Speaking of festive mayhem, there is none better than penned (imagined, executed!) by Roger Langridge. Over the scope of his long (and ongoing!) career, the whole ‘rocking around the Christmas tree’ thing has shown up at least a couple of times — you may not have snow where you live, but take a gander at these and watch your holiday spirits soar (especially if bolstered by a bit o’ tipple).
Here’s are some merry excerpts taken from The Four Seasons: Winter storyline printed in Muppets: The Four Seasons (2012, Marvel) for your enjoyment:
From the same issue, in this two-page digression (though what is The Muppets if not a series of glorious digressions), Sam narrates Dickens’ magnum opus… oh, nevermind.
Speaking of Dickens, though, he did not go un-Langridged, happily:
To further your cheer, a few more pages from Langridge’s Abigail & The Snowman (2016, KaBOOM!). This decade sure is a depressing one for all artistic professions — current active cartoonists seem to be mostly doomed to juggling thankless jobs for corporate giants such as Disney-slash-Marvel while defending their right to be (and to own their work) from AI pilfering (although ‘pilfering’ is too cute a word for it). Even such pundits as RL can rarely afford to work on what’s actually dear to their hearts. In that context, the sweet (and thoughtful) story of Abigail and her snowman friend was a very welcome addition to Langridge’s career, lodged as it was between two extremely underwhelming Dynamite-published affairs where he acted as the writer, namely King: Mandrake the Magician (2015) and Betty Boop (2017). I’m now convinced that Langridge’s art can save a poor script (thanks to jokes and beautifully non-sequitur asides inserted into the art), whereas a flat artist can ruin a plot faster than you can shout ‘Gisele Lagacé‘.
Langridge has been drawing daily cartoons based on his life for around 5 years now. This is the strip’s final week, as he has decided that it’s time to move on to something else, so I wanted to mention it before it’s too late — especially since it’s perfectly relevant to the season.
And a merry Christmas to all! We’ll see you again before the New Year.
~ ds
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