Thursday, December 20, 2007

Pulp Genre Christmas (From Scott)

[Here is Scott with a prompt for everyone:]

I've been reading Batman Black & White and one of the stories was a Christmas story. It occurred to me that there had been a great deal of wonderful (or wonderfully terrible) Superhero Christmas yarns and, come to think of it, a lot of Christmas stories in series where you wouldn't expect Christmas stories... so how about let's see what people can think of for their favorite/most memorable superhero/sci-fi/fantasy/horror Christmas stories?

[I remember Frank Miller having a good little short story in a Sin City book, but not much is springing to mind right now].

4 comments:

Christian O. said...

ARGH. I just lost a really, really long reply about why I think The Goon's A Christmas Carol is awesome.

And Darwyn Cooke's Tangled Web issues, where JJJ convinces a bunch of children that Spidey killed Santa and Peter is just horrible screwed over by everything that happens.

Bah humbug. I hate Christmas. It's just like all the other 331 days of the year.

Anyway, Transmet's winter issues are good too. And I've heard good things of the following:

The Dr. Seuss inspired Garth Ennis penned Hitman issue, the Kelley Puckett/Pete Wood Superman V. Bat-Santa, the Starman one and one other that I've forgotten now.

Anonymous said...

I was just going to mention the Starman one! It actually manages to take what could be a hokey story (homeless vet, working as Santa...) and, rather than being maudlin, it actually comes of as sincere.

Also good are the Justice League animated christmas episode (Particualarly the Flash/Ultra-Humanite story... it mananages to be both cute and clever), the Batman animated Christmas/Holiday episode "Holiday Knights" (The Ivy/Harley story is funny and I like the idea that Batman and Gordon meet for coffee every year after new year's) I also remember a particularly good episode of Space: Above and Beyone with team members stranded in space.

On the bad sad, well... there's the legendary Star Wars special, I also think I remember a particularly terrible He-man holiday episode (They had Sant-Or on his Battle Reindeer or somethin...)

Oh, and of course we can't forget Gremlins....

Anonymous said...

Uncanny X-Men #230 -- the X-Men travel around the world giving gifts, like Santa Clause. Silly, but it never fails to warm the cockles of my heart.

Incredible Hulk 378 -- The Rhino impersonates Santa Clause, and the Hulk beats him up. Gets my vote for funniest mainstream superhero story set at Christmastime.

Todd C. Murry said...

Everytime this comes up I always remember the John Byrne Enemy Ace Christmas story (where the WWII fighting stops for Christmas long enough for some milk of human kindness) and the Nick Cardy Teen Titan's swingin' version of A Christmas Carol (I think both of these were in the late 80's Christmas with the Super-Heroes books DC did for 2 years).