Thanksgiving

Year of Superman Week 48: Superman Through the Ages (Part Two)

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Continuing on from last week, I’m still making my way through all of the different Superman adaptations I haven’t touched upon so far. Of course, Thanksgiving is this week as well, and as always, life is bound to throw a few curve balls into my plans, because life enjoys doing that to me. But I’ve got a bare minimum of seven movies and TV shows I’m going to try to hit this week. Can I do it in seven days? Your guess is as good as mine. 

And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., Nov. 28

TV Episode: Superboy Season 1, Episode 1, “The Jewel of the Techacal.”

Notes: The same year as the Ruby-Spears Superman animated series I wrote about last week, the Salkinds (producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies) gave us a new live-action TV series starring John Haymes Newton as a college-age Superboy. Newton was replaced after one season with Gerard Christopher, whom I remember liking in the role a lot more, but I haven’t watched any of these episodes in years. I should, in all fairness, watch at least Christopher’s first episode as well for the sake of comparison, but I’ve only got the first season of the show on DVD and it does not appear to be on HBO Max because – and I cannot stress this enough – Warner Bros. does not know what the hell it’s doing. I’ve still got the whole month of December, though, so if I manage to locate any of the Christopher episodes, I’ll try to squeeze one in for the sake of completion. For now, though, we’re going to look at the first episode of the series, “The Jewel of the Techacal.”

Newton was joined by Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and in a nice nod to comic book continuity, the episode begins with her archaeologist father, who is apparently nervous to see his daughter again after some time as he comes to town with a set of Mayan artifacts. Lana and Clark are both students at Shuster College (cute), along with T.J. White (son of Perry, of course), and a young Lex Luthor who gives neither “mad scientist” nor “insidious businessman” vibes, but rather came out of central casting in the search for a villain in an 80s movie about a ski resort whose wacky staff has to show up some snobbish guests. Anyway, as the episode opens, Professor Lang’s plane is having some trouble, its landing gear refusing to go down, so Superboy zips into the sky to make a quick repair. Lana is overjoyed that her father doesn’t – y’know – die, but is despondent only minutes later when he quickly blows her off to tend to his artifacts. The tension gets worse when Professor Lang suddenly and inexplicably collapses, a malady his assistant attributes to a curse that came with the artifacts they found. While he’s out, Lex and his goon plot to steal the artifacts, but Superboy arrives to stop it, only to find himself susceptible to the curse as well. He collapses while Lex makes off with an ancient chest containing…well, the curse, I guess. Superboy recovers and catches Lex, turning him over to the cops with most of the artifacts – all except for the cursed chest, which he brings back to…well, presumably to Techacal. We only SEE him flying into the clouds, because shooting in South America would have been entirely too expensive. Returning the chest breaks the curse, though, and Professor Lang recovers, giving him and Lana another chance.

The next time I want to crack jokes about the teen soap opera aspects of Superman and Lois, I’m going to stop myself and remember this show, because holy CRAP was this stuff overwrought. Is it understandable that Lana is upset to have her father lying in a hospital bed dying, apparently, of nothing? Absolutely. Should she be behaving like a character in a telenovela? Absolutely not. On the other hand, that’s better than the utter lack of emotion that we get from Scott Wells as Lex Luthor. (Lex only appeared in four episodes of season one and he, too, was recast for the second season.) As for Newton himself…he’s okay, but he’s a little stiff. The show doesn’t do much to justify why this is Superboy instead of Superman either, save for the fact that he’s in college and not yet in Metropolis. All things considered, it’s kind of a miracle that the show lasted as long as it did.

The really shocking thing, though, is that through 1988 there hasn’t been a single Superman-related TV series that has a proper status quo-establishing pilot. I guess that sort of requirement is more recent than I had realized.

Comics: DC K.O. #2, Superman Vol. 6 #32, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #13

Notes: I popped by the comic shop today as well, grabbing this week’s books, and I’m going to take a little time this afternoon to catch up on DC’s current crossover event, DC K.O., the second issue of which is sitting in my hot little hands right now. In order to claim the Omega Energy before Darkseid – and with it, the power to reshape the entire universe – 32 heroes and villains have made it through the first stage of the gauntlet. In issue two, 16 items have been scattered across the battlefield. The rules are simple: if you’re holding one of the items when time runs out you advance to the next round. If you aren’t, you die. Lex Luthor (showing far more cunning than his counterpart in the Superboy TV show) makes right for a collection of Lantern power rings, while Superman tries not only to outrace Luthor, but stop the other villains at the same time.

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This issue is where I feel like we’re really going to see exactly what DC K.O. is. The conceit is that the eventual winner of this tournament will be able to reset the universe as they see fit, so the consequences here are kind of minimal – heroes and villains alike can be broken, maimed, even die, and you know that when that reset button is hit it’s all going to go away. Normally I would consider the existence of that sort of reset to be a negative, but K.O. has two major things going for it. First, the writers are using the lack of consequences as an opportunity to really cut loose, pushing the battles to extremes that they normally would never approach. Even Superman has an opportunity to be more brutal without violating his ethos, and this issue shows us just how scary that would be. The other thing is that although there IS a reset button included, that button will be used at the whim of whoever eventually wins the tournament, and I have a suspicion that it’s not going to be a simple square one reset. Whoever wins is probably going to have the opportunity to change some things when they rebuild the universe (for example, should a member of the Bat-family come out on top, it seems like this would be a prime opportunity to bring back a certain faithful butler whose presence has been sorely missed for quite some time), and I’m very curious to see what shape that will take.

Superman #32 fills in a blank and continues the side-story at the same time. Half the issue is used to explain where Lex and the rest of the villains came from in DC K.O. #1 when they suddenly joined the tournament. The other half picks up the story of Lois and Superboy-Prime versus Darkseid’s Legion at the Fortress of Solitude. The Lex stuff is nice to explain something that I’m sure a lot of of were curious about, but I’m more satisfied with the Lois/ Prime storyline. Prime’s characterization has shifted since the days of Infinite Crisis, sliding from a bitter ex-fanboy to a kid who leans on the fourth wall in a way that almost feels Deadpool-like. Considering his origins, it makes sense, and it never goes so far as to have him addressing the reader; instead, it’s more like he’s got awareness of the medium he’s in and he’s using it. I didn’t have it on my bingo card for the Year of Superman, but the redemption of Superboy-Prime is shaping up to be a great story.

And in Justice League Unlimited #13, we get part two of “The Terrific Ten.” Mr. Terrific leads his team of time-tossed Justice Leaguers (including the Electric Blue Superman and a young Power Girl) into Hell itself to confront the demon Neron, who has chosen a devil of a time to juice up some of Earth’s villains again. Meanwhile, the very Omega Energy that the heroes in the main book are trying to claim is simultaneously rendering Earth uninhabitable, and the remaining Justice Leaguers are trying to help the Titans coordinate the evacuation of the entire planet. At the same time, they’re trying to round up the amped-up villains that Neron has set loose. I have to say this for K.O. – I’ve read most of the tie-ins so far, and none of them feel the same as the others. What’s happening in Superman and Justice League are totally different than Titans and Flash. And while some of them feel more immediately relevant to the main storyline, none of them feel wasted or irrelevant to the titles that they’re reaching into. You can’t say that about every crossover, and the DC creators deserve a lot of credit for making it work so well thus far.  

