A Christmas Eve tradition saluting the greatest Christmas comic-book story of them all… — 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...
Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 80 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Dec. 24, 1945. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Dec. 17, 1950. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the comics that went on sale between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27.) So, let’s set the scene for our annual RETRO HOT PICKS Christmas foray deep into the Golden Age: World War II ended only four months earlier and on Dec. 21 one of its greatest American military leaders, Gen. George S. Patton, died from complications resulting from a Dec. 9 car accident in Germany that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Patton, 60, was a deeply complicated man. Known as “Old Blood and Guts,” he was a profoundly successful commander but he was also controversial, known for slapping two soldiers suffering from what was then called “shell shock,” a precursor to PTSD. Worse, when the war was over, Patton, who was rabidly anti-Semitic and showed no sympathy for Holocaust victims, dragged his feet on the de-Nazification of Germany, showing support for his former adversaries. Called out by the press, Patton gave a pass to the Germans, saying that most people with the experience to manage the defeated country’s infrastructure had been compelled to join the Nazis, whom he compared to Democrats and Republicans. Amid the uproar, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, ordered Patton to hold a press conference to correct himself. Instead, Patton doubled down and Eisenhower relieved him of duty. Old Blood and Guts was assigned to command a unit that was compiling a history of the war in Europe. Patton was buried in Luxembourg on Christmas Eve. IN OTHER NEWS — On Dec. 24, the Sodder children disappeared in Fayetteville, West Virginia, giving rise to a weird, decades-long mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Naturally, it was featured on the superb podcast Casefile (Case 192). — It’s not like it was Esperanto or anything, but on Dec. 26, playwright George Bernard Shaw proposed a new phonetic alphabet, with just one sign for every sound. It didn’t take. — The creation of the United Nations was well under way, with...
Another upside-down cover…
Scott and Dan — along with guest John S. Drew — hit up the comics racks from 45 years ago!
Lots of classic tidbits from the ’70s — and MORE…
