The holiday is again rapidly approaching. Along with holiday decorations, shopping, and the classic holiday music, comics with Christmas stories always added to the season for me, so I thought this would be a fun thread.
Some DC picks are:
BATMAN 219 (2/1970) backup by Friedrich, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. Batman shows up at police headquarters, no crime is occurring, so he sings Christmas carols all night with the police officers there. Kindness and good fortune makes people all over town think twice about crime, suicide, etc.
larger image of it HERE BATMAN 239 (2/1972) by Dennis O'Neil, Irv Novick and Giordano. A down-on-his-luck x-convict, his daughter, and a Scrooge-like company owner are helped by Batman. Plus a backup Golden Age Batman Christmas story by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, also reprinted here.
http://fullsize/239.GIF BATMAN 247 (3/1973) by O'Neil, Novick and Giordano. Batman hunts down a criminal who has stolen a germ-warfare weapon. The story is divided into two chapters, the first occurring at Christmas, the second part a week later on New Years' Eve.
http://fullsize/247.GIF PLOP 10 (3/1975) Cain, Abel and Eve sneak aboard Santa's sleigh and force him to put up with their stories while he rides around the world delivering presents. Art by Aragones and others.
http://fullsize/10.GIF DC SPECIAL SERIES 21 (SUPER STAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL, 1979) featuring a Batman story by O'Neil, Frank Miller and Steve Mitchell. Along with other stories of Jonah Hex (Fleisher/Ayers), Sgt Rock (Kanigher/Ayers) and the Legion(Levitz/Garcia-Lopez).
http://fullsize/21.GIF SECRET ORIGINS 10 (1986), featuring the Phantom Stranger in four different stories. Christmas stories of a more Biblical nature, by Alan Moore/Joe Orlando, Mike Barr/Jim Aparo, and Levitz/Garcia-Lopez.
http://fullsize/10.GIF Some great non-DC books:
BIZARRE ADVENTURES 34 (2/1983) Stories with a humorously bizarre look at Christmas.
"Son of Santa" by Mark Gruenwald and Paul Kupperberg,
"Howard the Duck's Christmas" by Steven Grant and Paul Smith (a very funny take-off on the movie It's a Wonderful Life, with some of the nicest Paul Smith pages I've seen),
"Slaybells" by Mike Carlin, and
"Santa Bites the Big Apple" by Al Milgrom.
This is one of my favorite Christmas comics.
http://fullsize/34.GIF GUMBY'S WINTER FUN SPECIAL (from Comico, 12/1988) by Steve Purcell and Arthur Adams. A very fun story with a childlike sense of innocence and adventure. Gumby and his pals go on an incredible journey to rescue Santa. And 40 gorgeous pages of Arthur Adams art.
http://fullsize/1.GIF X-MEN 143 (3/1981) by Claremont/Byrne/Austin. Not exactly a Christmas story, but with some great Christmas atmosphere scenes, including a young couple out in the woods selecting a Christmas tree, and the X-Men at home decorating for Christmas and getting into the spirit of the season.
http://fullsize/143.GIF Those are some of my Christmas picks. Anyone else?
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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."