Thur., Nov. 27

Comic: New Adventures of Superboy #38, JSA #54 (Guest Appearance)

Notes: Happy Thanksgiving! Well, it’s Thanksgiving as I write this. By the time you read this, it’ll be December 3, and I’m sure you’ll all be watching the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and if you aren’t, what even are you doing with your holidays? But at the time I write this I just took the dessert I made out of the oven, my wife is in the kitchen making her cornbread casserole, and Eddie and I are on the couch watching the Macy’s parade. Since they don’t have a Superman balloon for some insane reason, I need to work in something else to maintain my streak. Fortunately, the DC Universe app has me covered with New Adventures of Superboy #38, one of the terribly rare Thanksgiving comics out there. 

The story begins with Superboy paying a visit to the Soames Reformatory, where he pitches in with Thanksgiving dinner by cooking the turkeys with his X-Ray vision. There’s one resident of the reform school who isn’t impressed, though: young Lex Luthor. Lex pitches a fit and Superboy leaves, upset that for all his genius, he fears that Lex will never mend his ways. (Prescient kid, that Superboy.) But there’s no time to bemoan Lex’s fate – he’s gotta bounce to the future for the monthly meeting with the Legion of Super-Heroes. At the same time (somehow), 13 years in the future, an adult Superman is making a visit BACK in time. Superboy collides with his grown-up self in the timestream, and the two of them are hurled back to their respective time periods, but with their minds switched. Superman – in Superboy’s body – winds up back in the 60s, while Superboy in Superman’s body goes to 1982.

Superman wakes up in Superboy’s body, believing that something has made him younger, and decides to go hide out in the empty Kent house in Smallville until he can figure out what’s going on, shocked to find his parents there, alive. Stunned, he puts on teen Clark’s clothes and sits down for a Thanksgiving dinner with his family and teenage friends. The next day, Lex manages to sneak out of the reformatory. Superman/boy, meanwhile, suddenly finds himself in a Groundhog’s Day Loop of reliving Thanksgiving, the result of some sort of device Luthor planted on him the day before. He tries to break the loop by, instead of travelling to the future to see the Legion switching it up and going to the past. Somehow, this works, because Albert Einstein said if he went far enough back he would loop around to where he started from. Superman catches Lex, but his rage at what his former friend will one day become nearly pushes him to destroy him in anger. 

The story continues in Superman #380, where we see the other half of the story…presumably. That issue isn’t on the DC Infinity app. I cannot stress this enough, they have GOT to get their act together with this app. The story’s also kind of light on Thanksgiving cheer, so I’m going to call that an appetizer, with the main course being an unabashedly holiday story from JSA #54.

It’s Thanksgiving at the Justice Society brownstone in Manhattan, and they’ve invited the Justice League to join them. We get a series of vignettes to begin the story – Batman and Mr. Terrific talking shop, Wonder Woman and Wildcat having the required awkward political disagreement, Impulse and Jakeem Thunder bonding over a mutual hatred of school, and so forth. We get an amusing bit where Stargirl is upset about being placed at the kids’ table while Captain Marvel (whose secret identity she knows, but not everybody else does) gets to sit with the adults. Everything is going great…until Kulak the Sorcerer and the Warlock of Ys appear. Kulak is out for revenge against the JSA, the Warlock hates the JLA, but NEITHER of them really counted on just how many heroes’ dinner they just ruined. Their resistance…doesn’t last long. In the end, the two teams order a tower of pizzas and celebrate the holiday the way Batman always predicted they would.

Is it heavy on Superman content? No. But he gets a few nice moments, such as catching Wildcat flying out the window after Wonder Woman “disagrees” with him and another where he and Alan Scott crack their knuckles before wiping the floor with the bad guys. But it’s a funny, heartfelt story by Geoff Johns and Don Kramer, which is only slightly overshadowed by the absolute masterpiece that the Christmas story in the next issue would be. There’s no Super-family characters in that one so I probably won’t be reading it, but if you’re looking for Christmas comics to read over the next month, make sure you add it to your list. 

Fri., Nov. 28

Movie Serial: Superman (1948), Episodes 1-15

Notes: I’ve been holding off on this one until I had a day with a big chunk of time where I could watch it, as the 15 episodes of the original Superman movie serial make up a whopping four hours and change combined, but there was no way I could consider this project complete without including the work of Kirk Alyn, the first actor to portray Superman in live action.

(Before anybody comes in the comments trying to correct me, I know that Alyn wasn’t the first actor to wear a Superman costume. Ray Middleton dressed as Superman during the 1939 World’s Fair. But to the best of my knowledge, there was no footage of Middleton and, if there is, it doesn’t seem to exist anywhere. We’ve got a few still photos. Alyn’s is the earliest actual performance we can WATCH.)

Anyway, I’m not going to try to do a total recap of the movie serial the way I do for a lot of the things I watch. It’s too long, frankly, and like a lot of movie serials there’s a lot of repetition that would make it kind of tedious to read about. But here’s what’s important: the serial tells the story of the destruction of Krypton and baby Kal-El coming to Earth, being raised by the Kents, and then making up his mind to become a hero in the city of Metropolis all in the first 20-minute episode. After that, we see Superman at odds with assorted criminals and natural disasters before finally coming into conflict with the main villain of the serial: the Spider Lady, who is using her “Reducing Ray” to hold the world hostage.

The storyline is very much in keeping with a lot of the adventure serials of the era: goofy sci-fi weapons of dubious practicality, a femme fatale villain with a sort of bland identity, and tons and tons of goons that came straight out of the Goon Casting Academy. It’s the fact that the hero of this one is Superman rather than “Commando Cody” or something that makes it interesting. And the Superman we get here is very well done. Kirk Alyn is a great Superman for the era: he’s strong, but also somewhat joyful. He’s having FUN with his powers, and that’s something that you can’t always say. He also is quite clearly taking his cues from Bud Collyer’s portrayal of the character on the radio and in the Fleischer shorts, duplicating the way Collyer would start off his catch phrase as Clark Kent (“This looks like a job…”) and then drop his voice an octave (“…for SUPERMAN!”) to signal that he’s going into action. Even the credits for the serial indicate that it is “adapted from the Superman Radio Program,” so there’s no pretending it’s a coincidence. 

Noel Neill, as I mentioned last week, is our Lois Lane, a role she would reprise when Phyllis Coates left The Adventures of Superman a few years later…and I LOVE Neill’s Lois. She’s slick, clever, and occasionally even devious. She’s miffed at Clark for scooping her on the story that got him his job at the Daily Planet (a story beat that John Byrne would duplicate for his Man of Steel series four decades later) and isn’t above pulling some sneaky tricks to get him out of the way so she can beat him to the story. She’s feisty and ferocious, and I’m there for it.

Special effects being what they were in 1948, the serial makes frequent use of animation. The destruction of Krypton, the rocketship to Earth, any time Superman flies, and various super-feats that would be too difficult to portray in live action are all done through animation. It’s not – I must concede – particularly CONVINCING animation. It looks like the scenes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? where the toons and live-action characters coexist. But for the time, it was innovative, and the animation is good, fluid, and impressive.

Kirk Alyn’s name is overlooked far too often when we’re talking about the actors who have portrayed the Man of Steel. This serial and his performance are both great fun, and worthy of inclusion…it wouldn’t have been a Year of Superman without him. 

Sat., Nov. 29

TV Episode: Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman Season 1, Episodes 1-2, “Pilot,” Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 6, “Of Sound Mind.”

