Blondie, 1/7/22

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you know that Elmo is one of my Blondie obsessions. Who is he? Where are his parents? Why does he spend so much time with Dagwood, an adult to whom he is unrelated? Well, a faithful reader recently sent me a report from her visit to the Library of Congress, where American tax dollars are (correctly) being used to maintain old Blondie strips that shed some light on the issue. Both Alexander and Cookie started out as babies in the strip before gradually aging up to teenagerhood and then staying there; as you can see in this strip from 1954, Elmo was originally introduced as a playmate/potential crush object for Cookie when they were about the same age.

Blondie, 7/21/54