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Snark Free Corner for Christmas!

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• by Brian Cronin
• in Snark Free Corner
• 5 Comments

Welcome to the latest installment of your breath of snark free air!

Enjoy!

COOL CHRISTMAS COMIC BOOK MOMENT

This moment is courtesy of this year’s DC Infinite Holiday Special #1 (so spoilers a-comin’!), in a story written by Kelley Puckett and drawn by Pete Woods titled, “Yes, Tyrone, There is a Santa Claus.”

In it, a child writes to the Daily Planet asking if there is, in fact, a Santa Claus. Superman decides to answer his question by dressing up in a specialized designed Santa Claus version of his costume and flying to the boy’s family to give him presents. However, Batman intercepts Superman, and explains to him how doing something like this just trivializes Superman’s powers, and Superman is better served helping save the world from natural disasters than dressing up like Santa for a kid.

Superman begrudgingly agrees, and flies off, but then realizes he might as well drop off the presents to young Tyrone.

When he gets there, though, who is delivering presents but…Bat-Santa! “Bat-Santa, you’re the best!” “I love you, Bat-Santa!” shout the children. Superman glares, Batman winks, and our final splash page is Superman decking Bat-Santa as the children look on in terror.

How cool is THAT?

COVER HOMAGE

One cool point to the first person who can tell me what magazine and what artist this The Goon cover is homaging!

SNARK FREE CHALLENGE

Who is faster? Santa Claus on his sleigh or the Silver Surfer on his, well, surfboard?

COOL CHRISTMAS CHARACTER

First appearing over forty years ago, Jingles the Elf has been a mainstay in Archie Christmas stories.

Jingles only appears to people who still have a bit of youthful innocence left in them, and it is heavily implied that Archie and the gang will not always recognize Jingles (okay, they won’t age, so they WILL always recognize him, but you know what I meant!).

Jingles is a real good-intentioned assistant of Santa Claus, but he is also clumsy, and often pretty hot-tempered. He is sometimes more like Archie than one would expect from a magical elf!

In fact, in this year’s Betty and Veronica Spectacular #76, he was even given a makeover by writer/artist, Dan Parent, who has Santa turn Jingles into a teenage boy, who used his own special brand of Archie-esque trouble making (as in, accidentally making two dates for the same time) to eventually spread Christmas cheer.

Anyone have a nice pic of Jingles in his normal identity that I could use to show folks what he looks like normally? A cool point to the first one to send me a pic I can use!

THIS COMIC IS GOOD

I dunno if I have made this clear (maybe putting it as what I thought was the funniest comic book of all time was a hint…hehe), but I am a major, major Ambush Bug fan, so you better believe that I was a huge fan of Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer, from back in 1986, by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming (and inker Bob Oksner)

The main plot from Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer involves zombie toys coming back from the “dead” to eat OTHER toys.

How awesome does that sound?! The answer, of course, is “very extremely awesome!” This zombie plot was also the way to bring Ambush Bug’s dear departed sidekick, Cheeks the Toy Wonder, back to the book! And there’s a particularly funny scene in the comic where Ambush Bug travels through time – by going through the comic itself, back to a previous page!!!

Toss in the Joker attending an Arkham Asylum class reunion, Ambush Bug being hunted down for “violating continuity” by going back in time during a comic book (thereby voiding the pages in between), and a whole ton of other wacky hijinx, and this comic book might very well be the funniest Christmas comic book I have ever read.

And that is certainly enough to make this comic good.

Well, that’s it for this installment of Snark Free Corner.

Hope you had fun!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!