New York Jets 50th Super Bowl Anniversary Special

Marvel and the New York Jets revisted The Guarantee game in 2018 with this digital four parter commemorating the 50th anniversary of the AFC earning its spot among the NFC homeguard.

While not an official holiday, Super Sunday has become THE sports day in America. The day when millions sit down to a diet of hype and hyperbole served with fried food and drowned in liquid suger and carbs. It is a day of celebration, exasperation and fraternity. The culmination of a season’s worth of cheering and cursing.

All wrapped between mulit-million dollar advertisements watched by as many who watch for the game alone.

At Four Color Holidays we offer a link to the past to connect with the present. If you don’t know the story of the 1968 Jets, here it is. This is why Joe Namath has a gold jacket and a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This is when the NFL became the NFL we know today:  Jets 50th Anniversary 1968 Championship Team comic book.

Coming on the heels of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Alvin and His Pals Merry Christmas with Clyde Crashcup and Leonard offered 84 pages of solace.

Alvin and His Pals in Merry Christmas with Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo (1963)

Alvin, Theodore and Simon had reached celebrity a mere five years after their creation. Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., had initially created the animated, anthropomorphized-woodland creatures for a novelty album. Their success branched over into cartoons and other media.

Clyde Crashcup was created to compliment the Chipmunks on The Alvin Show. Crashcup would invent things that already existed. Leonardo was his silent – literally – partner.

Crashcup and aid would spell Alvin and his friends throughout the Christmas special. He and Leonardo even opened the book with “Clyde Crashcup Invents Snow.” The duo would tag-team with the Chipmunks for the remainder of the book alternating stories. The difference being Crashcup and Leonardo wove a related tale with each of their stories until they would finally meet up with Santa.

Alvin, Simon and Theodore appeared in vignettes either Christmas or winter related.

Also interspersed throughout are one-page prose stories and challenges for readers.

Not bad for a quarter.

As the first of February dawns cold and promising little, but more of the same to come, flower, greeting card and jewelry shops wait with baited breathe. February is the month for love. Valentine’s Day.

Zombies go with pretty much anything. Why not Valentine’s Day?

Much like George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Dan Mendoza uses the mall setting – to a lesser extent – to pontificate on American culture and Valentine’s Day itself.

The main thrust of the book is love (?) and loss.

Not much to say about the title. Not one I read, so no background to relate. Just a (moldy) cheesecake comic featuring a shapely zombie.

Sorry. You’ll hafta wait till Valentine’s Day for a better posting.

The eternal teens of Riverdale celebrate another Christmas with four stories for the 2018 season.

Archie Christmas Spectacular (2018) 1

Archie and Jughead embark on an entrepreneurial endeavor in the lead tale, “One Person’s Trash.” The boys find money can be made in repurposing garbage pail finds. It comes to naught when an uninvited partner crashes the party.

“All Aboard” is a story about wish fulfillment that ends with the adage, “be careful what you wish for.”

Santa’s daughter returns to Riverdale in “The Last Noelle.” Santa isn’t pleased, but Mrs. Claus understands the solitude of living at the North Pole.

Finally, “Jingles’ Jangled” has the impish elf as an unwelcome house guest when his powers are remanded by a jealous acquaintance. Jughead finds Jingles’ hidden talents tasty and is sorry to see him leave.

Hard to believe there are still stories to be told about Archie and crew after 77 years, but the kids live on.

Here’s one that slipped past me last Christmas.

At first glance, not much to write home about. “Pete & Miles in Off Duty,” is no Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Only the best incarnation of all the silver screen Spider-Mans by the way. No, “Pete & Miles in Off Duty” is, well, not sure how to describe it.

Confusing?

In a way.

Lifeless?

Yeah, you could say that.

In short it’s just not good.

Now, “Nuts and Bots” is a different story. Literally. Squirrel Girl and Doc Doom. C’mon. That’s a match up. Not a heavy weight title bout, but still way more entertaining than midget wrestling.

Finally, Squirrel Girl is getting a little respect. She deserves it. Her own title and some guest appearances. Good stuff.

What I haven’t mentioned about the holiday special is the Deadpool framing sequence. Deadpool is our emcee for the show. In a Saturday Night Live or old Muppet Show twist, Deadpool is brought forward from behind-the-scenes allowing Squirrel Girl to interact with him.

The two go toe-to-toe, not with fisticuffs or weapons, but in a far more deadly verbal one-on-one.

Finally, “Holi-La-La-Days” continues to make amends for a slow start. Deadpool steps out of the framing sequence to help move the story to a satisfying conclusion with Hawkeye playing detective.

A worthy addition to anyone’s holiday collection.

Wolverine: Flies to a Spider reads more like a grindhouse movie than a New Year’s Eve celebration.

