Jasper Rasper

Jasper Rasper

A mean-minded old skinflint who makes a dastardly attempt to "sabotage Christmas" by feeding Santa Claus chocolate candy coated with a fat-producing "wonder drug" that makes him too fat to fit down chimneys, and by dosing his reindeer fodder with a debilitating chemical that makes the animals too ill to pull the magic sleigh. Superman rescues Christmas from disaster by helping Santa trim down to his normal weight and by flying his sleigh around the world in place of the sickened reindeer, and when Jasper Rasper is accidentally stranded on an ice floe, it is Superman who swoops down to save him.

"Why did you want to sabotage Christmas, Rasper?" asks Superman.

"I jostled and fought my way up from poverty without scruples." replies Rasper. "No one ever gave me a helping hand, and my formula for success was to be trickier than my neighbor.

"I hated Christmas, with its talk of charity and good will! It made a mockery of my hard-boiled philosophy. I decided to sabotage the holiday!

"But now that you two have saved my life, I'm beginning to wonder maybe I've been wrong. Maybe there is something to the 'good will toward men' reasoning..."

"If you see the error of your ways, Rasper," chimes in Santa, "there's hope for you" (Act No. 105, Feb. 1947: "The Man Who Hated Christmas!"). (TGSB)