents said it was too expensive and too big. I wasn't happy about it but unlike the title character of this book, I got over it.
  This indy comic from 1996 stars the little known character of Patty Cake Bakerman. She's a wry smart-aleck girl with wild ideas and even wilder dreams. I first read some of her stories a few years ago when I was visiting the Chapel Hill Public Library regularly. I thought the series was charming and hilarious.
   The Patty Cake books are geared for all ages. Yes, the series was a little silly. But as the Tom Baker Doctor would say, "What's the point of being a grown-up if you can't be childish once in a while?" That's why I liked it.
   Early this year, I got a really good deal at an online comic seller. We're talking 70% off total sale price or better good. With this deal, I decided it was the best time to find some Christmas and holiday books for the upcoming holiday season. A Patty Cake Christmas was something I didn't even knew existed and for only a $1.25, I couldn't pass it up.
   So what's this story about?
   Here, Patty's got her heart set on a $300 (sorry, $299.99) play set for her barrel monkeys to play with. From the moment she gets her copy of the Spend-Mor catalog in July through Halloween and Thanksgiving, it's all Patty Cake can think of.
    But money's tight and her handyman father is secretly making her a rocking chair. Patty's reaction is both typical of today's youth and pretty shocking.
   As for the monkey play set, one of her friends get it from Santa and they aren't impressed. That reminds me of when I wanted a Robin Hood village play set and when I got it, I realized it was cheaply made and a recasting of the Ewok village from Return of the Jedi! I felt so gypped. Plus, what was I going to do with 2 Ewok villages now!
    This comic brought back some memories and it will bring them back for you too! Kids today might now understand how cool it was to get a catalog in the mail, but they'll enjoy the goofy characters and zany moments. This is something I think parents and adults might get more of a kick out of than kids anyway. Remember the movie "A Christmas Story?" It's a kids movie, but the nostalgia factor being based on the real-life events of the film's screenwriter, this makes it very appealing for adults. Well, in the afterword by creator Scott Roberts, it is revealed that this story was inspired by a homemade gift his late father made for him as a child. So, I think that's why I am such a fan of this comic.
     This is a very hard to find gem. But it is available online, you just have to search. And for a collector and avid shopper like me, that's half the fun.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.