Have you ever seen The Haunted Closet? You know the blog I
mean. That old, dark blog that’s usually at the bottom of the search results.
The owner hasn’t posted in years; no one really knows why. The links are broken
and boarded, and some of the older embedded graphics have changed into
placeholder icons. The comments section has grown wild, piling up with
unmonitored spam, making strange offers in the night.
Whew—that old Haunted Closet gives me the creeps!
Okay, I’m prying the two by fours off the front door,
lighting up the fireplace, and giving the foyer a thorough dusting and
cobwebbing* (*if “dusting” means to remove dust, “cobwebbing” should mean the
same for spider webs, right?) in order to announce that…
After years of dreaming, dithering and delaying, I finally
broke out the thirty dollar USB tablet and drew myself a comic book (or, I
should say, another comic book.)
Unlike my Thundarr-meets-Chuck Norris prior title, this one
is a tragi-cringe-comedy imagining the difficulties a certain miser named
Ebenezer Scrooge faces in the days immediately following his come-to-Christmas
moment as depicted at the climax of the Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas
Carol”.
While I only got around to reading the original novella as
an adult, I grew up consuming various adaptations of this holiday staple, and
it may very well be the first ghost story (and time travel story) I’d ever been
exposed to.
The earliest version I remember seeing is also my favorite,
the 1938 film starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge and Gene Lockhart as his long-suffering
employee Bob Cratchit. It is appropriately spooky where it needs to be (the
Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come depicted here ranks as one of the most
spine-tingling iterations) but peppered with enough humor and heart to strike a
pleasing balance. This is my “default” version that I compare all other
adaptations against.
My second favorite would have to be the 1984 made-for-TV
version starring George C. Scott. Scott gives us a more restrained performance
as Scrooge, his Christmas morning transformation being less hyperkinetic than we’ve
been conditioned to expect. But this version includes certain details from the
book often omitted in other adaptations, like the disturbing feral children embodying
“Ignorance” and “Want” hidden under the Ghost of Christmas Present’s robes. And
the specter of Scrooge’s dead business partner, Jacob Marley (Frank Finlay), all
clambering and caterwauling, is truly horrifying.
Of the animated adaptations, too many to inventory here, Mr.
Magoo’s cute musical play-within-a-play (1962) and Richard Williams' grim but
faithful rendition (1971) sit at opposite ends of a spectrum between which all
other versions can be plotted.
SOMETHING ABOUT A COMIC BOOK?
Oh yea, the comic book thing. As much as I enjoy “A
Christmas Carol”, I always thought the ending was wrapped up just a little too
neatly. Ebenezer Scrooge, as you’ll remember, was a cold, cruel miser who had
distanced himself from everyone around him. His prizing of money over all other
concerns has left him a lonely, friendless bachelor, whose business interests
have seen families evicted from their homes, children succumb to sickness and
disease, and the poor resigned to debtors’ prisons.
But in the course of a few hours, he undergoes a miraculous
transformation brought on by three visiting spirits (four if we count Jacob
Marley’s pre-show warm-up) who take Scrooge on a tour through time and space,
granting him a fresh perspective on his past, present, and future. Christmas
morning, Scrooge is a changed man who sets about righting a lifetime of wrongs.
But what about all the people he’s harmed who didn’t have
the benefit of experiencing a life-altering supernatural adventure? How do they
react while Scrooge is suddenly, inexplicably skipping down the street like a
giddy schoolboy with “Merry Christmas” on his lips? Their acceptance of
Scrooge’s sudden change of heart won’t be easily won.
And how about ol’ Ebenezer himself? Being kind and generous
is not his nature. He’ll have to work hard fanning the delicate flame that sparked
his heart in the afterglow of that otherworldly visit with the spirits, lest
it extinguishes itself.
This is what I wanted to explore. In comic form.
I initially envisioned an ongoing serial of undetermined
length, like a daily newspaper strip, following Scrooge’s misadventures as his
attempt to reinvent himself butts up against a real world that repeatedly pushes
back. Those strips could go on indefinitely. Full color on Sundays.
But I knew how I wanted it to begin, and I knew how I wanted
it to end, and those segments comprise a self-contained story, whose meandering
middle chapters could be fleshed out later.
So, these twenty-six pages encompass the “bookend” chapters,
beginning the morning after Christmas, when Ebenezer first reveals his transformed
self to a confused Bob Cratchit, and ending at an uncomfortable New Years Eve
party hosted by his sympathetic nephew Fred (an event never mentioned in the
original Dickens text.) You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you just might tear up a
little.
This will be a printed, hard-copy comic book, not some
vaporous digital download. And the art will be in my barely passable “I could
draw that” style (because yes, I could, and yes, I did!)
Details to follow!
One of my earliest Christmas television special memories is Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, which originally aired on PBS back in 1978. 
But you also get a wonderful anti-Christmas diatribe courtesy of Oscar the Grouch, who sings "I Hate Christmas", (lyrics below)...
...while going on a holiday-ruining rampage that includes destroying Christmas decorations (in this case he's torn the letters down from Mr. Hooper's "NOEL" sign, leaving only a protesting "NO"...)
...knocking snow off of eaves onto the heads of formerly smiling gift-givers...
...and handing out presents dripping with motor oil (I hope... although it could just as easily be pig's blood, I suppose!)
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is available on DVD.
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