Batman Returns One Dark Christmas Eve – The Illustrated Holiday Classic
By Ivan Cohen & JJ Harrison & various (Insight Editions)
ISBN: 978-1-64722-754-8 (HB)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Mirthful Movie Moments… 9/10
The Holiday Season means many things to most people. For comics fans – legendarily the sappiest and most sentimental people on Earth – it has always delivered delightful festive tales that break hearts, gladden spirits and thrill the pants off you.
Batman has owned Christmas in comics since the Golden Age – and where’s my archive collection of those stories huh? In 1992 Tim Burton and his talented cinematic cohort perfectly addressed all that Holiday Heritage in the blockbuster Batman Returns – the first X-Mas Superhero movie.
You’ve either seen it or not, but its legacy looms large in this delicious (practically) all-ages treat from author/graphic novelist, journalist and TV writer Ivan Cohen (Space Jam: A New Legacy, Star Wars, Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries, Teen Titans GO!) and gallery artist/illustrator JJ Harrison (A Die Hard Christmas, Ninja Boy Goes to School, Gremlins: The Illustrated Storybook).
Batman Returns One Dark Christmas Eve whimsically revisits the film in a deviously approachable spoof based on the screenplay by Daniel Waters and Sam Hamm: a strange attractor taking plot and dialogue from the film, setting it to a familiar Christmas carol and somehow succinctly synthesising the epic into a wry, wittily hilarious picture book with sharp edges. This Bat-bauble highlights the fun side of heroes and villains, perfectly capturing the charms of Bruce Wayne/Batman and Alfred as they contest The Penguin, Catwoman and killer capitalist Max Shreck whilst ensuring a “Merry Christmas, and to all a Dark Knight”…
© 2022 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
A Wish for Wings That Work
By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 978-0-31610-758-7 (HB) 978-0-31610 691-7 (PB)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Bird of Absolutely Good Omen… 10/10
For most of the 1980s and early 1990s Berke Breathed dominated the American newspaper comic strip scene with his astoundingly funny surreal political fantasy strip Bloom County – and latterly its spin-off Outland – (both fully still available digitally – so don’t wait for my reviews, just get them now!).
At the top of his game he retired from strip cartooning and began to create a series of lavish children’s fantasy picture books – such as Red Ranger Came Calling and Mars Needs Moms! – that rank among the best America has ever produced. That first foray into the field was A Wish for Wings That Work: a Christmas parable featuring Breathed’s signature character, and his most charmingly human. It was adapted into an animated feature film, and that’s worth tracking down too…
Opus is a talking penguin, reasonably educated (for America), archaically erudite yet ultimately emotionally vulnerable, insecure yet unfalteringly optimistic. His most fervent dream is that one day he might fly like a “real” bird…
As Christmas approaches his desperation and desolation grow, but he remains dolorously earthbound. And then on December 24th Santa Claus has a little accident…
Breathed’s first children’s book is still in many ways his most poignant and joyous. It’s an old-fashioned Christmas miracle tale, laconically told and beautifully painted; stuffed with dry wit and uproarious belly-laughs to melt the hardest heart. It belongs on the bookshelf of every parent, spiritual or rationalist.
When the family have almost ruined the holiday, or if you find yourself somewhere other than where you’d want or expect to be, this is what you want to restore your spirits. Kids might like it too…
© 1991, 1995 Berkeley Breathed. All rights reserved.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas 3 images
By Dr. Seuss (Random House/Harper Collins Children’s Books)
ISBN: 978-0-00717-024-1, 978-0-00736-554-8, 978-0-00717-304-4
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect. Just Perfect… 10/10
The son of a wealthy beermaker of German origins, Theodore Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield Massachusetts on March 2nd 1894. Some years later, he attended Dartmouth College, where he edited the college magazine, before graduating in 1925 – despite a few narrow escapes from the opprobrious oversight of college authorities.
Geisel liked to party and preferred drawing to his studies. It was apparently how he got his penname: after the Dean banned him from drawing after a particularly raucous binge, the young artist took pains to sign his work only with his middle name…
Theodore studied English Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1927, where he met his first wife Helen. Upon returning to America he became a cartoonist and illustrator, doing spot gags, political panels and covers for a variety of publishers. He produced weekly strip Birdsies and Beasties for prestigious humour magazine Judge and his work also appeared in Life, Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty and PM among others.
He even briefly – in 1935 – produced a newspaper strip (‘Hejji’) and tried his hand at animation and advertising. During WWII Geisel turned to political cartooning, advocating a strong response to the Fascist threat and in 1943 enlisted as a lead animator and director for the US Army: winning an award in 1947 for documentary Design For Death which explored Japanese cultural history.
Geisel published his first poem/cartoon book And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street in 1937, but only truly and gradually became a literary god after the war when news reports about relative illiteracy and lack of vocabulary in young children (particularly a damning report in Life from May 1954) led him to create a string of easy-reading books like The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Gerald McBoing-Boing, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Horton Hears a Who! and 38 others before his death in 1991.
In 1957 he released the How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: a Yuletide evergreen, immortalized in a brilliant Chuck Jones animated short in 1966 and a brace of so-so big budget movies in 2000 and 2018. Over and above any of these, the actual book still towers as a masterpiece of cartoon fiction and one I beg you to read if you already haven’t.
If you’re one of the three westerners who still don’t know the story…
The Grinch is a mean hermit who, for no apparent reason, loathes everything about the whole Christmas Season. So, one X-Mas Eve he creeps into all Who-houses in nearby Who hamlet and nicks every trinket that Christmas espouses. No Trees, Tinsel, Presents or Tasty Treats are left: the nasty old codger has left Who-ville bereft.
But just at the moment when his triumph is paramount the Grinch sees what Christmas is actually all about. Heart bursting with joy and good feelings re-surging, Grinch returns all the treats he was wickedly purging and joins Who-ville’s people in their grand feast – and even shares some of their glorious Roast Beast!
Seriously though; the simple heart-warming tale of the old monster – and his trusty, long-suffering and illogically faithful hound – as they fail to ruin Christmas, the miraculous change of heart and eventual redemption is the perfect examination of what the Season should mean. And let me be clear here: it’s people not the festival he truly found fault with…
Moreover, it’s written in a captivating manner with bold rhyme and incredibly enthralling artwork that embeds itself deep inside every reader. Wily, wise and wonderful, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is absolutely the best kid’s Christmas book ever created and one you simple have to read. If your house has kids (or not) but no copy, it must be brought up to code immediately and forthwith.
Doctor’s orders… so don’t make me put coal in your socks…
© 1957, 2016 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All rights reserved