Christmas
Happy Holidays from Robot 6
from Matthew Petz
It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re winding down here at Robot 6 to go spend time with family and friends. Before heading off to celebrate, though, you’ll find a collection of holiday-themed links after the jump, along with this year’s collection of holiday cards we received.
On behalf of all of Robot 6, have a great holiday and stay safe. We’ll see you next week.
(Above: a Christmas showdown by Matthew Petz)
- December 24, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
The Fifth Color | Don’t be the bigger man for Christmas
That's right - I busted out my Dynamic Forces cover for you guys!
It’s okay to hate the holidays.
Really, no secret Santa brigade will beat you into being jolly. In fact, it’s perfectly natural to get a sort of dread around this season. The sun doesn’t shine as much, the weather outside is frightful, it’s the end of a year and the approach of a new one that we can only hope is better. As much as festive decorations, carols and family dinners might say otherwise, this is the season for frustrations.
Dear reader, I understand this feeling. I work retail. It’s perfectly fine to hate the holidays, and it’s perfectly normal to wish things were better. Charlie Brown Christmas Specials are all well and good, and it’s great to aspire to that Rockwell painting of a warm Christmas dinner, but let’s face it: that’s not reality. Reality sometimes is that a roast is burnt, the family just bickers and drinks, and all those Peanuts kids dance like idiots.
We can’t get the perfect Christmastime we want so badly, but sometimes we can be Avenged. We can take Christmas into our own hands, show some Scrooges what for and make them kinder. We can look at all the little things that make this time, if not perfect, uniquely special. And we can rocket a perverted uncle around in a frilly brassiere once we’ve shrunk him to the size of an action figure.
Folks, this is Ant Man’s Big Christmas.
- December 24, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Carla Hoffman
Laura Lee Gulledge makes holiday magic
Laura Lee Gulledge has an interesting double life: She’s the creator of the graphic novel Page by Paige, which was published by Abrams earlier this year, but like many others in the field, she also has a day job. It’s a very unusual day job though: Gulledge is a scene painter for store window displays, and she worked on the holiday displays for several big New York department stores. She has posted some fascinatingly surreal videos and photos of the windows she worked on at her blog, It Needs More Glitter, and she told me that she painted all of the Saks windows herself, rather than working with a group, adding, “so you can recognize my inking style in the finished work.” Gulledge is working on a children’s picture book concept that is inspired by her Christmas-window work—a book that she would love to see as the starting point for a real store window, thus bringing the whole thing full circle. I was curious how she mingles her two careers in real life, so I e-mailed her a couple questions.
Robot 6: How do you integrate your graphic novel work with your store windows–do you have to set everything else aside when the holidays draw near?
Laura Lee Gulledge: Anyone in comics can tell you that there isn’t a lot of money in it, especially when you’re a new author building an audience. So working as a “holiday elf” for 4 months of the year has been a good way to supplement my income over the past couple years while working on my comic projects. Unfortunately, taking away time from a book when you already have a deadline (just so you can pay the bills) can be hard. With Page by Paige I gave myself only 7 months to draw it all out because I worked a season on Christmas windows, which was insane. For my next book I’m giving myself more time to draw it, so I might not be able to fit in another season of windows. It’s been a great learning opportunity to be a scenic artist, but ultimately I’d like to be drawing full time.
- December 23, 2011 @ 02:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Grumpy Old Fan | Origin stories
The Season's Finest
… [T]here were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
– Luke 2: 8-14 (King James Version)
If you are inexorably compelled to top off that passage with “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” join the club. As well, if you’re wondering how this relates to DC Comics’ superheroes, fear not — we’ll get there. (And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t worry — I’ll try not to prosletyze.)
* * *
- December 22, 2011 @ 02:05 PM by Tom Bondurant
Unwrapping comics: Pros share their holiday memories
A couple of weeks ago, I got to thinking about the holidays and comics. More exactly, I started wondering what some creators might say if i asked them for their favorite comics-related memory. As I got into contact with some creators, they did not have a favorite story per se, but those recollections were definitely memorable. Bottom line, these storytellers not surprisingly had some great stories to share. My holiday memory is an odd one, as a kid in the 1970s reading the Doonesbury comic strip where Rev. Scott Sloan had opening remarks before the Christmas pageant, where he noted that the part of the Baby Jesus would be played by a 40-watt light bulb. A lifelong Doonesbury fan, there are few strips that have made me laugh longer than that one. Told you it was an odd one. Now on to the storytellers with far better tales. My thanks to everyone that responded. Once you’ve read them all, please be sure to chime in with your most memorable comics-related holiday recollection in the comments section.