Notes: In 1993 it was time for TV to take another swing at the Man of Steel. But as it WAS the 90s, this time out the focus was more 90s as well. For a superhero show, the emphasis was on the relationship and burgeoning romance between Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) and Clark Kent (Dean Cain). In fact, they even gave Lois top billing in the title, as if to emphasize the fact that this wasn’t like the OLD adventures of Superman at all. The series doesn’t even begin with Clark, it begins with Lois returning to the Daily Planet office stripping off a disguise she used to go undercover to land a big story. As they’re celebrating her scoop, a young man steps off the bus outside, carrying a suitcase with the initials “C.K.” The young Clark Kent meets with Perry White (the great Lane Smith, perhaps my favorite Perry White of all time), who rejects him due to his lack of experience. He retreats to the rundown apartment he’s renting and, as a lightbulb above his head begins flickering, he casually floats to the ceiling and fixes it. Because, y’know, super powers. Lois, meanwhile, retreats to the apartment she shares with her sister Lucy, who berates her for the way she constantly drives away all the men in her life for being too weak, then sobs while watching a sappy movie. Because yeah, it’s a superhero TV show, but it’s also a romantic comedy. 

The next day, Clark tracks down an aging actress in an abandoned theater, poaching a human interest story he heard Lois reject in Perry’s office, and brings it to the Planet, where his initiative impresses Perry enough to give him the job. Just seconds later, the TV in the office shows a disaster at a space launch. Lois is determined to follow leads that point to a conspiracy in the space program, and over her objections, Perry assigns her to partner with the newcomer Clark. She’s not thrilled about it, and she’s less thrilled when her scheduled date for a gala thrown by Lex Luthor drops out, forcing her to ask Clark to accompany her if she wants any chance at landing the first one-on-one interview Luthor has ever given. 

Before the Gala he flies home to Smallville (under his own power, naturally) to have dinner with his parents (Eddie Jones and Jonathan and K Callan as Martha), where he bemoans the fact that he has to hide his powers instead of openly helping people. Jonathan, always the wise one, tells him he’ll find a way. At the Gala, Clark has his socks knocked off when he sees Lois dressed to the nines, but she’s preoccupied dancing with businessman Lex Luthor (John Shea). Luthor turns out to be charming, showing off his tower and saying how he loves the fact that everyone in Metropolis has to look up to see him. He uses the ball as an opportunity to announce his newest initiative: the creation of a space station bearing his name. He’s outraged, though, when the Congress of Nations rejects his proposal to continue their own plans. 

Over the next few days Lois – despite herself – finds that she’s warming up to Clark, who has a charm she can’t deny, and is full of surprises, like the ability to read Chinese (which he demonstrates after bringing her Chinese food – unbeknownst to her – from China). He also comforts her when they find a source who has been feeding her information about the space sabotage dead, an apparent suicide, although Lois and Clark aren’t buying it. After a few close calls of nearly being caught helping people, Clark asks his mom to help him make an “outfit” to use. 

Lois continues to pursue the story, finally getting herself and Jimmy captured. Clark manages to find her trapped in an empty warehouse, but has to allow himself to get caught in order to protect his secret. As Lois berates him for bumbling in without a plan, he casually frees himself from the shackles, but allows Lois to continue with her raving as it transmogrifies into a bit of a self-therapy session, then he frees them both. He gets Lois – and the unconscious Jimmy – out of the warehouse just before it’s blown up. The evidence she has saves the space launch, and Clark goes back to Smallville to help finish his disguise. After a montage, he settles on something…iconic: blue tights, with red boots, trunks, and a cape. Something is missing, thought and Martha digs into a chest to pull out the blanket Clark was wrapped in as a baby, complete with a familiar crest.

Jonathan, meanwhile, is watching the space launch on TV, not knowing that Lois has 1) stowed away on the rocket and 2) discovered a bomb. She tries to disarm the bomb, but instead causes a mechanical error that ends the countdown. Sensing something is wrong, Clark takes to the air and arrives just in time to reach the bomb and EAT the explosive, saving the rocket, its crew, and Lois. The crew – planning to be long-term colonists on the space station – fear the mission will end as their window is about to close, but Superman gets beneath the rocket and flies it into orbit himself, docking it with the station and saving the mission. In the final scene, the newly-dubbed Superman arrives at Lex Luthor’s tower to confront him over the bomb: he knows that Luthor was behind the sabotage to promote his own station. And although he can’t prove any of it, he’s going to have his eyes on Luthor from now on. As he takes off, he tells Luthor “If you ever need to find me, all you have to do is look up.” 

If you remember the personal timeline of my experience with Superman, you may remember that I first became a big fan of the character in the early 90s, and this show was one of the elements that paralleled that. By the time it came out in 1993, I was already big into the comics, but the show helped fuel that fandom for a few years, helping to bolster Superman’s status as an icon (recently reignited thanks to his “death”) and carrying it forward. And it was, sincerely, the perfect show for the era. It’s VERY 90s, and the different take on Superman works for the time period. Teri Hatcher’s Lois is confident (good) bordering on arrogant (bad), but it soon becomes clear that it’s a mask for her rather deep loneliness (awwwww). Clark, meanwhile, isn’t the pushover that we had in the Christopher Reeve era. His background from “Smallville” leads to people (Lois, for instance) underestimating him, but he proves to be shrewd and clever, in addition to just being competent at reporting. This show also has to get credit for one of my favorite Superman lines, one that people (myself included) often misattribute to Superman For All Seasons: when a kid tells Superman she likes his costume, he replies, “Thanks, my mother made it for me.”

The supporting cast is aces as well. I mentioned already how much I love Lane Smith as Perry White, with a sort of drawl that makes his character sound like he’s handing out homespun wisdom. Jones and Callan as the Kents make for a perfect sounding board for Clark, demonstrating yet again how wise it was of John Byrne to let them live to Clark’s adulthood rather than forcing him to spend his life UTTERLY alone. And John Shea’s Lex Luthor probably wouldn’t have worked if they were going for the “mad scientist” interpretation of the character, but as the ruthless businessman, he’s perfectly suited for the role. Tracy Skoggins’ predatory Cat Grant is very much a reflection of the earliest versions of the character, and although he would be replaced in favor of a younger actor later in the series, I rather liked Michael Landes’ Jimmy Olsen. 

One thing I’ve noticed is just how well the various live-action incarnations of Superman act as a sort of capsule of the time. While the broad strokes remain the same, the details in each incarnation of the character give you a good idea of where culture was at that point. 90s television was the era of the relationship drama, and this show reflects the Superman version of that perfectly.  

Sun., Nov. 30

Novel: The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson

Notes: I’ve been reading this novel off and on for about two weeks, and I finished it up today. If there’s one thing I wish I had squeezed more of into this Year of Superman, it’s prose fiction…but the truth is there isn’t all THAT much to choose from, and some of the best — specifically as the novels of Elliot S! Maggin — were books I read just last year, not long before I decided to do this project, and I didn’t quite have the impetus for a re-read just yet. But this book by frequent Star Wars writer Kevin J. Anderson went a long way towards scratching that itch.

As the title implies, this book tells us the story of the final days (final years, actually, but that’s not as catchy a title) of the planet Krypton before its ultimate destruction. Jor-El is the protagonist of the book, a scientist whose work has been suppressed by Krypton’s staunchly unbending ruling council, even as he finds sign after sign that the planet is in imminent danger. One of the few people who takes him seriously is Councilor Dru-Zod, who has an eye on conquest and forges a bond with Jor-El in the hopes of using him towards his own ends. Over the course of the book, Jor-El falls in love with an artist, Lara Lor-Van, and colludes with his scientist brother Zor-El (mayor of Argo City) to help save the planet from itself.

