Cushlamochree!

If you think you recognize the kid at left, you're probably familiar with a cousin of his, a boy with a purple crayon. "Barnaby" was drawn by Crockett Johnson, the same man who brought you children's classic "Harold and the Purple Crayon." The two works share the same fondness for the fantastic, and promote the world as a much more interesting place than adults realize. It's a little hard to pin down "Barnaby," except for the beautiful minimalist drawing. It comes close to being a comic-strip version of what Tolkien would define as a true fairy tale, except that the fairies intrude upon the human world instead of the other way around. Mr. O'Malley, fairy godfather to Barnaby, leads the parade of fantastic characters. He's generally incompetent, perhaps because his magic wand suspiciously resembles a cigar. Barnaby suffers from Snuffleupagus syndrome, his parents never seeing Mr. O'Malley and believing their child to have emotional troubles. On the other hand, Mr. O'Malley is not sure Barnaby's parents exist, either.

Johnson drew the strip mostly during the 1940s, but stopped its production at that magical 10-year mark. It never had a wide audience, but those who loved it loved it. In the mid-80s an attempt was made to reproduce the strip's entire run in paperback, but as far as I can tell the project was dropped after five or six books.