The Avengers #4 (Not the comic stuffed in 'Lil Daryl's stocking)
Every Christmas, comics would show up in my stocking. They’d be rolled up, which I’m sure breaks the heart of every collector out there, but it didn’t bother me much. Comics were for reading. For some reason, my mother thought I liked Thor. I wasn’t a Thor guy, except when he was hanging out in the Avengers. I was, and still am, a Captain America super-fan. How could my Mom not know this? But every year I’d get a couple more Thor comics.
Fast-forward 35 years. I’m the official stocking-stuffer in the household. My wife is the queen of holiday organization, but the stocking assignment has always been mine, primarily because it’s the kind of job you can give to a procrastinator. I can run out on Christmas Eve and grab everything I need: gum, iTunes gift cards, candy bars, extra batteries… and comics. See, my son is 15, and he IS a Thor guy, so I usually try to round up something Asgardian for him, as well as a something with Atomic Robo or Axe Cop. I don’t understand the clothing my daughter is asking for (an “infinity scarf” sounds like something Dr. Who would wear), but by gum, I do know my son’s taste in comics.
- December 22, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
A Scrooge and Santa Q&A
Last year, around this time, a Christmas comic caught my eye: Scrooge and Santa, by Matthew Wilson and Josh Kenfield. I liked it a lot—it mashes up a lot of Christmas traditions but still has a fairly original story, and the kinetic art made me think of an animated cartoon. So this year, I fired off some questions for Wilson and Kenfield about their story—which is back in comics stores this week, just in time for Christmas.
Robot 6: What was your favorite Christmas special (or movie or book) when you were a kid? (I see a lot of shout-outs to It’s a Wonderful Life—was that one of your favorites?)
Matt: Definitely It’s a Wonderful Life! It’s not only my favorite Christmas movie, but one of my favorite movies of all time. I love the honesty. It’s known as a feel-good movie, but people forget how dark it is. George Bailey spends most of the movie frustrated and angry. His life is so hard and difficult that he’s ready to kill himself. But in the end, when all his family and friends show him the impact a lifetime of doing the right thing has made, that joy is real and the feel-good moment is earned. That’s something I hoped to do with Scrooge and Santa, give everyone a feel-good Christmas moment without cheating and manipulating emotions.
- December 20, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Tony Piro asks readers to help stop the copying
Last year around this time, Calamaties of Nature creator Tony Piro posted a pointed parody of A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was well received, but, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, it was also copied, altered and posted all over the internet without attribution.
Yesterday, Piro noted the problem:
My use of the Peanuts characters, in a comic that I drew and wrote myself, is allowed as a parody. But when people grab my art, change a few words, and label it as their own, it amounts to theft. Of course people are free to make their own parodies, but they should use their own art and writing. I could attempt to police these copies, but ultimately this is impossible to do on the internet, especially once images start spreading on social sites like Facebook.
Of course, if his appropriation of Charles Schulz’s characters is allowable as parody, couldn’t some of his imitators claim the same thing about their appropriation of Tony Piro’s comic? Semantics aside, Piro realizes the futility of trying to stop the appropriators, so his solution is to ask his readers to post his version of the comic, with attribution, in a sort of good-information-crowds-out-bad strategy. To show that he’s no Grinch, Piro will donate $1 to Doctors Without Borders for every 500 extra page views the comic gets.
And to round out this Christmas story, someone popped up in comments to apologize for unknowingly using an altered version of the comic. Of course, the trolls were there too…
(Via Fleen.)
- December 20, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Brigid Alverson
Miracles and superheroes: Some thoughts on Batman: The Brave and The Bold #14
House Ad for 1976 Ragman series by co-creator Joe Kubert
As miracle-based winter holidays go, Jewish Chanukah suffers a bit in constant comparison to Christian Christmas, a fact that has to do more with a coincidence of the calendar than with the importance of the holidays to the respective groups who celebrate them.