Spoiler warning: It doesn’t quite work out.

That’s the tricky thing with prequels: so much of what’s going to happen is a foregone conclusion. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of Superman’s history knows that Jor-El’s efforts to save the planet will fail and that he and Lara will perish after sending their infant son Kal-El into space. People who have a slightly deeper – but still not encyclopedic – knowledge of the lore will also know that before the end of the story Zod will be in the Phantom Zone, allowing him to survive the planet’s destruction. And the real ones, of course, will know that Zor-El will save Argo City from Krypton’s destruction only to suffer its own doom some years later. So since all of these things are locked into canon before you even crack open the book, where’s the tension? Where’s the drama?

Miraculously, it’s there.

Anderson does a fine job of weaving a story that’s still compelling despite the fact that we know more or less how it’s all going to go. The relationship between Zod and Jor-El has shades of Shakespearean tragedy, of a friendship gone wrong, although the degree to which Zod ever actually considered Jor-El a friend is debatable. He also does a fine job of fleshing out Lara and Zor-El, characters who have never been quite as well-developed in the comics as Jor-El or Zod, imbuing them with distinct personalities that fit cleanly into the story and both serve as support for Jor-El in different ways.

Most impressive to me, though, is how Anderson plunders decades of Superman continuity for the details that populate this story. Stories from the comics like the ancient Kryptonian despot Jax-Ur, the abduction of Kandor by Brainiac, or the question of just why Argo City was beneath a dome in the first place all factor into the storyline. But Anderson avoids the trap that so many prequels fall into of feeling like the writers are just connecting the dots, trying to piece together the information we already have, and instead incorporates these different elements organically and sometimes in such a subtle way that you don’t quite realize the significance of certain things until they come to the forefront. 

The story paints Krypton’s destruction as imminent, and finds fault with multiple characters – even, to a degree, Jor-El himself. It builds to the tragedy, this notion that the death of Krypton’s civilization may have been avoidable, but was propelled by hubris. The book is a little vague on just how inevitable the end of the planet was – there are several elements that make it seem like Krypton was doomed no matter what anybody did – but there are definitely actions by certain people that accelerate its death, and if not for the pigheadedness of those in charge, the people of Krypton may have found a way to save themselves, even if the planet as a whole was doomed. 

Anderson isn’t beholden to any particular continuity. As I said, many of the elements are drawn from different eras of the comic books, but it’s not married to any of them. (It would fit fairly well with the Silver Age, for example, but doesn’t fit at all with the Man of Steel era.) Other things, like Jor-El’s physical description of white hair and shimmering white robes, seem to come more from the movies. Ultimately, though, it serves as a sort of platonic example of the final days of a grand civilization and a backdrop of the tragedy that ultimately would give birth to Earth’s greatest hero. 

Mon. Dec. 1.

Comics: Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #47 (Jonathan and Martha Kent Guest appearance), Action Comics #1092

Notes: I have a child. Children have things like choir rehearsal and basketball practice. Dad has no time to do stuff. This is the circle of life. Anyway, without the time to watch anything today, I’m squeezing in some comics.

I don’t often write about the quick read “DC Go” comics, but every so often I get one that’s so delightful I need to draw attention to it. Batman: Wayne Family Adventures is a bit of a reimagining of the Batman characters as a sort of family dramedy. The focus is on Bruce and his multitude of adopted children, and although they are superheroes, the comic strip is really about them functioning as a family, with most actual adventures happening off-panel. Episode #47 is a spotlight on Alfred, having what appears to be a fairly regular dinner with his friends, Jonathan and Martha Kent. The story is sweet and simple, a portrait of the adopted parents of Earth’s two greatest heroes spending time together and relating to one another in a way that nobody else in the world possibly could. We’ve seen elements of this in the main continuity from time to time, but this short story really is a treat. 

On to Action Comics #1092, which is sort of a breather issue. The Captain Comet storyline wrapped up last issue, so this month we see young Clark Kent bemoaning the fact that Lana Lang is interested in Superboy instead of “him,” Pete Ross wonder why he best friend is so distant lately, and Sam Lane roll into town to try to do something about this super powered teenager that’s been running around lately. There’s a lot of good character stuff here for Superboy – Mark Waid is dipping his toes into the struggles of Clark trying not to draw attention to himself, and seems to be leaning in towards the old Silver Age status quo of Pete Ross figuring out that Clark is Superboy but keeping that information private. The scene with Sam Lane is especially good, demonstrating the relationship that Superboy has forged with the people of Smallville in a relatively short time. On the other hand, Waid has a teenage Clark make reference to the Star Wars prequels, a comment that makes me feel egregiously old and for which I may never forgive him. 

Tues., Dec. 2

Comic: Adventure Comics #423

Notes: I had intended, this week, to try to wrap up at least the most important “Superman Through the Ages” that I hadn’t gotten to yet – things like the pilot episode of Smallville and Supergirl, or to finally talk about Henry Cavill’s Superman movies. But it’s that time of year, guys. Holidays, family events, work, and a kid who is into both choir and basketball are eating up my time. I’ve got the last few weeks of this project planned a little – holiday tales for the week before Christmas and some all-star stuff, including “endings” for that week before the new year. In the two weeks between now and then, I’m not going to make myself beholden to any theme and I’m going to read whatever I want on the day, but I’m also going to do my best to scratch off as many of the remaining movies and TV shows from my list as possible.

Today, though, that isn’t going to happen, because of the aforementioned work and basketball and whatnot. So instead, let’s look at Adventure Comics #423, a story from the time that Supergirl was the headliner of the series, but which has her in conflict with Superman, who – as you see from the cover – she’s calling a traitor. In “Treachery,” written by E. Nelson Bridwell and Steve Skeates with art by Mike Sekowsky and Bob Oskner, Linda Danvers is shopping one day when she tries on a pair of sunglasses that she cannot remove from her face. The glasses are the creation of aliens who have been observing her from space and who plan to control her via messages embedded in the glasses. The aliens force Linda to go to Metropolis to visit her cousin Clark (you may have heard of him), and secretly switch his glasses for a pair sent by the aliens. They force Superman and Supergirl to visit their spacecraft, hidden beneath the waters of the bay, and collect glasses to use on the rest of Earth’s superheroes. As they enter, the heroes immediately begin mopping the floor up with the aliens before their leader Gur realizes his crony ordered them to enter the craft, but gave no commands preventing them from fighting back. He orders them to cease all action and executes the flunky responsible. Superman is ordered to trick the rest of the Justice League into putting on the glasses, but without specific orders of her own, Supergirl again rebels against the aliens and, again, is stopped by Gur. Gur’s brother, however, however, opposed to Gur’s plans for conquest, gives Supergirl an order to use her heat vision, which melts the glasses off her face and sets her free. She makes short work of the aliens and rushes to the Justice League satellite, where Superman is trying to con his teammates into wearing the glasses. (There’s a particularly funny panel where he’s grabbing the Atom like a doll and trying to force the glasses onto his face.) Supergirl tells Green Lantern to blast the glasses off Superman’s face and set him free. Meanwhile, the alien ship is sinking and Gur and his brother fight, with the two of them eventually going down with the ship as the rest of their crew escapes. Superman and Supergirl build a craft to send the rest of the aliens home, hoping that Gur was one-of-a-kind. 

