There's a weapon that we can use in our defence

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Andrew and Steven, Those Amusing Brothers Christmas Special

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The Santa Synthesis 

It’s minus 10 in the blue light of the polar night. I’m preparing for the ritual [MO 07/12/25] I’d figured my way into Father Christmas [MO 14/12/25] but I was still skeevy of Santa Claus. Coca Cola magic, mapping naughty and nice on to rich and poor. Git. 

But in the snow and the cold I understood that I’d missed it. I’d been sarky about Victorian sentimentality enshrining Christmas as a family holiday while presiding over an empire built on child labour, child prostitution and child malnutrition. But if Half Man Half Biscuit have taught me anything it’s that it’s cliched to be cynical at Christmas 

The entanglement of Father Christmas and Santa Claus gets going in the 1850s. Christmas Carol is 1843, The Ragged Schools 1844, Communist Manifesto 1848. We’re thinking about children, we’re thinking about the poor, we’re thinking about the people being crushed by the machinery of empire and capital. 

What sort of entity do we need to conjure to protect us? 

It’s a big job. We’re gonna need a team-up. 

We’re going to need English folklore, the shadow in the woods, the story in the smoke, Lord of Misrule,  descendant of Odin. We’re going to need big Christian magic. St Nicholas of Myra, the good saint, the Sinterklaas, drunken dutch sailor, your nice grandad. All these elements transformed through the cutting edge communications technology of the most modern city in the world to create a global icon. Santa Claus. 

This is precisely the same cultural process and technologies and crucially the same physical crucibles that in the 1930s created superheroes to fight fascism and in the 1960s revitalised them to fight the atomic bomb. 

Santa Claus is the first superhero. Calling it. 

Me and Santa are cool now. 

Bezzies. 

We got a thing going on. 

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soft

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A Brief History of British Comics
12: Annuals

• Multiple publishers
• Multiple years
• Multiple issues

You know what that is. Eyes travelling across the myriad wrapped boxes. It’s the only present you can be certain of as soon as you spy it. The weight and heft of it – unmistakable. The solidity of the hard board covers. The dimensions of the paper.

You asked for it and you got it. Or maybe you didn’t ask for it. Maybe your parents, auntie or uncle just knew. Maybe it’s just a tradition.

Fingers scrape at shiny paper; you hook under an edge of tape and pull. Yielding with a tear, unfolding like origami. There it is. The cover you already know. It’s been advertised in the comic for months. Now it’s real, physical, in your hands.

Flip it over, is the cover repeated on the back? A standard maintenance check. Or perhaps there’s a different image – hidden gold.

Open it. A contents page, across the inside cover. Flick through the pages. Stories separated by duo-shaded colours; orange and yellow, red and pink, dark and light blue. Or even full colour. Artists whose work you’ve never seen outside of black and white.

There are text stories. Quizzes. Fact-files. Cross-sections. Interviews.

Hey, this strip is old. You’ve seen it before. This version of the character feels weird.

Oh cool. An Alan Moore ABC Warriors strip. Lee Sullivan is drawing Galvatron and Megatron fighting. A John Smith Indigo Prime text piece, you love these. Wow, a feature length Minnie the Minx. This Bad Co. strip looks mental in colour. You’re scared to read this Hookjaw story but you can’t stop. Misty’s hair looks so shiny on the painted cover.

Can’t wait to read it. Maybe later when the presents are done, before lunch is served. Lie on your bed. Dissolve into it.

But first, grab a pencil.

‘This Book Belongs To'

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What Christmas is as We Grow Older (Charles Dickens, 1851); Terminator 2 Bio-Flesh Regenerator Playset (Kenner, 1991)

Time was you could have done Dickens with the Muppets and called it a day, but they put the dirge of a song back in so now the balance of the film is shot. Shame. Another Christmas Dickens, then. Another way for beleaguered Others to teach the Tories to dance.

“On this day we shut out Nothing!”

A version of that spirit is with us now, of course. The sense that on this day in particular, to not have brought home every available item is a failing. 

This week a rogue social media post reminded me of something that never made its way to my house, a Bio-Flesh Regenerator I’d have skinned my own arm for at the time. 

Pretty sure it would have been an arseache in reality. Insubstantial armour sloshing off the at the wrong moment, life-sap waste all over the place, exhausted Xoo supplies prompting the inevitable demand for refills – a little Nothing factory in your own home crying more more more.

But wait.

“On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing.”

This particular Dickens number starts with a reflection on what could have been in our own lives, before moving on to endings that seemed more definitive. Remember: here, now, Nothing is barred.  

““Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?”

Not even that.”

We’ve all got our own hauntings. A dad, ten years past his last Christmas. A colleague whose addiction spannered plans five years ago. Time to sit with them and all the other ghosts, the worlds that could have been or might yet come. A festive derangement where we allow the fire to burn hot enough to melt the gunge from our bones.

Together now. Let us walk our scorched exoskeletons into a new year. 

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That Present You Really Wanted

You should know about Shoji Kawamori. As an artist at Studio Nue, he helped design the Diaclone toys that became rebranded as The Transformers.

He then was one of the creators of the anime Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Maybe you’ve heard this one? A starship full of civilians journeys to Earth, protected by fighter pilots, and discover secrets about the origins of mankind. Their aircraft are transforming robots, so they can square go giant aliens. Kawamori designed the iconic VF-1 Valkyrie, and then worked with Takatoku to produce an accurate toy.

Meanwhile, toy company Matchbox backed a US release of Macross, rebranded as Robotech. Takatoku collapsed and Hasbro bought some of their toy rights, releasing the Valkyrie as the Transformer Jetfire. Matchbox were denied the best version of the plane and needed to take care about patent infringement.

