Alvin And His Pals In Merry Christmas Dell Giant

We Wish You A
Merry Chipmunk

Alvin And His Pals In
Merry Christmas with
Clyde Crashcup and
Leonardo Dell Giant
Issue Code 02-120-402
Dell Four Colour Comics
1963

Okay, I used to love the one issue I had of Dell Comics’ Alvin when I was a kid. Mainly because, since I was born in 1968, I’ve been listening to the original Christmas With The Chipmunks album throughout every December, initially on the original vinyl album from '68 onwards but, from around somewhere in the early 2000s, on a CD version with the same cover reproduced on the front. So, yeah, to date I’ve listened to this album multiple times over 54 years... I guess I must have listened to it well over 200 times (probably more like 300) which isn’t too bad, given that it only comes out to play in December.

This Alvin And His Pals In Merry Christmas Dell Giant from 1963 (which seems to have been reissued, from what I can tell, annually for a few years after its initial release, at the princely sum of 25 cents) is fresh to me and, it’s somewhat disappointing... but also, somehow kinda horrific, inappropriate and also expressive of the duality of man, I thought.

So the big downside is the Clyde Crashcup story, which features as multi-episode, meandering story arc which is printed between various, stand alone Chipmunk stories... along with the usual activity pages and single page text stories. This involves an ‘inventor’ who can just draw things with his magic pen into the air and they just exist as his new inventions. Ignoring the questionable science involved in this, of course, it has to be said that everything he manages to invent in this story is something that has already been invented (such as when he decides to invent Santa Claus before his assistant Leonardo points out there’s already such a being in existence). It’s a convoluted road journey which ends up, after a few dull adventures, with the two titular protagonists hitching a ride back to their place on Santa’s sleigh. Which is also questionable within the confines of this issue if you assume the characters share the same universe as Alvin and the Chipmunks, in terms of Santa but... I’ll get to that in just a minute.

Okay, so the stand alone Chipmunk tales are okay. Starting off on a nice one where the chipmunks mistake various Christmas traditions for more sinister things, when they flashback to their first ever Christmas with David Seville. Various shenanigans in the tales are standard stuff but entertaining enough, especially if you are a kid (which, mentally, I still pretty much am... yay for me).

But there’s a dark heart beating at the centre of these tales in that, in the first story the tradition of the man of the house, dressing up as the make believe Santa (in this case Dave) is firmly established. Which in itself must have been a blow for any youngsters reading this particular story in 1963. However, above and beyond this trauma, there’s something else which makes no sense. In a story where the Chipmunks are dreaming about helping Father Christmas deliver toys on his sleigh, the twist to the story is that they didn’t dream it and they were actually helping out the real Santa Claus. Wait, what? How can this be when the previous story had lifted the lid and  continued the tradition of parents dressing up as the non-existent Santa? In fact, in another story, Dave is telling the boys about how delivering presents is Santa's job... huh? Is he gaslighting them now? No explanation of this dual manifestation is forthcoming in the strip and I’m sure this would have laid the seeds of schizophrenia in various children exposed to this questionable, continuity busting, retrofitting of values already established in the first story.

The activity pages and text stories are all fine and quite wholesome in some ways... although I suspect the page dedicated to showing kids how to Make Your Own Golliwog may not get much of an appreciative audience these days. One lovely page has the music and lyrics printed to The Chipmunk Song, which is one of the tracks on that initial album that got me into the furry trio in the first place... so that was nice.

And then there’s the last, somewhat worrying Chipmunk story in the issue. Dave, Alvin, Simon and Theodore are prepping for Christmas and they buy way too much food. But then they see their neighbours... a father, mother and two kids... out on the street singing Christmas carols for the neighbourhood, as they do every year apparently. However, they are a very poor family with ripped clothes and very little money to eat. So Alvin and the gang invite the neighbours in to share their huge Christmas dinner with them... which is a really nice sentiment and teaches kids about the gift of kindness, for sure. Except... hang on... there’s something fishy going on here. If these jolly carollers are so poor then why are they living in the same neighbourhood as the obviously well off David Seville and his chipmunks? If Dave is living in an upmarket suburb of the USA then surely these poor people would not be able to afford to live in a house in the same district. Similarly, if they are living in more ‘wealth appropriate’ accommodation, then why would Seville be living in a run down neighbourhood when he can obviously afford to look after three growing Chipmunks and overspend on huge amounts of Christmas food? This obviously doesn’t make sense but, again, at no moment in these pages is any attempt made to explain this conundrum.

And, yeah, okay... that’s me done on this rather short but, hopefully, revealing review of the 1963 Alvin And His Pals In Merry Christmas Dell Giant. An entertaining issue but, as you can see, with a darker seam lurking beneath the Christmas values the comic book appears to be peddling. Fun, entertaining and traumatic reading for the kiddies, for sure.