I’ve never read this story before, and I was surprised by just how much I liked it. The hero-versus-hero trope is kind of tired, as is the “mind controlled hero,” but it actually works here because there’s a reasonable explanation. “Here, try on these sunglasses.” It’s a simple enough way to kick things off, and it’s completely believable that even a Supergirl would be off guard and fall into that trap. From that point, it’s easy enough to accept her swapping Clark’s glasses and pulling him in as well. The only weak point was Superman utterly failing to convince the rest of the JLA to put the glasses on – he’s just not that good at deception. Speaking of which, it’s a good thing that nobody else seemed to see Superman flying around wearing the alien spectacles, because the ol’ Clark Kent disguise would have gone out the window REALLY quickly if they had. 

We’re going into the last month of the year, friends, and my goal at this point is just to knock off as many things remaining on my list as possible. So expect the next two weeks to be kind of eclectic – movies, TV shows, comics, and whatever else I haven’t gotten around to yet. Thanks for sticking around this long – I hope you’ll find the last month of this little project to be as much fun as the first 11.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!

Geek Punditry #99: Blake’s Five Favorite Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Displays

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Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to “Blake’s Five Favorites,” that semi-regular Geek Punditry mini-feature in which I pick some aspect of pop culture and just wax poetic about my five favorite examples of that thing. As always, “Five Favorites” is totally subjective. I’m not saying these are the BEST five examples, just that these are five that make ME smile…and it’s important to note that, when it comes to ranking things like this, I can be kind of fickle. If I were to write this column a week from now, I might pick five totally different examples.

Well…four different examples. Number one for this week holds a permanent place in my heart.

Next week is Thanksgiving, the second in the great Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas extravaganza that makes the last three months of the year my favorite time. Last year, if you’ll recall, I wrote about the sad dearth of Thanksgiving-related entertainment: with few movies other than Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, few specials beyond Peanuts and Garfield, and few bingeable TV shows other than Friends and Bob’s Burgers. But that doesn’t mean there’s NOTHING fun to watch for Thanksgiving, and this week I’m going to talk about one of my favorites: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This year is going to be the 98th annual parade, and I have to admit, I’m already kind of a-tingle looking forward to 2026 and wondering what they’ve got in store for the centennial edition of the greatest Thanksgiving tradition since Ben Franklin stuffed the first duck inside of George Washington’s chicken and then fed it to Alexander Hamilton’s turkey. Or whatever happened.

A tradition as precious as Uncle Fred making comments about Aunt Judy’s ‘vacation to Motel California” and making everyone feel awkward.

This week, I’m going to look back at the great parades I’ve watched over the years and talk about some of my favorite displays, be they floats, musical performances, or the legendary balloons. These will be in no particular order except for number one. I’m saving the best for last.

#5: The Spider-Man Balloon

I remember, for Spider-Man’s first crawl down the skies of New York in 1987. That first Spider-Man balloon was remarkably exciting for me, for reasons that are maybe a little difficult to articulate, especially to modern fans. It’s hard to remember, in this day and age when geek culture IS popular culture, that there was a time when things like comic books, sci-fi, and fantasy were looked down upon. They were considered “low” culture by the hoi polloi and expressing a love for such things was as good as placing a target on your back from the schoolyard bullies. So seeing Spider-Man appear in the Macy’s parade was…kind of a revelation. In a strange way, it was a sort of validation, seeing something that meant so much to me get mainstream attention. It was the first time I had an inkling that MY culture COULD be pop culture…and let’s face it, guys, the years since have proven me right.

Spidey’s original balloon lasted from 1987 until 1998. He came back in 2004 with a new, updated balloon that continued to fly along until 2014. And that was it…until next week.

“Peter One…Peter Two…Peter Three!”

A brand-new Spider-Man balloon is going to debut this year! Yes, May Parker’s favorite nephew is making his return to the Macy’s Parade for the first time in a decade, and I cannot wait to sit on the couch with my son and watch him soar across the sky once again. I don’t know how long Spidey Mark III will last, but I feel like the wallcrawler has become something of a perennial. And I can only hope that if Eddie ever has kids of his own, he’ll be watching Spider-Man on Thanksgiving day with them. 

#4: The Marching Bands

I was a band geek in school.

I know, it’s shocking, but try to compose yourself.

I was a band geek all through middle school, high school, college. And of course, that means I was a marching band geek. I spent a lot of Fridays and Saturdays glide-stepping across a football field, slinging my trombone and wearing pants that rode entirely too close to my nipples. And to this day, I still love watching a marching band…but I hate the fact that they never seem to get any love on TV. Nearly every one of these college football games we watch has at least ONE marching band out there at halftime, playing their hearts out. I’d love to see them get a little credit for once.

You laugh, but you’d be shocked at how many girls swooned over the guy who could play “Land of 1,000 Dances” on trombone.

…None. The number is zero.

So the Macy’s Parade is great because that actually happens. For one day a year, we get to watch as dozens of schools from across the country strut their stuff on the biggest stage a marching band can get. The thing to remember is that the kids you see in that parade busted their butts to get there. Not only have they given countless hours rehearsing music and practicing drills, but the schools also have to pay their own way to the parade. So bands do fundraisers of all types: car washes, bake sales, soda sales…even mattress sales seem to have become popular in recent years. For those of us watching at home, we see 30 seconds of a marching band performance, but that could be the result of up to two years of hard work, planning, fundraising, and rehearsal. I love to see them get to show their stuff, even if half the country uses their appearance to go baste the turkey. 

#3: The Marvel Superheroes Float

The same year that Spider-Man’s first balloon premiered, we got another Marvel presentation, the Marvel Universe float. The float rolled three times before retiring after 1989, but similar to the Spider-Man balloon itself, it left an indelible mark on my geek psyche. (Side note: I’m realizing that this column is getting much deeper into my assorted nerdities than I would have expected.) The float was full of costumed performers dressed as characters that – in the 80s – were pretty damn obscure to the general public. I mean…Dr. Strange? Wolverine? Who the hell would ever make a movie about THOSE guys, right?

Pictured: Life before High Definition

This was long before Marvel was purchased by the Walt Disney Corporation and Global Underground Shadow Government and Falafel Stand, so the production values were at a level that I would describe as “Six Flags Knock-Off Amusement Park Show.” The costumes look like they were sewed together by somebody’s mother, and calling the “stunt” work stunt work is a bigger gift than anything Santa could bring. Despite the incredible cheese factor, I’ve never forgotten how much I loved watching that float, and in the week before Thanksgiving every year, I still pull up the clip of the 1989 parade on YouTube and watch it again, immersing myself in lovely, lovely memories. 

#2: The Garfield Balloon

This is another one that scratches that nostalgia itch, but when I think about Macy’s parade balloons, if it’s not Spider-Man, the first thing that comes to mind is Jim Davis’s legendary fat cat. I know, in this day and age it’s not fashionable to be a fan of Garfield. It’s bland. It’s homogenized. And the most recent movie took WILD liberties with established series canon. But I feel like I need to remind you that I was born the year before the first Garfield comic strip came out. The cat and I literally grew up together, so I have a soft spot for him. Plus, the old Garfield and Friends cartoon show was actually really good, and the holiday specials were great.

Garfield never rides in the Canadian Thanksgiving parade because he hates Mondays.

All that said, I remember seeing Garfield in the Macy’s Parade for years. It was the sort of thing that felt like a perennial to me, something that was just always there and always would be. Looking back, I see that it wasn’t QUITE that constant, but he did have a heck of a run. The original Garfield balloon traveled down the streets with the parade from 1985 until 1989, with a second stint from 1992 through 1999. A new Garfield balloon, this time carrying his teddy bear Pooky, showed up in 2003 and lasted through 2006. 

