Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
‘Tis the season to read holiday comics and thanks to illegal downloads I’m working my way through Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, published by DC Comics in the 50s and 60s. I’ve never read them before and quality wise they’re pretty much on par with the rest of DC’s anthropomorphic humor output (Peter Porkchops, Raccoon Kids, etc.); they may not be “classics,” but they’re certainly interesting. For one thing, because the comics predate the Rankin-Bass TV special by over a decade the character of Rudolph is radically different here.
In most of the stories Rudolph develops enough self esteem to stand up for himself (or as the text would have it, he gets a swelled head over his fame and “forgets his place”), which is enough to get him banished from Santa’s Workshop, and he only gets back in Santa’s good graces by abasing himself. As depicted, Santa is an inordinate jerk. In one story he learns there’s a country, besides
Which brings up the obvious question, where have all the NEW Christmas comics gone? Recently over at Newsarama Dan DiDio was good enough to provide an answer:
“We have to acknowledge that we have problems with delivery on occasion, and the last thing I ever want to do is put out Halloween in November, and Christmas in February. I’d love the holidays to continue for that long, but it doesn’t serve anyone if we ended up doing that.
“So that’s why we want to build these specials outside of the regular books – to ensure that they come out on time, but that does not mean that at some point we will not revisit and re-examine the idea of doing more holiday material, or things that are more reflective of the period of time in the ongoing series. It’s something we’d like to do; it’s just that we’re not doing it at the moment.”
Well it is the holidays so I won’t be too rough on Dan, but I have to object; the statement that the modern comic book has to be what the questioner at Newsarama called the “perpetual story” assumes facts not in evidence. I could, would and will (next week) argue making it as difficult as possible for your current readers to stop reading your comics is just a way of temporarily delaying the inevitable – your circulation shrinking still further.
I stand by all of the above but this year’s DC Holiday Special is pretty good, starting with the cover by Frank Quitely; it’s a spectacular piece. The characters’ expressions, especially the recently reintroduced Dr. Light, are full of genuine human feeling (I realize that being obnoxious is her defining characteristic but it was nice seeing her smile). And the stories themselves…besides putting the heroes on a human level (something DC needs to do a lot more of), all of them managed to avoid the trite cliches and false sentiment too often found in holiday stories.
And, finally, going to the movies on Christmas Day is something outside my experience (although not exactly forbidden during my conventional Catholic upbringing, doing so was definitely unthinkable), but I of course knew studios open select films on Christmas Day. But that usually had more to do with creating a limited release for a prestige project to get them into theaters before the end of the year so they’ll be eligible for Oscar consideration than filling seats.
Maybe I missed the memo (and I miss a lot of them) but given the selection of this year’s Christmas Day releases (Marly & Me, Bedtime Stories, The Spirit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie) someone clearly expects Americans, at least a good number of them, to go to the movies on Christmas, which sure seems like a cultural sea change to me. I’m going to be alone this year so I definitely could sneak off to see The Spirit… but the more clips I see from it the more likely it is I’ll be seeing Last Chance Harvey starring Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman instead.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