That is, Christmas is the second biggest holiday of the Christian year, behind Easter, and the one that has been most widely embraced by secular culture. For Jews, Chanukah is a relatively minor religious holiday.
The two holidays are generally forced into contrast each winter as they are celebrated around the same time, though, and Chanukah can’t help but come across as the lesser of the two, in a miracle vs. miracle sense.
The miracle of Chanukah, beyond the military victory in which the Maccabees defeated the vastly larger Greek army (Take that, Frank Miller and Zack Snyder!), was that the one day’s worth of oil they had to burn in the temple menorah burned for eight days.
Christmas has a couple of miracles for Christians, including a virgin birth, a portentous star in the sky and angels visiting multiple witnesses.
From an outsider standpoint, the Chanukah story has a lot more action, but the Christmas one inspires more awe.
Of course, neither the temple oil lasting a supernaturally long time nor a baby being born to a virgin and that event’s accompanying aerial phenomenon seem quite as impressive as this particular miracle: A magical suit stitched together from rags transforms the person who wears it into a superhero, granting him super-strength and invulnerability, limited flight ability, and, most, spectacularly, the ability to absorb the souls of truly evil people, transforming them into rags in his quilt-like suit.
- December 15, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by J. Caleb Mozzocco
The Fifth Color | How to give the gift of comics this season
I bet you Ben never knows what to get Franklin every year...
Perhaps your family gathering is going to have way more kids than previous years. Maybe the moment is right for you to hand down some traditional comics reading to a son or daughter. Is your significant other a little more receptive toward your choice of literature these days? You could have even pulled a co-worker at your Secret Santa office party who likes to talk to you about the latest comic book movie. Personally, my brother gave me his comic collection when I was a kid, and I always like to try and give him a couple new ones in return, as a way of saying thank you and reminding him of his roots.
We all have reasons for giving comics and comic-related accessories this holiday season. Comics have been vetted in popular culture, can cover a dozen different interests and physical forms, and always have been a perfectly wonderful gift for any age or interest. In fact, I think we’d all appreciate a little recruitment drive to keep comics at the top of the charts and off cancellation lists!
I’m not saying it’s easy, though. Well, it might be. For some fair readers, you could be looking at a big pile of gifts already wrapped under your Christmas tree, taking a deep breath of satisfaction. Then again, you could be strapped for cash, gift ideas and time to make sure that you don’t show up somewhere empty handed. Or worse, you could be the giftee and all Grandma knows is that you like Batman. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a guide to all the best gifts this year? Well, there is, the fine folks at CBR made up a Holiday Gift Guide, while we here at Robot 6 reached out to comic pros to see what they recommended, and I could recommend no finer list made by dashing and intellectual folks.
Then again, what if this is odd gift shopping? Working retail, I meet the clueless, the frazzled, the fearful and the confused for whom a simple and eloquently put-together list would not be enough. So for you, who will still be shopping on Dec. 24, to anyone who has ever gotten two Batman toothbrushes as a gag gift, to anyone who might be sent out into the cold for the first time to find a comic book, this guide is for you.
This is your Fear Gift-self shopping guide.
- December 9, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
The Fifth Color | End of the line with Marvel’s December solicitations
That's a strange amount of whimsy from Matt Murdock...
Now, I will admit that the Distinguished Competition has given this month an air of finality. So many No. 1 issues, what could possibly come next? Tonight there will be drinks raised high and hands shaken to a job well done as their Wrap Party ends this publishing month at Golden Apple Comics. And it does seem a little final, doesn’t it?
It’s the perfect mood for looking ahead to December, where the last of the Marvel books published this year will leave 2011 not with a bang or a whimper, but with a dawn of things to come. I’m not saying it’s a very big dawn or a brilliant one either; right now, I will full admit things look kind of so-so for December at Marvel …
… then again, I have been wrong before, so let’s take a look at December’s books, shall we?