It’s hard to explain what exactly it is about the Garfield balloon that I find so comforting. Yeah, the character is as corporate as it gets, and in fact, Jim Davis deliberately crafted the comic strip to be as inoffensive and all-encompassing as possible. But in a way, that’s kind of appropriate. Hell, the parade itself is put on by a department store, and every float and balloon comes with a sponsor whose name is announced on national television during the broadcast – are we really going to pretend we’re NOT watching a three-hour commercial every Thanksgiving morning? And for that reason, I think Garfield is actually kinda the perfect mascot for the whole shebang. So yeah, I love seeing that balloon for the same reason I get a little smile every time I’m reminded of the days when every other car on the road had a Garfield plush stuck against the rear window. It just kind of feels…right.

#1: Santa Claus

I mean, what else could possibly take the top spot on my rating of the greatest parts of the Thanksgiving parade? I’ve often said that I think gatekeeping is stupid and that anybody who tries to tell anyone else that they’re wrong to start celebrating Christmas “early” is only showing their own prejudices. That said, in my house, I don’t think it’s Christmastime until that last minute of the Macy’s parade, when Santa’s sleigh rolls down the streets of Manhattan. It’s at that moment that I really feel like the holiday season has “officially” begun and there’s no longer any rationale from any of those Scrooges who claim that it’s too early for Christmas to keep flapping their gums.

“Ho, ho, hooold on a second there, save me some pumpkin pie!”

Santa’s most famous ride is still a month out, of course, but seeing him in the parade reminds every kid in the world that he’s on his way, that it’s time to make a list, that they better start behaving themselves, consarn it. And it feels like THE most constant part of the parade to me. Floats and balloons come and go, you don’t see the same marching bands every year, the musical performances are carefully crafted to support whatever is hot on Broadway that season…but no matter what else is going on in the world and who else is being paid to show up in the parade, Santa Claus is always going to be there. Hell, the whole tradition is the centerpiece of the movie Miracle on 34th Street, and I’ll never get tired of either one of them.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. If he had a genie available to him, one of his wishes would be to create a character so universally beloved that they would be immortalized in the Macy’s parade. The next wish would be for an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.

Geek Punditry #46: We Need Something to be Thankful For

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In January, I decided to do a soft relaunch of this blog, challenging myself to find something I was happy about in pop culture to write about once a week. And although I’ve been pretty successful with that goal so far, it hasn’t always been easy. This week, for example. This week’s post is scheduled for Nov. 17, the last Friday before Thanksgiving, and in a situation like that my normal inclination is to write something about the culture of the holiday, an exploration of some of the classic movies or specials that I always associate with the season, that I revisit every year, and that helps enrich and makes the holidays more meaningful for me. There’s only one problem. In that November, there isn’t that much to be thankful for.

I mean, it’s not even deep-fat fried.

Christmas is easy – there are thousands of Christmas-themed films, TV shows, books, and comics I can turn to, and between Hallmark and the Lifetime Channel they’ve turned out 17 more since we began reading this sentence. Halloween, similarly, isn’t difficult. There are a lot of Halloween-specific movies, and really, anything on the creepy spectrum can feel Halloween-appropriate, even if it’s not set around Samhain. Thanksgiving, though? That’s tougher. 

There are a few Thanksgiving movies, but to date there’s really only been one GREAT Thanksgiving movie, and that’s the 1987 classic Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. If you’ve never seen it, I recommend you check it out before next week: Steve Martin plays an executive trying to get home from a business trip in time for Thanksgiving, and absolutely everything goes wrong. But he’s not alone: fate seems to have linked his travel mishaps with a buffoonish shower curtain ring salesman (really) played by the late, great John Candy. Both of these comedians are at the top of their game in this movie – Steve Martin plays the straight man for most of the film, save for one memorable freak-out scene at a rental car counter, and Candy manages to pull the viewer on a roller coaster ride that makes his character at turns goofy, charming, unbearable, sympathetic, and even tragic. My wife Erin contends (and I do not disagree) that if Candy hadn’t passed away at such a young age, he would have had a late-career dramatic renaissance like John Goodman or Bryan Cranston. And while I wouldn’t change anything about the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe, there’s an alternate reality out there where Candy lived long enough to play Saul Goodman, and I bet that’s really interesting. At any rate, this scene shows hints of that dramatic master that, sadly, will never be. There are several must-see movies every Christmas and Halloween for me, but out of all the Thanksgiving movies that exist, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is the only one I go out of my way to watch every year. 

“Seriously, shower curtain rings?”

The first runner up would probably be Fun in Balloon Land, a horrific fever dream of a film where a child wanders through a fairy land made up of hideous balloon people at the behest of a creepy narrator, intercut with scenes of the world’s most boring Thanksgiving parade. This film is truly an abomination, but the good people of RiffTrax have put out a commentary track that is a favorite of mine.

But that’s it? Only two really memorable movies? One and a half, really – Balloon Land isn’t even an hour long. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. I feel like it deserves more. 

(This is the point where someone in the comments will point out Eli Roth’s new holiday slasher flick Thanksgiving, now playing. But I haven’t seen it yet, and even if I had, I feel like a minimum of five years needs to pass before it’s fair to designate a movie as a potential “classic.” Get back to me in 2028.)

So there aren’t enough Thanksgiving movies, that’s clear. But what about holiday specials? Once again, there are some to choose from, but not as many as the other two third quarter holidays. There’s Bugs Bunny’s Thanksgiving Diet, one of the late 70s/early 80s compilation Looney Tunes specials that wraps a new framing sequence around clips from the classic cartoons. BC’s The First Thanksgiving is…weird, although thematically it at least makes a little more sense than the Christmas special. Alvin and the Chipmunks: A Chipmunk Celebration? This is baffling, as it is CLEARLY a Thanksgiving special, but they NEVER EVEN SAY THE WORD “THANKSGIVING.” They dance around it, referring to the “holiday,” which is utterly bizarre to me. Thanksgiving doesn’t even have the religious connotations that make some modern specials afraid to mention Christmas, and what’s more, this came out in 1994. Does David Seville just despise the concept of “thanks”?

“Let’s get ready for Simon’s hate crime!”

Nah, just like Christmas and Halloween, the top two specials belong to our friends from the newspaper pages: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Garfield’s Thanksgiving. The former features the legendary sequence in which Charlie Brown serves a highly-ungrateful Peppermint Patty a Thanksgiving dinner of popcorn, toast, pretzels, and jellybeans. It’s a classic bit, and it really makes me wonder why Kellogg’s, who released a Great Pumpkin-themed cereal for Halloween this year, didn’t follow suit with a cereal that looks like popcorn and jellybeans.

Put that in a bowl.

As for Garfield, this special is second only to his legendary Halloween adventure, showing Jon finally get a date with Liz the Vet, who bizarrely agrees to a first date of having Thanksgiving dinner with him. Jon being Jon, though, he totally fouls up the dinner, and winds up having to call Grandma Arbuckle to save the day. The special is great, with some of the surreal humor that made Garfield back in the day so much fun. Plus, you know how sometimes they manage to make cartoon food look so good that you crave it in real life? If I could bring one cartoon character into the real world, I’d have Grandma Arbuckle show up to make dinner. 

I’m getting hungry just looking at this.

