Far Out There: Christmas Is Looming... (Patreon)

Oh snap, it’s almost Christmas time! You know what THAT means! The same two dozen songs on every radio station, sentimentally manipulative commercials for two straight months, aggressively forced nostalgia wherever you turn, and SO MUCH blatant commercialized materialism! Truly, it IS the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. I mean, I obviously must think so, why else would I run myself ragged each year cranking out twenty-five uninterrupted days of Far Out There material every December? I mean, aside from the fact that cranking out more material means more site traffic and it’s a lot easier to crank out that much extra stuff when I have an excuse to have it all be out of continuity. Or that out-of-continuity material provides an easy entry point for readers who are scared to dive into nearly a decade’s worth of backstory. Or how latching onto something that’s already culturally omnipresent is a great way to attract attention, aside from all that.

But seriously, I really, genuinely, unapologetically do love Christmastime. Don’t ask me to pin down any one specific reason, there’s a whole swathe of reasons it resonates with me. I mean, it was simple enough when I was a kid: it was when the weather got cold and I got presents, what more could you need? I still love both those things, but as I get older I’ve realized my “why Christmas gets me all warm and fuzzy” list is WAAAAY to long to be the actual point of a blog like this. Heck, the very fact that this thing we in the western world call “Christmas” is basically an amalgamation of a dozen different celebrations happening simultaneously is probably one of the things I like. And I don’t even mean that in the “Happy Holidays” sense, either. Even if you narrow it down to the people who specific celebrate “Christmas,” you’ll still end up with a whole mess of holiday traditions that don’t really have anything to do with each other except for the fact that we just say they do. There’s the religious Happy Birthday Jesus Even Though We Know Its A Few Months Late event that provides a name for it all, obviously. Then there’s the more secular Annual Altruistic Act To Pretend We Don’t All Hate Each Other, which is often dressed up to be part of the religious holiday but really isn’t. There’s The Yearly Buying of Presents for Relatives You Barely Ever See (aka Materialism Appreciation Day) which is often lumped in with THAT, even though they’re often the antithesis of each other. We have the Season of Being A Kid Again, with its mass consumption of whimsical carols and child-friendly specials and indulgence in all things nostalgic. And speaking of consumption and indulgence, there’s the numerous parties and big dinners that could collectively be referred to as Thanksgiving II: The Reckoning. There’s the Festival of Lights All Over EVERYTHING, with its sister celebration Drag A Dead Tree Into Your Living Room Day. And, of course, who can forget Santa Month? That’s a lot of holiday, and I like at least a little piece of all of it. So of COURSE I allow myself to get more worked up over it that, say, Arbor Day.

So, why does Far Out There inevitably turn into the vehicle of my Christmas obsession and not Conventional Wisdom? Well, it’s just easier, mostly. Since Far Out There is so much more character driven, I can drop its characters into different, holiday-related stories and just let them write themselves. What characters Conventional Wisdom even has are so ill-defined that I’d have to, you know, actually THINK about what happens, and who wants to spend their holidays doing THAT? Plus, Conventional Wisdom is heavily based on real life geek activity I go out and do... which makes it hard to draw at a time where I spend nearly every waking hour either at a family event, in a church production, or cooped up in my room working on Far Out There. Case in point: this year is the first year Anime USA is explicitly a Christmas convention, and it’s the first one since I started GOING to cons that I’m skipping. So yeah, Far Out There’s got a pretty unassailable claim on Christmas comics.

That said, I do think the Far Out There/Conventional Wisdom crossover from 2015 is probably my favorite of all the Christmas comics. It’s not the most consistently funny by any stretch (I think both 2014’s variety special and 2013’s holiday parade did way better in the joke department) but I love the whole notion of a Christmas crossover in any context. Maybe it’s the influence of seeing the Muppet Family Christmas too many times (or, to a much lesser extent, all those cheap Hanna Barberra specials) but doing a big “everybody gets together for a holiday party” story was right up near the top of my Christmas bucket list. In case you’re wondering, the only stuff higher up on the list are an animated video clip of the cast doing that dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas (I did a traditional comic version once, but until I or someone else makes a full frame-by-frame recreation of the actual dance, my work on this Earth is not done) and a full retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Layla in the role of Scrooge. I know, I know, everybody has done a Christmas Carol parody at some point. But that’s just the thing: EVERYBODY’S done a version of a Christmas Carol! The Chipmunks have one, The Jetsons have one, even frickin’ Doctor Who sort of did one. I can’t have Far Out There being left out! Unfortunately, because it’s me we’re talking about, my Far Out There Christmas Carol idea is consistently too big for me to actually do once Christmas actually rolls around. Even in it’s vague, not-even-an-outline-yet stage, I know it’d be WAAAAAAAAY longer than 25 pages, so the usual page a day all December schedule wouldn’t work AND I’d have to start work on it a lot sooner. The schedule thing wouldn’t be that hard to work around, I don’t think I have to explain the many ways in which me starting work on something early is a VERY rare thing. And length aside, this thing would be a BEAST to actually draw, because I’m not talking about one of those things where Three Ghosts inexplicably turn up in the pre-established universe of the comic. I’ve never liked those takes on a Christmas Carol. I’m talking about something more along the lines of Mickey’s Christmas Carol, that’s actually set in Olde Timey England and where the cast is playing the actual characters from the story... with inevitable creative liberties to keep things interesting, of course. I mean, think about it: Layla as Scrooge, Trigger as Bob Cratchit, Alphonse as Tiny Tim, Vengeance as the ghost of Christmas Future, there’s a lot of ways to have fun combining that basic narrative with the Far Out There characters, right? But there’d be a LOT of material, and it’d involve drawing lots and lots of old fashioned period costumes and vaguely old English architecture and lot and lots of moody atmospherics to get the spirit of the work down. Basically, given the rate at which I get things done, I’d have to start work on A Far Out There Christmas Carol the day after the previous Christmas series wrapped up, and spend the whole following year chipping away at it. I don’t like working on ANYTHING that long, not unless I can release little bits of it at a time and get SOME kind of satisfaction from people seeing what I’ve done so far. That kind of isn’t an option for a Christmas comic, never mind the fact that I just HATE working on Christmas material out of season. Yeah, for all my aggressive holiday spirit, I’m still one of those people who actively fights against Christmas creeping past its sovereign border with Thanksgiving. Don’t ruin a good thing by spreading it out so far that we all get sick of it, ya know? Still, that already enables my chronic lateness on Far Out There Christmas comics as it is, and it’s a SEVERE obstacle to ever getting a Christmas Carol done.

Speaking of which, have I actually gotten any work on this year’s comics done yet? Well, yeah... somewhat... sort of... I’ll get back to you on that...