"The Beast of Bear Mountain"

 Okay, okay, Achille, I yield.  It's time to make some Christmas dreams come true.  Or something.

You know, the reason I was so reluctant to cover this material is because the equation seems to change fairly dramatically depending on whether you're talking about professional or amateur work.  My philosophy generally is, if someone got paid to write this story, and readers were meant to pay for the privilege, it's fair game.  But here, it's like: we're all amateurs!  What right do I have to criticize someone who's writing purely out of love?  Crikey, man!  Also, it's a small internet!  There's a good chance Jolley will see this (actually, unless she intentionally refuses to, she definitely will; it would be rude for me not to email her)!  How am I going to feel about making harsh criticisms?  And even in the even that I don't HAVE any sharp criticisms (and my feelings here are more favorable than not), there's still a sense that this is a performance; that you're kind of on a tightrope.  Who knows!  Maybe I'm overthinking it!  It has happened before.  I'd better get started before I manage to talk myself out of it.  This one, which Achille linked to for fairly obvious reasons.  As usual, I'm not going to try to cover every plot point.  Read it for yourself.

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Dollicious

This blog is for Disney comics, but we may also use it to celebrate the accomplishments of its readers, yeah? It's what Christmas is all about.

Well, yes. So, as you may know, and if you didn't you do now, our own Pan Milius, aka, Maciek Kur, is a comics creator in his own right. Polish comics may not tend to get a lot of international attention (although, of course, The Witcher is Polish, so it's not like there's no crossover), but he's rocking them. His flagship series, and I think the only one to be localized into English, is Dollicious, which we will discuss today. For context, quite some time ago, he got his publisher to send me complementary copies to review, and DAMN did I ever flake out on him (admit it: you thought I'd never get to it.  So did I, kind of). There are various reasons, but really, there's no dang excuse. So here we are!

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"The Christmas Contest"

 Hey!  Let's get some Christmas going 'round here, shall we?  This year...well, I'm not quite sure.  If you suggest something to me, there's actually at least a semi-decent chance I'll cover it, because we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  I suppose at some point I'll stop even trying to find new Christmas stories, and just do some general stuff I like for Christmas.  But for now: well, there's this story that I do not feel super-strongly about.  This originally appeared in IDW's Christmas Parade 5--the one after they decided their scripts had to be Fresh and Modern (boy, I ran THAT one into the ground) and fired everyone who knew what they were doing, as you do.  So the script is not great.  But I will say one thing: I don't blame Erin Brady (the translator); it's not her fault.  Sure, her work isn't particularly inspired or fun to read, but IDW was absolutely NOT looking for inspiration or fun, and if she didn't deliver, they just would've found someone who would.  So no hard feelings, Erin.  Try reading some Barks comics!  You might become a fan!

(I remember a few years back I slightly misspoke and blamed Fantagraphics for something that was Disney's fault, and for some reason this necessitated A LOT of people frantically correcting me on this trivial point.  It felt a little...hectoring, let's say.  Mebbe in the future we could be just a LITTLE less heavy-handed?)

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