If there’s one area where Thanksgiving does have a little bit of traction in pop culture, it’s in the world of the television comedy. For decades, the sitcom has used Thanksgiving as a backdrop for some classic episodes, and there are few reasons for this. First of all, with the traditional television season running from September to May, shows (especially live-action ones) would usually keep the series more or less in real time. In other words, an episode that first aired in September was usually set during September, a show that aired in February was usually set in February, and so forth. That made it easy – and even logical – to use holidays to mark the passage of time. In this streaming era, though, that concept may be endangered – when Netflix drops an entire season of a comedy in mid-July, it makes little sense to have a holiday episode. (This was even lampshaded in the first season of their Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot, where they had a Christmas episode, but the characters quipped that people binging the series wouldn’t be watching it anywhere near Christmas.) 

The other reason is that a large number of sitcoms, historically speaking, have been about some type of family: either a traditional nuclear family, a nontraditional family, or about the “found family” that we sometimes create with a group of friends or closely-knit co-workers. As Thanksgiving is arguably the holiday most associated with family as a concept, it only makes sense to tell stories about those families at Thanksgiving. 

Although many sitcoms have had Thanksgiving episodes, there are two that elevated it to an artform: Friends and Bob’s Burgers. The gang at Central Perk made up what is possibly the most recognizable example of the “found family” sitcom in history, and although every one of the main six characters had at least one other biological family member they could have spent the day with, after the first season (where their respective plans all fell apart and they instead spent the holiday together), they rarely made a comment about spending Thanksgiving with anybody but each other. This resulted in some legendary episodes, including “The One With the Football” (in which a touch football game goes wildly out of hand), and “The One With All the Thanksgivings,” (where they reminisce about Thanksgivings past and, quite memorably, Chandler first tells Monica that he loves her while she has a turkey on her head). 

True love.

Bob’s Burgers, meanwhile, is a show about a family that owns a burger joint, with the titular Bob being a chef with dreams of grandeur, and who sees cooking Thanksgiving dinner as a point of personal pride and a constant challenge to outdo himself. Being an animated series, the shows often get far wilder than you would often see in live action, such as the Thanksgiving where a stampede of turkeys trapped the kids in an amusement park ride, the one where Bob has to drag his wife’s injured sister to Thanksgiving dinner in a blizzard, or the time a school Thanksgiving pageant turns into a horrific and hilarious gorefest. At the core, though, this is a show about a family that sincerely and deeply loves each other, and the Thanksgiving episodes are often some of the finest reflections of that. 

Also true love.

Both of these shows would make for fine Thanksgiving marathons. If only Max and Hulu (the streaming services that have them) would wise up and include a button that allows you to watch all the Thanksgiving episodes in order. We know the technology exists, people. Warner Bros., Disney? Are you listening? I’m putting you on notice: I want a “Play Thanksgiving” button come November 2024.

And of course, no discussion of Thanksgiving episodes would be complete without what is perhaps the most legendary one of them all: WKRP in Cincinnati’s “Turkeys Away.” In this episode, the manager of the titular radio station decides to stage a Thanksgiving publicity stunt by escalating a turkey giveaway to preposterous levels. This is the first episode anybody thinks of when they think of WKRP, and even people who’ve never watched the series may still be familiar with the episode’s final line, a killer punchline that has resonated in the annals of sitcom history, but which I will not spoil here for anybody who hasn’t watched the episode. It’s a classic piece of television, but it also has one perplexing footnote. The original air date for this piece of Thanksgiving history? October 30, 1978 – the day before Halloween.

“This is the best we could have hoped for.”

Still, even with these examples I have provided, it should be clear that Thanksgiving has gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to classic pieces of entertainment. I can binge Halloween specials and horror movies all October long. And once Santa comes down Main Street in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, there are more than enough Christmas movies, specials, and TV shows to keep me pleasantly stuffed until Twelfth Night in January. But even with a relatively short 22 days between Halloween and Thanksgiving, like we have this year, there just isn’t enough content to fill it all up. So to all the people out there who make movies and TV shows, I implore you: give Thanksgiving a chance. With such relatively little competition, it really wouldn’t be that hard to make the next definitive piece of Thanksgiving culture. 

I’m putting you on the same timeline as the Hulu and Max people. You got one year, folks, or I may just have to do it myself.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He realizes that he neglected to mention one specific Lifetime Thanksgiving movie, the 2015 film Jim Henson’s Turkey Hollow, produced by the Jim Henson Company and based on an idea from the legendary Jim Henson before his untimely death. It was a’ight. 

Santa’s Odyssey: Thanksgiving

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On Christmas morning, as Santa Claus and two of his helpers returned to the North Pole, they came under attack by a group of holiday Icons angry that Claus was monopolizing the holiday glory. This year, stranded in the human world with no way home, Santa will be forced to take on the tasks for every other holiday — the Icons are on strike.

Previous Installments:

Eleven: Thanksgiving

Across the rest of the Pole, spirits were subdued in mid-November. Across the rest of the Pole excitement was low, the air was vacant of song, and holiday cheer — which in normal times would have been bubbling over into an explosive pitch — was virtually absent. Across the rest of the Pole, that is. In Mrs. Claus’s house, it was a brilliant, colorful, energetic time. Elves were wrapping gift and secreting them in their own homes. In the kitchen, cookies and cakes were being turned out in record time, pots of hot cocoa bubbling on the stove, all of it to keep the workers happy and motivated. And through it all, Mrs. Claus and Penny wandered around, supervising the proceedings, and taking careful note of where each bundle of toys were hidden, along with their contents. Mrs. Claus carried a red binder where she secreted all of their hiding places, which elves had what, and where each toy was destined to be delivered.

“The ledger is the most important thing here, Penny,” Mrs. Claus told her when she asked why they were documenting things so closely. Some day — and some day soon, I promise — Santa is going to be back, and he’s going to need these toys to make his rounds. It won’t do us any good if we don’t know exactly what is hidden where so he can make his deliveries.”

Penny nodded and followed along. It was her role, and she was good at it, but Mrs. Claus had been impressed by the strength and loyalty in the little mail elf. She had taken the lead on the job of organizing the hidden toys, was coordinating the production lines so the elves in the factories all knew exactly how much they needed of each toy, and even diverted things in the mail room to try to prevent Edgar from figuring out exactly what they were doing.

Two days before Thanksgiving in America, things were perfectly on schedule. The elves had made — and hidden — almost enough toys to cover the entire order. If anything, they were more productive when working to get out from under Edgar’s yoke. The pockets of hidden toys across the Pole would be easily gathered and brought together in the days before Christmas Eve, and by the time the children woke up on the morning of the 25th, all would be well.

This, of course, was the plan.

On Chanticleer’s birthday, as everybody finished up a little celebration with a break from work, Mrs. Claus looked around with pride. “You know,” she said, “Maybe it’s time to put out the Christmas decorations outside.”

“Really? Before Thanksgiving?”

“Oh, I know it’s a few days early, but considering the circumstances, I think we could all use a little decoration break. What do you say, elves? Who wants to Kringle up the place?”

There were cheers from throughout the home, and they rushed to the attic to get the boxes of decorations. There were dozens of them, of course, but Santa’s elves were the most efficient workers on the planet. Within minutes they were outside stringing up lights, driving candy cane markers into the ground on either side of her walkway, and setting up the blow mold nativity scene in the front yard.

“Um… what about this, Mrs. C?” asked a young elf named Luke. He opened a box and pulled out a wad of fabric she recognized as her inflatable Santa Claus. It looked just like her husband — red cheeks, jolly smile, and a big belly. It was her favorite decoration. He hated it.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Front and center. It gets a place of honor this year.”

