Annual Chrismas Round-Up 2016

Happy Life Day everyone. There was more than the usual number of Holiday-themed comics this year (or I just found more) so let's crack on!

To Beanotown! Where Christmas is threatened due to an evil plan by Walter...

 And Calamity James contracts classic comics disease spottyitis, but gets a George Bailey ending.

This is from the Beano Annual 2017, the Bash Street Teacher gets Dickensed

And from this year's Dandy Annual, Brassneck discovers he is a Transformer. Albeit a rubbish one.

And at the adult end of the humour comics, here's this year's Viz round-up

Fru T. Bunn made Christmas puddings... 

There was a delightful Broons pastiche featuring the Royal family called The Broon Windsors 

Lord Kitchener finds his pointing skills hamper his work as Santa 

And 8 Ace has a visit from a Snow-Can 

Here's the best cartoons from Private Eye

And in 2000AD:

Seasonal cheer hits Megacity One

The Ace Trucking Company takes a swipe at Amazon 

From there to that other sci-fi mainstay Doctor Who Magazine

Danger Mouse encounters this year's hottest toy: Fuzby!

Which turns out to be part of an evil plot by the Snowman (read this in the voice of Richard Ayoade for maximum effect) 

Another evil plot, this one by the Phantom Blot, is thwarted in Mickey and Donald Christmas Parade

The lead story in this anthology of European Disney comics translated to English for the first time is from Sweden's Kalle Ankas Pocket 422 and features time travelling to ruin Christmas in the 1950s to make the people of the present hate it. It's bonkers and great fun and features your actual Santa fighting robots with Huey, Louie and Dewey. 

Over in the superhero comics we got an origin for the Rebirth-era Ace the Bat-Hound!

Batman Annual was a lovely anthology that featured two riffs on the classic story The Silent Night of the Batman from 1970. The second featured Harley Quinn. And the first of many appearances of this song

Batman shuts her up quite quickly but she got to finish it over on Scooby Doo Team-Up 21

It even turned up as a ring tone for Luke Cage in Power Man and Iron Fist Annual (a story called - what else? - Sweet Christmas)

Now let's hear it sung properly....

Oh, Squid Bits.... Okay let's pay a call on The Phoenix 

But back to Scooby Doo Team-Up. Harley wants to join Mystery Inc but there investigation of the Christmassy ghost is interrupted by this guy...

Scooby Doo Team-Up delights in bringing up weird obscure bits of forgotten comics lore but I was not prepared for this:

The return of Gaggy! The Joker's original sidekick! From a 1966 Gardner Fox/Sheldon Moldoff story! 

There was possibly a record number of Santa appearances in superhero comics this year but also a surprising number of Krampus spots.

Ash is confronted in Evil Dead 2: Revenge of Krampus

Lucifer 13 has this

Technically people dressed as Krampus.

And the aforementioned Power Man and Iron Fist Annual features the returning Krampus being fought off by Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Santa Satan

All of which leads to the return of Santa himself, who has been laying low waiting for Krampus to get cocky

I sincerely hope this is the new canonical story Santa in the Marvel Universe.

Harley Quinn 10 features our anti-heroine saving Santa.... FROM HIMSELF!!

Detective Chimp is hired by.... someone to find his lost.... animal

in DC Rebirth Holiday Special 1

And in Klaus and the Witch of Winter (the first spin-off from Grant Morrison and Dan Mora's excellent Santa origin story, pulling threads from various European folk tales) we are introduced to the various avatars of Winter that make up the modern-day Santa, including St Nicholas and Father Christmas

It's The League of Extraordinary Santas!

Evil Dead 2: A Very Deadite Christmas sees Ash fighting his original nemeses in a theme park

The DC Rebirth Holiday Special (hosted by Harley Quinn - they really got their money's worth out of her this year, didn't they) was the best at showing the diverse celebrations of the season

(and the unexpected return of the Penny Plunderer!) 

John Constantine celebrates the Solstice with Wonder Woman 

New Superman taught us about Dongzhi and DC's most prominent Jewish hero, Batwoman, has a peaceful Hannukah  

And I learned of Mexican traditions for Epiphany from Green Lanterns 

I don't think anyone got left out. Did they?

Spider-man Deadpool 12 featured the return of Roman god Saturn, annoyed that his feast of Saturnalia is no longer celebrated. Well, good news. It may be forgotten on Earth....

The Simpson Annual 2017 (UK) also featured Homer doing Die Hard

The Giant Days Holiday Special 2016 gave us a glimpse into an alternate reality in a full-on What If? pastiche

Best of all this year was Gwenpool Holiday Special: Merry Mix-up wherein Gwen finds herself in a world where the Christmas traditions she knew were radically altered. Reality has changed and only she can tell!

Now Santa has been replaced by a benevolent Galactus, carols are about fish and people get gifts of hotpants every Pantsgiving.

An anthology awaits with various characters we love in this strange world. Spider-Man (Mile Morales) takes a trip to the mall, ignores Ned and Maude Flanders

before defeating a bunch of big bads with the help of a magical visit from jolly old Galactus himself 

Of course, no-one believes him.

