What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? Why does Gasoline Alley have a talking bear? November 2022 – February 2023

Gasoline Alley, at least under Jim Scancarelli’s tenure, is a lightly fantastic universe. That’s all. There’s elements that can’t exist, like the Old Comics Home, or the recent visit with Santa Claus, or the current story with Bear. There was an attempt at saying the recent visit with Santa Claus was imaginary. I think it’s not possible to make the talking bear only something in kids’ imagination. Scancarelli enjoys a strip that lets him step outside the already-gentle realism of the normal story and that’s that.

This should catch you up to early February 2023 in the comics. If you’re reading this after about May 2023, I should have a more up-to-date plot recap of Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley at this link. If you’re not, then, enjoy catching up here.

Gasoline Alley.

7 November 2022 – 4 February 2023.

Walt Wallet was finally writing up a bucket list. The least recklessly dangerous thing on it? Riding on the back of a garbage truck, something that caught his imagination as a child and that he never got to do. The trouble: nobody’s going to let a man who can remember when there were 45 states in the union ride the back of a garbage truck. Even if they would, they can’t; there’s no perch for that anymore. Hulla Ballew, reporter for the Gasette newspaper, thinks it’d be a fun story if he could. And Rufus, of the comedy-relief team of Rufus and Joel, has an in with Mayor Melba.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 7th of December, 2022. Snarky guy is not exactly wrong; EtymologyOnline gives 1913 for the introduction of ‘truck’ like we think of trucks in American English. But ‘motor truck’, certainly getting the same spirit of the thing, dates to 1901 which … I guess we usually suppose on 1900 as Walt Wallet’s notional birthdate. (The word itself goes back much farther, with the usual sorts of goofy mutations in meaning.)

Over dinner at Corky’s Diner Rufus asks if Walt Wallet could get a ride. Melba thinks it’s a great idea; fun for Walt Wallet and some good publicity for the sanitation department. Despite Skeezix’s reasonable concern, the bit of civic whimsy gets set up in good order. By early December the city has a garbage truck, with a platform on the back, and a harness so a theoretically 122-year-old man can’t fall off, ready to go. And so, in front of cameras, the press, and half the population of town, he gets his ride.

Though we see him take off, we don’t get to actually see his ride. We see him arriving back home and thanking the mayor, who thinks she’ll ride the garbage truck back City Hall herself. And, the 13th of December, he falls into a happy sleep.

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The 14th starts the next story, with Aubee Skinner (great-granddaughter of Walt Wallet), Ava Luna, and Sophie visiting. Also Ida Noe, Ava Luna’s magic doll, who’s used as an excuse for Scancarelli to spend a week drawing The Twelve Days Of Christmas. Which was not the only Twelve Days of Christmas montage this season, either; Barney Google and Snuffy Smith had a take on the song too.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 3rd of January, 2023. You have to agree Jim Scancarelli draws a cute reindeer. Any animal, really; we’re a bit disadvantaged he didn’t get into drawing a full-time funny-animals comic strip.

After that — and after Christmas — Ava Luna says she’s going to take Santa up on his invitation last year to visit again. And in a poof they’re off to … not the North Pole. It’s after Christmas. Santa’s vacationing in the tropics. Not for long, though, as there’s a crisis back at the North Pole. Bunky, the Big Book Brownie — keeper of the list of naughty and nice kids (we met him in 2021) is resigning. He wants to strike out on his own, form some company of his own to do elf business. Santa is skeptical of this plan, which you can’t even call half-baked. It’s more resting in the mixing bowl waiting for someone to find the cake dish and start preheating the oven.

Jim Scancarelli’s Gasoline Alley for the 17th of January, 2023. I was starting to pitch a story about Santa deciding to use his worldwide overnight transportation network to gather all the trash from all over the world and then — using his amazing skills at creating things — salvaging what can be made into new goods and bringing the true waste to places it can be safely stored, dispersed, or left for future technologies that make it usable again, and then realized I was probably writing a Dinosaur Comics that already exists.

But Santa understands Bunky’s aspirations and mentions his own childhood wish to ride the back of a garbage truck. This, I’m sure, reflects Jim Scancarelli’s awareness of how The Jack Benny Show could turn anything into a runner. Anyway, Santa wishes him luck. He may be aware that the moment Bunky saw Santa’s new secretary, Allure, he’d insist on staying another 99 years. So everything is resolved in a happy if old-fashioned manner.

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And then — you know, I’m going ahead and putting the start at Sunday, the 29th of January — we start what seems like the current story. Boog Skinner, Aubee’s older brother, is talking with the local wildlife again. Particularly, Bear, his best friend. Bear’s having some trouble sleeping, what with the racket of the city (Gasoline Alley) encroaching on the wilderness. Also all the fuss about Groundhog Day. Boog offers some earplugs and wishes him a good late hibernation and that’s where that story’s gotten.

Next Week!

It was an innocent attempt at cryptozoology; how we not end up exploding a boat over alligators? Other than because they were crocodiles? I try to answer next week as I recap Jules Rivera’s Mark Trail, all things going to plan.

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