Depictions of Jetfire took pains to never resemble the Valkyrie too much, possibly because Hasbro’s Japanese partner, Takara, would bring Transformers to Japan. Maybe it was to placate the Robotech guys, but nobody really knows.

FASA, a wargaming company, was licensing Japanese robot designs from an importer, some of which were the units from Macross. In the 90’s they would begin work on a cartoon version of Battletech, toyline by Tyco, and would face competition from Universal’s mecha show Exo-Squad (toys by Playmates). This would turn sour when Exo-Squad listed an upcoming toy that was essentially a Battletech MadCat/Timberwolf. FASA attempted to litigate but got beat up in court over the Macross designs as Playmates got haunners from Robotech rights owners Harmony Gold.

How does Kawamori feel about any of it? Well, like many greats, he was a contractor. He gets nothing from Robotech. As far as he’s concerned, they put their name on his work and got paid for it.

I hope you got Jetfire for Xmas.

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Melt their faces, three-person’d God!

Out of nowhere, my almost-8-year-old has expressed an interest in watching Indiana Jones, and my wife seems keen to initiate a family viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Though she generally steers clear of film gore or violence herself, she is pleasingly blasé about film classifications where our daughter is concerned, particularly, it seems, in seasonal holidays. Three or four Easters ago she insisted on showing Jesus Christ Superstar to our then-toddler, who spent most of the film asking when the baby Jesus was going to die. I pulled the plug shortly before the crucifixion.

Raiders is of course not really a Christmas film, but it has strong Christmas associations for me as in my childhood it was a mainstay of the yuletide schedules, a rare opportunity to see a relatively recent blockbuster on dusty, four-channel TV. I didn’t go nuts for Indie the same way I did for Star Wars, but that first film has a special place in my heart because, as everyone knows, you got to WATCH A NAZI’S FACE MELT OFF!

At some point, nearer the end of the 80s, the well-meaning media mandarins decided that the nation’s square-eyed youth should be spared this formative horror, and they started to cut that scene from the annual viewing. I can still remember the feeling of disappointment and betrayal as we reached the finale and the Nazi’s face was not a waxy puddle on the floor. Perhaps Christmas has never quite been the same since.

Is almost-8 too young to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark? Will my daughter cope with this gory vision of divine retribution (or will she just think it’s bad special effects)? God knows we could do with some melting Nazis right now. Come on Trump, what are you scared of? Release the Ark of the Covenant!

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Interview with a Top Celeb at Christmas

Hello, it’s great to be here.  Ha ha.  Yes, this reminds me of the time I worked with another top celeb at an anecdote in which I made sure I mentioned what a great job the whole team did in a way that broadcasts how humble I am and always treat ordinary people as if they were equal. Ha ha.  I said something to the other celeb and they responded with something that cast them in a light which was very different from the public perception of them.  Ha ha. Great to be here.  Ha ha.  No no,  the pleasure’s all mine although it clearly isn’t, it’s all yours. Christmas eh?  Ha ha.  Well despite what you might think, although I'm a film star I like having a normal Christmas just like normal people.  I love Christmas and I’m so proud of this album.  Despite what you might think, music has always been my first love and I love Christmas so this was the perfect opportunity to write this book.  I’ve worked with so many talented people on this film and that’s why I truly believe in this perfume, aftershave and TV special.  At this time of year we need to think about those less fortunate than ourselves which is why I got involved with this wonderful company, (so many talented people behind the scenes) to make this brand of coffee, salad dressing and fashion trousers to coincide with my return to the stage which was always my first love alongside a lifelong passion for allegations of inappropriate behaviour and pictures in the press of me taking cocaine which is why I've returned to my first love, property investment. Excuse me, I really have to go, excuse me, sorry.

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Poems (Nearly God, Terry Hall, Martina Topley-Bird, 1996)

Three Seasons ago this week, when he died, the shops and radios did their bit so amid the festive classics we were taunted round the queues by that sarcastic whisper, mocked for our willing part in such basic ritual. It worked perfectly, and Terry Hall has been a Christmas saint ever since, kept deliberately on rotation through the darkest month.

Hall was kidnapped by a teacher age 12, taken cross channel to a French hotel, raped, passed around, beaten, locked in a wardrobe, then dumped back on a roadside in the midlands. It must be how he got those eyes.

The depressions of midwinter are lethal and Christmas is a necessity for surviving the darkness - not merely some mythical celebration of return, buried in prehistoric astronomy. While vitamin Ds plummet and the air grows cold, pathogens multiply just as our bodily territory is at its most vulnerable. But the dangers of this moment are more than physical.

Non-corporeal entities are repelled by light and noise. The pandemic showed us how rapidly the dead and other, inorganic spirits return to the environment the moment our habitual shields against them are removed. Without the vanishing sun to help us in the short days, these aggressive beings press in - working at our psychic weaknesses, drinking our vitality, making us abject.

Humans’ best resistance against this cold insurgency is an enormous act of collective will and effort. When the promise of hope seems empty, novelty must be physically amassed. Songs sung, bells rung, lamps lit, drink and cake to stoke the fires in our bellies. It's an error to think the sun will cease its retreat unless we demand it through sacrificial action.

If you forget about the necessity, the struggle against the extinction of the self and the overwhelming dark, it can be hard to take the Christmas cheer seriously. It’s good to invite a reminder in, and that haunting can be Terry Hall, all beautiful and miserable. 

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Tell just one person that you liked this newsletter. Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves. Thank you very much for reading and Merry Christmas.