Logan takes on small town corruption to avenge the death of an innocent.

The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the book. The more it reminds me of those 1970s drive-in classics. The more it feels right.

Right for the character.

Gregg Hurwitz does a good job unsheathing the claws. Jerome Opena does an equally good job in rendering those claws.

Chris Claremont gave Logan his catch phrase in the 1982 Wolverine mini-series, “I’m the best at what I do. And, what I do isn’t very nice.”

None of Flies to a Spider is nice. Just satisfying.

Okay, no idea is what’s going on here. The 2018 special begins where I left off back about 1977. Our heroine is still clad in her trademark metal bikini astride a mighty stead, broadsword at her side.

Red Sonja Holiday Special

Yet, by page six she’s riding on the back of some guy named Max’s motorcycle through the snow covered streets of modern day New York. Still in her metal bikini. At Christmas time.

Max conducts a tour of the town explaining the various traditions for the season. The action picks up when they meet a dog walker who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Overhearing some mob news, the man is chased until he runs into Sonja and Max.

They choose to beat feet and lose themselves in a Santa Claus convention. Stymied by the scrum of Santas the bad guys decide to leave well enough alone.

At least the remainder of the book is given back to Roy Thomas and Frank Thorne in a replay of “Wizards of the Black Sun” that originally appeared in The Savage Sword of Conan issue 23.

As I’ve written before, you knew it was a good week when you could find a copy of Red Sonja on the spin rack. Sorry, Leia, no one has ever rocked a metal bikini quite like the red-haired Hyborian hottie.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story is the beginning of civil unrest in America. At least from the media standpoint. It is also the story of how a Baptist preacher became a household name in America.

Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story

When Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks refused to surrender their seats on a Montgomery, AL, public bus a movement began. From the simple action of two women a platform was built to challenge the Jim Crow laws of the time. For 385 days a boycott against the public bus system was staged. As a result, segregation was repelled by the United States District Court on the city’s public buses.

The comic book retells the tale of a stand taken by remaining seated over half a century ago.

King was instrumental in registering the plight of African-Americans long before the designation came to fashion. An advocate of non-violence, King and his followers suffered the backlash of an America not ready to change.

For his efforts, King was murdered April 4, 1968, in Memphis, TN, while attempting to better conditions for black sanitary public work employees. King was almost prophetic in his “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” sermon given the night before he was assassinated in which he proclaimed, “I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

A full copy of the comic book can be read online at:  http://www.ep.tc/mlk/index.html

For most of us, our introduction to Bugs Bunny was in Saturday morning or after-school cartoons.

In the fall of 1960 the Bugs Bunny Show aired as prime-time programming. Featured were his earlier animated works dating back to 1948. After two seasons competing with network sitcoms and dramas the wascially wabbit was relegated to Saturday mornings where he would remain for 40 years.

Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies subscription ad

In the 1970s Bugs appeared in seasonal specials such as Bugs Bunny’s Thanksgiving Diet airing Nov. 15, 1979. Bugs Bunny’s Easter Special predated that airing April 7, 1977. Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales first aired Nov. 27, 1979.

His comic book debut was long before that, appearing in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics issue one in 1941 a year after his debut in animated shorts. Dell spun Bugs off into his own book lasting 245 issues from 1952 through 1983. Bugs was further featured in several Dell-published Bugs Bunny entitled books outside of his vanity feature.

By the 1990s Warner Communications had control of Bugs and friends and published a long-running series of its own.

From 1942 through 1993 a Bugs Bunny comic strip was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Assocaition.

Here Santa Claus hawks the original Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies book. For a buck subscribers receive 12 “fun-packed” issues. In addition, subscribers will receive “five beautiful color pictures of the principal characters” featured in the title. All are suitable for framing.

Daredevil (1964) 253

The only person to cause Daredevil more grief than the Kingpin is Frank Miller.

For 23 issues Miller penned and penciled a path through love and loss. Those were arguably two of the most riveting years of Daredevil’s life. Miller took a second-tier, blind hero and catapulted him to the levels of A-list, flagship characters like Spider-Man and Hulk.

In addition, Miller added to the pantheon of Marvel mythos by creating Electra Natchios. A former lover of Matt Murdock, Elektra returned to steal and break Murdock’s heart. Miller eventually brought the relationship to a tragic end having Bullseye murder her.

So popular was the character, the powers to be at Marvel refused to allow her a restful repose.

Issue 253 is a continuation of the Kingpin’s crusade to crush Murdock and his alter ego in “Merry Christmas, Kingpin.” It began in Miller’s original treatment of the character and escalated in the epic Born Again story arc that marked Miller’s return as scribe to DD. This time it’s Ann Nocenti and John Romita, Jr., in the driver’s seat.