Even The Punisher celebrates Pantsgiving 

And the Red Skull, Captain America's greatest enemy, is feeling dejected at this time of year. It's time for a festive message from a ghostly presence to lift his spirits.

And who else could that be? 

Might be the single greatest comics moment of the year.

Anyway, it turns out that Gwen finds the perpetrator of this reality shift 

It's that man again.

Also in this issue is a back-up Deadpool story set at Halloween (oh, Deadpool, you so wacky) 

I wouldn't have mentioned it if not for the child in the Eleven costume.

I'll wrap this up with one final image from the Gwenpool special, in tribute to someone we lost on Christmas Day itself. 

Happy New Year, readers!

Presidential Comics Reloaded

The first time I discussed  American presidents in comics it became clear (not least through helpful comments) that I had made some omissions.

It was odd that I didn't think to mention Garry Trudeau's long-running satirical strip Doonesbury, for example. I was trying to avoid outright satirical representations (otherwise my Prime Ministers follow up will be 90% Steve Bell) but Trudeau's method of characterising the Commander-in-Chief is worth noting. Reagan was depicted as Max Headroom, Bush Sr was deemed so insignificant he was drawn as a speck and Clinton was a waffle.

Oh, and Bush Jr was a speck wearing a cowboy hat.

Less than a week after writing the previous post I found myself reading Peter Bagge's Batboy, a strip he did for the Weekly World News, which, in 2004, had the hero become.... you know.

I'm grateful to reader Tribs over at B3ta.com for pointing out that Zombo in 200AD featured an horrific future with Donald Trump as president. I hadn't read it before so that was a fun diversion for me. He was responsible fotr the creation of Obmoz, the reverse-Zombo which is a great silver-age DCish idea.

I should also mention that since the previous post Jack Northworthy of Citizen Jack did, as predicted, become president in spite of a near-total mental breakdown. 

Then, just this past week has seen creators joining the election bandwagon. There was a Catwoman Election Night one-off by Meredith Finch and Shane Davis (as well as a back-up Beth Ross Prez story which was delightful, by creators Russell and Caldwell).

The main story concerns Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin, and his campaign to run for Gotham Mayor. Again. 

Like he did in the 60s.

And then again in the 90s.

And, I'm told he's doing it again in the TV show Gotham too.

Anyway, this is used to make some not-too-subtle digs at you-know-who. 

Also out now is the latest issue of the weird satirical gritty reboot of The Flintstones from DC, by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh.

I'll admit it took me a while to get into this but it's really hitting a fun cynical stride now. 

It seems worth mentioning that the second story arc of Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro's excellent Bitch Planet is in full swing although the significance of the title is not yet fully apparent.

If you don't know it I like to describe it as a Roger Corman women-in-prison movie if it were written by Margaret Atwood. If that intrigues you give it a go. Each issue is backed up with fascinating essays on feminism as related politics.

That's all for now. Now we just wait to see the results of the election.

This could be the end....

Butterfly: Come for the horrific racism, stay for the pretty cool alien robots

Let's go back further than we've ever gone before....

Presenting Butterfly, from July 1939.

To put some historical context to this, it is less than a year since the first issue of The Beano was published and less than two months since the first Batman story.

This one proved tricky to research, my usual sources had no information but I now know it was launched in 1904 and ceased publication in 1940. My copy is a reprint from I know not where.

It's an 8-page combination of comic strips and illustrated adventure stories. The strips all have wordy commentaries beneath the panels, as was common at the time.

There's a little rhyme above the title which, due to the size of the printing, my scanner cuts off part of. It refers to the comic as "the jolly old Butt" which is upsetting.

So let's crack on with the cover stars: Smiler and Smuge The Carraway College Comics.

Ugh. It's going to be one of those, is it? 

Yep, an hilarious blackface caricature who talks like Rochester and is described as "the pocket-sized coon".

"Breaf ob fresh air"?

In the strip's defence, Smudge is the smart one, tricking Smiler out of some cash in order to take a boat trip (the Angeline mentioned above is a boat) and after goes after him in a dinghy...

...he ends up accidentally scooping up a load of fish into the lap of a nearby angler.

Slap up feast all round!

Page two gives us a character that would not have looked out of place in Judy or Mandy. Cindy Lee, Drudge of Her Selfish Sisters. 

A text story of a put-upon girl whose father remarried and uses her good-old British pluck to deal with her vicious step-sisters. This week, an invitation to an evening of tennis is nearly thwarted. 

I love seeing these illustrations that mean so little out of context. It made Glen Baxter's entire career.

Below that is The Sailor Detective, the adventures of ship-bound law-enforcement. This week: The Missing Stamp Collection!

It's one of those stories where you, the reader, are invited to spot the clue that gives away the real thief. The answer is on page 7.

Next up, a full page serial story, The Forest Phantom.

Our hero has found himself caught up in a nefarious scheme of Mortimer Grevelle, Squire of Dean who means to have him done in, going so far as to hire an American criminal called Oneshot Krale. 

