« In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago. » — Christina Rossetti
Christmas is nearly upon us, but while a great many will opt to retreat into the miasma of nostalgia to forget what an annus horribilis it’s been, I’ve picked something a bit more appropriately sombre in tone to nail down the occasion.
But with a more hopeful chaser… to balance things out a bit.
When the indefatigable Carmine Infantino (1925-2013) stepped down from his multi-hatted rôle of publisher, editor-in-chief, cover designer and art director — and so on — at DC, he found that no-one was beating his door down to offer him a similar position.
So he went back to drawing, as a freelancer. As Infantino put it: « Jim Warren was the first comics publisher to contact me after DC. I said “I’ll do work for you, but nothing full-time because I’m busy with other things.” He said, “Okay, whatever you’re willing to give me.” I wasn’t really comfortable with the Warren material — it was the sexiest work I’d ever done! Jim had an older audience and wanted it that way. My feelings about the material never affected the mutual respect Jim and I had for one another. » [ source ]
All told, Infantino pencilled around forty stories for Warren in a span of four years. There was even a brief period when he just about monopolized individual issues of Creepy and Eerie, which was offset by pairing him with wildly disparate inkers. Sometimes the results sang, sometimes they croaked.
Here’s a case of rarely combined styles that nevertheless meshed beautifully: Infantino and John Severin. Let’s face it, who’s more reliably excellent than Mr. Severin?
And so this is… Bloodstone Christmas, written by Gerry Boudreau, pencilled by Infantino, and inked by John Powers Severin (1921-2012).
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.And now, for something sweeter.
And now, for the sweeter part of our double-header.
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Oh, and Happy Holidays to you, esteemed readers!
-RG
p.s. Oh, and speaking of carmine, the colour, not the man: I just read, a few days ago, in Steve Ettlinger‘s superb Twinkie, Deconstructed (2007), that « the fascinating, rich magenta carmine, also known as cochineal, is extracted from the dried body of the female cochineal insect », and that « the output of the Canary Islands is used almost exclusively to colour the Italian apéritif Campari. » Caveat emptor, then! Ironically, « carmine dye is produced from the acid that females naturally secrete to deter predators. » Not, however, industrious humans.
Who's Out There? 
We are in a wolf-age, more appropriate to the Viking era. Instead of Christmas, I give you — Yule
Winter Solstice
Ellen Kuhfeld
Now the days begin to lengthen,
Shaman’s shadow-staff declares;
Stronger each day, warming Sun-shaft
Wars ‘gainst Winter’s icy airs.
Not this year the Fimbul-Winter –
Year of darkness, year of cold!
Though his frigid hand doth grasp us,
Winter weakens, and grows old.
Climbing Heaven’s clouded ramparts,
Warmth foretelling, Spring shall come!
Armies of the Sun shall surely
Winter’s fastness overcome!
As the Hunter rules the night-sky,
Send our hunters forth with spear,
Bow and arrow, smith-forged knife blade;
Hunt us now the Winter’s deer.
Bring the meat back to the kitchens,
Let the turnspit slowly spin.
Sun is coming, Spring shall follow –
Winter’s festival begins!
Hope you don’t mind poetry. It, too, is art.
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Mind poetry? Why, I open many of my posts with poetry, including (if you’re keeping track) this one! As for cold, we were confident — nearly certain! — of a White Christmas this year, until yesterday, when the temperature rose to 12˚C (54˚F) and all of our beautiful snow melted. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for some reinforcements!
Thank you very much for your inspired response, and happy Yule to you too, Ellen!
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I noticed the poem at the beginning. That’s why I thought to put a poem on the end. but that’s a lot of space between lines. It started out in quartets, with ordinary line spacing and an extra line between quarrtets. Then I copied it to your e-mail, and the program put extra spaces between the lines and deleted the extra-extra spaces. And your program widened the sspaces even more. Could you neaten up the poem for me?
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John Severin–much like Wally Wood and Joe Sinnott–could be a dominating inker and there are shades of that here. Glancing at it, I thought at first it was his work, but then I thought, no, it didn’t look quite right. Then with that big panel with the camp fire and especially the Mexican on the left, I thought, ah, Carmine Infantino.
i think the Warren people went out of their way to give him material they at least thought would be appropriate for him. He had done westerns before, yeah? And they gave him some sports stories, too, and I believe he had also done sports stories before. And he definitely got more super hero stories—as apocalyptic as they could be–than the average Warren artist.
Christmas was a super common theme at Warren and it often brought out equal measures of gore and sentimentality. Richard Corben got a lot like that, but there was another post-apocalypse one where an act of–unseen–cannibalism was framed in such light.
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