Continue Reading »
- September 30, 2011 @ 03:00 PM by Carla Hoffman
Me and My iPad: A Very Cthulhu Christmas
Christmas is over, but for those who can’t get enough — or for those who hate the holiday so much that they wish it would be devoured by the ultimate horror — the Penny Arcade guys have a treat for you. The Last Christmas is an animated storybook for the iPad, based on a comic that first appeared in 2004. Basically, it’s a reverse twist on The Night Before Christmas in which Cthulhu arrives and eats everything in sight. It looks like a children’s book, but the horror/cuteness combination is really aimed at adults: In the iPad version, which is lightly animated, tiny skaters fall from the ice after Cthulhu pops up in the middle of it, and lights twinkle on a tree as he devours it (and the screaming hordes run in horror). The app is only a few pages long, and it’s free; the last page is a pitch for donations to Child’s Play, the charity established by Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, which sends toys, games, and books to children in hospitals worldwide.
(via Fleen)
- December 29, 2010 @ 11:30 AM by Brigid Alverson
Happy Holidays from Robot 6
by Chris Samnee
With the holiday weekend upon us, we’re winding down here at Robot 6 to go spend time with family and friends. Before heading off to stuff our stockings and trim this trees, though, you’ll find a collection of holiday-themed links after the jump.
On behalf of all of Robot 6, have a great holiday and stay safe. We’ll see you next week.
(Above: Chris Samnee says happy holidays, Thor style).
- December 24, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Axe Cop
Welcome once again to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy based on certain spending limits — $15, $30 to spend and if we had extra money to spend on what we call the “Splurge” item. Check out Diamond’s release list for this week if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Michael May
If I had $15:
I’d be all about the Axe Cop, Volume 1 ($14.99). Should be the best thing since Katie Mignola’s The Magician and the Snake.
If I had $30:
I’d add On the Case with Holmes and Watson, Volume 5: The Adventure of the Speckled Band ($6.95) and Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword #1 ($7.99). Those On the Case books are cool and a Howard anthology of new and reprinted material sounds awesome. Especially when the creators involved include Paul Tobin, Marc Andreyko, Tim Bradstreet and Barry Windsor Smith.
- December 21, 2010 @ 03:37 PM by JK Parkin
Henry & Glenn (i.e. Rollins & Danzig) wish you a merry Anti-Christmas
Move over, Rudolph and Charlie Brown: There’s a new Christmas cartoon classic in town. Exploding from the pages of Henry & Glenn Forever — the very very funny romance/gag-strip comic chronicling the eternal love between musclebound, black-clad hardcore progenitors Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig — comes the Henry & Glenn Forever X-Mas Special, an animated short by cartoonist and animator Tom Neely. Neely, who co-created Henry & Glenn Forever with fellow Igloo Tornado art-collective members Gin Stevens, Scot Nobles, and Dino Fucker, serves up a heartwarming tale reminiscent of O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” — if, that is, “Gift of the Magi” included a visit from Black Santa and Krampus, a jam session with notorious Satanists Darryl Hall and John Oates, and an exchange of thong underwear and a book about Nazi werewolves, all in honor of the birthday of H.P. Lovecraft. It’s the perfect reminder that the Henry & Glenn Forever comic makes a great fishnet-stocking stuffer. Season’s greetings, you goddamn son of a bitch!
- December 14, 2010 @ 10:15 AM by Sean T. Collins
Robot Reviews: The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories
The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories
Edited by Craig Yoe
IDW, 176 pages, $34.99
When I was a kid, the word “treasury” promised delights beyond measure, and Christmas was the time when treasuries—of comics, fairy tales, Christmas stories, and other delights—showed up under the tree.
Craig Yoe’s The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories is a throwback to those days when a big, fat, colorful book was the centerpiece of the Christmas swag. It is very much a baby-boomer book, chock full of colorful stories from the 1940s and 1950s, but most of the material has aged pretty well and there are some solid classics in there. Of course there are some clinkers, too, but that’s the way of anthologies.
Most notable among the good stuff are several stories by Walt Kelly. His Santa tales are a far cry from Pogo, with a massive, good-natured Santa surrounded by cherubic elves, while his winsome animal stories are more familiar but all sweetness and no bite. The most imaginative of his stories is “The Great Three-Flavored Blizzard,” a classic fairy-tale type story in which weather problems threaten Christmas (no snow, no sleigh) until an elf and the Easter Bunny solve the problem by using ice cream for snow.
- December 13, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson