The ComicsAlliance Post-Holiday Wrap-Up: Our 5 Favorite Links From Christmas Weekend

As much as we here at ComicsAlliance are still typing through a haze of eggnog, Christmas is over and it's time once again to box up our Yuletide content until next December. But before you shuffle off like Charlie Brown through a snowstorm, we're going to take one more day to stave off that inevitable post-holiday comedown by sharing five of our favorite pieces of Christmas content that we didn't have time to talk about before the big day!

It's been a pretty great year for creative presents, but one of the neatest things I saw this year was an artistic advent calendar drawn by Matt Reid as a gift for his wife (Rachelle Goguen, of Living Between Wednesdays and the Stolen Minks), where each day featured their one-year old son Mitchell drawn as a different comic book character.As you might expect, I'm pretty fond of seeing Mitch as decidedly Dick Sprang-ish Batman, but my favorites are Reid's interpretations of his son as Animal Man...

and Scott McCloud's Zot!...

But the best one of all is Mitchell as Iron Man, depicted here after what I can only assume was a three-day milk bender:

You can find the entire calendar -- including all 24 interior images, the front piece that's done up with different sound effects for every day, and photos of the actual physical calendar -- over on Flickr.

Those of you who haven't been following Bully the Little Stuffed Bull have been missing out on what's easily and consistently one of the best comics blogs on the web. Case in point: Christmas Day, when Bully posted eighteen awesome splash pages from Marvel Christmas comics, updated almost hourly.

There's a lot of great stuff in there -- including Jeff Parker's adaptation of "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus," as delivered by Captain America and Thor's dad stepping in for St. Nick to deliver vikings safely home from their adventures in pillaging -- but my favorite is Emma Frost delivering an oddly seductive True Meaning of Christmas:

Pretty sure we all know which one of Santa's lists she's going on.

Hark, A Vagrant's Kate Beaton has a knack for translating her bittersweet Christmas memories to webcomic form -- check out last year's "Church, Christmas Eve" for evidence, but only if you're in the mood to get sad -- but she outdoes herself in this year's extra long strip.

I'll cop to being a pretty easy mark when it comes to Christmas-related heart-string tugging, but seriously? If you can read this without getting a little dust in your eye, then you might as well just buy a dog named Max and move to Mount Crumpet.

And speaking of Christmasy webcomics, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the amazing job Matt Digges did with Awesome Hospital's first ever Christmas special, Night of the Secret Santas.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should definitely point out that usually, I'm AH's co-writer, but the Christmas story -- which is based around the fact that for 364 days a year, Santa Claus is the world's greatest surgeon and the chief of staff at a hospital where everything is awesome -- was entirely Matt's, with letters by Josh Krach. He managed to throw in everything everybody loves about Christmas specials, from the old standard of Substitute Santas to references to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Well, maybe that's just something we love.

THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

We've mentioned our pals over at Everything Is Terrible before, but if you're not familiar, it's a website where a group of modern-day saints take clips they find on VHS tapes -- be they tapes on how to maximize your earning potential, VHS board games, and of course, instructions for cat massage -- and create wonderful things. And this Christmas, they went all out for the holidays.

My favorite clip is the one above, where the True Meaning of Christmas is discussed in a variety of sources, including the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Christmas Special, which I didn't even know existed, and a speech from Han Solo himself in the infamously terrible Star Wars Holiday Special, the existence of which I am all too painfully aware of. And even better, the Turtles reappear (along with a ton of other insanity) in their compilation of truly bizarre Christmas songs...

THE MAJESTY OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

...although oddly enough, Bea Arthur's number from the Star Wars special didn't make it in.

And yes: That is actually a thing that happened.