A Loving Tribute to THE SILENT NIGHT OF THE BATMAN — and NEAL ADAMS
A Christmas Eve special from Peter Stone’s THE NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES… — UPDATED 12/24/25: Every year on Christmas Eve we run a tribute to Mike Friedrich and Neal Adams’ 1969 classic The Silent Night of the Batman — the greatest Christmas comic-book story of them all. This particular column, by Neal’s son-in-law, Pete Stone, first appeared in 2023. Enjoy. — Dan — By PETER STONE Neal Adams was one of the worst people to buy for at Christmas. Literally, he wanted nothing. He didn’t collect toys or any sort of collectibles. He bought himself everything he wanted. He didn’t search the internet for things he wanted or needed or had never seen. He didn’t want any clothes because he tended to wear the same clothes all the time. Jeans, sneakers and the famous “Blue Shirt”! The only thing he ever wanted or loved were his cartoon ties, the ones with the characters or superheroes on them. Some of them were simply characters hidden in paisley shapes and some were subtly repeated logos. He liked the ones that you wouldn’t notice at first. (Like the one in that banner above.) So, the family would search out the most unique ties for him, but if you couldn’t find a good one you were stuck. My daughter found him a Sasquatch tie one year. Sasquatch was hiding behind a fir tree, and he thought that was great. If you couldn’t find him a new one or a funny one, you had to buy him a real present. An Art of Jack Davis book. Drew Struzen: Oeuvre, a collection of Alphonse Mucha’s art, or an anthology of exceptional comic stories. Those were so hard to find and usually expensive. So, what could you buy the man who wants nothing for Christmas? I found the answer. Neal Adams loved Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. He had gotten hardcover editions of Prince Valiant from Fantagraphics. I remember him looking through those editions, studying how much information Hal Foster put into every single panel… the ships, the construction of buildings, the castles and so much more. He loved Hal Foster’s drawing ability and how much he knew about the world in general. So, wouldn’t he like the oversize Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant Fantagraphics Studio Edition? Every single Sunday strip by Hal Foster, mostly in black and white,...
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