Fortunately our hero finds himself protected by a woodland mystery man known only as the Forest Phantom. Who does not feature in this chapter at all.

Oh, and our hero is called Alan Carr, which made it difficult to take seriously.

Next comes a five-panel humour strip with a ridiculously long title: The Quaint and Amusing Antics of Ping, the Panda, the Popular Pet. Presented here in its entirety, 

And, for the record, Pandas are not a popular pet. Nor should they be.

Ping shares his page with the first of our serialised comic strips: The Dagger of Amulla. 

Simba, the Elephant Boy, a slightly more sympathetic representation of a person of colour, is on a quest to retrieve a stolen dagger which may be the key (figuratively and literally) to a lost treasure. He travels with a white girl in jodhpurs called Connie, who may not be a Strong Female Lead but it's still pleasing to see a girl adventuring in this time period.

An encounter with a kind old beggar (a sympathetic Muslim character, also rare) leads them to the man who stole the dagger and a daring midnight raid...

What happens next? I'll never know.

This is immediately followed by another serialised adventure strip on a quest for an important artefact. Detective duo Spotsem and Getsem (Getsem is a dog) are searching for The Jewelled Carrot.

This one is more comedic in style and tone and this chapter has our plucky sleuths tracking the ne'er-do-wells the Ivy Road Creepers to a museum where they hide the decorative vegetable in a dinosaur bone.

However, before Spotsem can retrieve the blinged-out daucus, it in snatched by a passing hungry stray dog. A gag that would become something of a comic strip cliche. 

By the time they get the bone back (by offering the mutt a fresh ham bone in place) the jazzed-up taproot is gone!

What happens next? I'll never know.

Beneath that is a short comedy story of a family fun called The Jolly Days.

In this strip the brother and sister prank their dad and abscond with the food hamper.

Given the ubiquity of corporal punishment in the comics of the 1970s and 80s with which I grew up (the reason this blog is called The Slipper) I'm genuinely surprised to see Dad threatening "a good talking to" in the final panel. I guess we learned less about child welfare as the century progressed before learning more.

Another self-contained text adventure story next with Prince of the Mounties.

RCMP Terry Prince is everything we'd come to expect from the cliche of the do-gooding mountie from Dudley Do-Right to Benton Fraser.

In this story he's partnered with a hot-headed new recruit who resents following the rules and leads them into trouble!

A short story on the same page stars a lion cub called Rora.

I got wasted at work once. It was a bad time for me. No-one noticed.

Ahem.

The story has Rora wandering around his jungle home before getting caught in a vicious storm. Which begs the question: Why is there a lion cub (and indeed his whole family) living in a jungle? Their natural home is the grasslands of Africa but here they appear to be in an Indian jungle with monkeys. Either there is a back story here or the writer did no research and took the "king of the jungle" thing literally. I'm going with the former, for fairness' sake.

There's an ad on this page too, for badly-titled story weekly Sports Budget.

Ace Hart News-Reel Knockout, I will never encounter you again.

A young boy's wish-fulfilment story next, with If----!

Young Toby was given some magic green powder by "an Indian fakir". Malcolm McDowell played him in the movie.

Toby didn't have the best imagination.

He shares his page with some shorter cartoons...

...and a sort-of letters column featuring a man you wouldn't leave your children with, Uncle Bertram.

The address leads me to believe this publisher would become Fleetway Comics.

Advice there on how to trick someone into giving you money by pretending to be homeless. With no negative consequences.

Oh, and here on page 7 we find out that Tom Main, Sailor Detective knew Mr Harrap was lying because he wasn't wet. And if he had been up on deck he'd have known it was raining. I worked it out. I'm dead clever, me.

The back cover gives us a fine science fiction serial strip Into Unknown Worlds.

Joan and John, plucky sister/brother team are on the alien planet Nevus, looking for their kidnapped uncle, Professor Ramon.

To put some slight historical context, sci-fi is still in its infancy. we're less than 20 years since the word robot was coined and five years since the creation of Flash Gordon, for example.

Now look at that alien car and the pterodactyl-ish alien beast flying beneath the bridge. 

The villain of the piece, Skorpio (he'll sting you with his dreams of power and wealth), is taking a "hypnotic gas chair" back to his lair to use it on the Prof. J&J negotiate their way through an energy beam to follow.

There's a Futurama-style transparent tube for transport.

But how to get in the lair without being spotted?

I love the design of these robots. I wish I could credit the artist.

They remove the "wires, batteries and valves" from the insides so they can wear the robots' skin. I love it when old-timey sci-fi has "valves".

Meanwhile, Skorpio is in discussion with his henchman, both looking like drag queens.

John follows him and beats him over the head with his heavily-armoured robot fist.

That guy's dead, right?

And finally they are re-united with their uncle!

"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

What happens next? I'll never know.

All in all, Butterfly is a mixed bag. Its style was going out of fashion (thanks to new titles like the Dandy and The Beano) and I imagine the paper rationing of the war years took its toll. Still, 36 years is pretty impressive. And apparently Peter O'Donnell (creator of Modesty Blaise) cut his teeth writing there.

Till next time, when we look at something more contemporary.