Luke plugged “Santa” in, staked him at the bottom, and the assembled elves and Mrs. Claus watched as he slowly floated up to stand, smiling, proud. It was almost as if the real Santa was back, watching over them, promising that somehow everything was going to be all right.

Until his eye was gone.

There was a snapping sound, like something being fired from a bow, and the fabric in Santa’s face suddenly had a gaping hole. The inflatable fell down faster than it went up, and soon it lay on the ground, inert. In the wall of Mrs. Claus’s house, a wooden shaft quivered, with a chunk of fabric pinned to the house.

“Oh, so sorry about that. I should have warned you.”

Edgar stood beyond the fence that separated Mrs. Claus’s yard from the busy North Pole street. He had a few elves with him — a few that she recognized as being unflinchingly loyal to their new leader for some reason or another. But beyond the elves, there were wooden soldiers, full-sized, armed with…

“No,” she said, her eyes burning.

They weren’t wooden soldiers. They were painted to look like them, with the classic red coats and white X-straps across the chest, but after a few seconds’ examination, she saw that the bodies of the artificial stormtroopers weren’t wooden at all, didn’t even conform with the normal shape of the old-fashioned toy. They were larger, scaled-up versions of the Edgarbots. And one of them lowered an arm which was still reverberating with a “twanging” sound.

“How dare you?” she snapped. “What is the meaning of this?”

“As I said, I should have warned you,” he said. “This is my new security team. The Edgarbot 2.0! I’m really quite proud of how well the basic design works in a full-sized model. And the computer brain is remarkably good at marksmanship, problem-solving–”

“We’ve never had armed security at the North Pole! We’ve never needed it!”

He shook his head. “Oh I know, I know. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Once upon a time, there was simply no need for this sort of thing. But it’s a changing world Mrs. Claus, and the time has come to take some new precautions. To guard against the sort of things that we didn’t have to worry about in the past. It’s a shame, it truly is, but we have to be adults about this.”

“And what about this?” she pointed at the empty shell that resembled her husband, and he shook his head again.

“We have reason to believe that there are certain unsavory elements that want to disrupt things for us this Christmas season. We also believe that they’ll make their move — whatever move it is — while wearing Mr. Claus’s accoutrements. Therefore, I’ve been forced to decree that any and all imagery of Santa Claus, unfortunately, must be banned from the North Pole until further notice.”

“Have… you… gone… mad?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, Mrs. Claus. You and everybody else here. The Edgarbots are programmed to make sure no Clausian iconography is allowed to infiltrate the Pole.”

“And what happens when the real Santa comes back, Edgar? What happens then?”

“Oh, Mrs. Claus… I know you cling to hope, but we have to be realistic here. You and I both know that isn’t going to be an issue.”

The Edgarbots turned and marched down the street, Edgar and his goons behind them. He only made it a few steps, though, before turning and looking back.

“By the way, I’ve been told about some materials going missing from our factories. It seems as though significant quantities of our building materials have been used, but aren’t accounted for by new toys in our storehouse. It would certainly be a shame if anybody was stealing from your husband’s factory, don’t you think? We may have to do an investigation. Soon.”

He wandered off, and the elves on Mrs. Claus’s lawn exhaled. Kimmie, one of the Elves from the sports equipment department, grabbed Mrs. Claus’s hand. “We can’t let him get away with this,” she said.

“What do we do?” Luke asked. “We don’t have any weapons.”

“Unless a Laser Tag gun is going to help,” Piper from electronics said.

“He’s got us over a barrel of nog,” Luke moaned. “What are we going to do?”

“We fight back,” Mrs. Claus said. “I don’t know how, but we will fight back.”

November 22, 11:45 a.m.

The North Pole In Exile sat around Gary’s apartment on Thanksgiving morning, watching the Macy’s Parade on television. Gary was making a turkey, while Eleanor helped by whipping up mashed potatoes and corn. Blinky made his special pumpkin pie (Santa had never quite figured out how the elf had gotten so good at baking, but he really was a master). Santa, on the other hand, hadn’t done much of anything. It was out of character for him, to be certain. He usually was the first one to pitch in, building things, helping around the kitchen. And over the past few weeks, as they approached the Holidays, Gary had noticed Santa’s spirits rising considerably. He was happier than he had been since Gary had first met him on New Year’s Eve. In fact, for the first time he was acting more like the Santa Claus he expected from years of movies and cartoons and legends. He was happy, he was jolly, and he seemed more certain than ever that his time with Gary was coming to a close. In fact, that’s all he said all week. “Thank you, Gary. You’ve been wonderful. I won’t forget you when I go back to the North Pole. Which will be soon.” Blinky and Eleanor were both as confused as Gary was, but Eleanor smiled wider every time Santa did.

“If the boss says he’s got a plan, he’s got a plan,” she said.

On the television, balloons and bands marched down the streets of New York City, as they did every year. Gary peeked in, watching as they went. “You know, my mother took me to see the parade in person a couple of times when I was little,” he said. “It was the best. I saw Garfield and Spider-Man and I listened to the band… did you know I joined the band in high school because of the parade? I played the sousaphone. It was amazing.”

“Did you now, Gary? That’s wonderful. Were you any good?”

“Eh, I was high school good. I couldn’t go pro or anything.”

“That’s a shame. I hear professional sousaphone players get all the girls.”

The two of them laughed together, Santa’s eye twinkling, but never leaving the television.

“What was your favorite part of the parade, Gary?”

“The end, of course. The part where Santa Claus came down the street in his sleigh. It’s like that’s the moment where Christmas really begins.”

“Oh yes, indeed. I know what you mean. That’s my favorite part too.”

“Always about you, right?” A burst of feathers flew into the air, swirling, finally coalescing into the form of a fat little turkey. It was bigger than any turkey Gary had ever seen — three or four feet tall, even, and with every syllable that came out of its beak, its wattles shook like they were caught in the wind.

“Tom!” Santa said. “I was wondering when you would get here! What took you so long?”

“It’s my day, Kringle! My time of power, but even today, you have to make everyone’s favorite part of it about you!”

“You know, Tom, I never tried to take anything from you. You’re supposed to be the symbol of a day for thanks. I’m the symbol of a season for giving. We should go together. Why don’t you see that?”

“Because it’s my day! Everybody just rushes through dinner and watches football or starts in with their Christmas shopping now! It’s like I don’t even exist! But I’m going to show you Santa Claus. I’m going to teach you the meaning of Thanksgiving.”

Santa laughed, a deep, guttural sound that was different than than the laughs Gary had grown accustomed to. It wasn’t “Ha, ha, ha.” It was a sound that could only be described as “Ho, ho, ho.”

“Tom, you silly bird. Everybody knows that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. It’s there in the name. And can I tell you what I’m thankful for?”

The turkey blanched, confused. “What?”

On the TV, the announcer suddenly grew animated, exuberant even, and there was an uproar from the crowd. “Here he is, folks, the star of the season! Making his annual appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the man himself, Santa–”

Before the name was finished, Santa’s eyes flashed — not twinkled, flashed — with a blinding light unlike anything Gary had seen before. Tom’s face looked like he’d just been escorted to a deep fat fryer, and with a gobble and a gulp, he vanished.

“Santa? What’s happening?” Gary asked.

“Right now, my friend, million of people all over the world are watching this parade. Millions of children are watching this. Believing in this. Believing in me.”

“What do you mean?”

“It may only be Thanksgiving, son, but my time of power begins now.”

To demonstrate, he snapped the fingers on each hand. From the right hand, a dazzling spray of sparks shot up and into the ceiling, the sprinkler system in the apartment glowed, even shivered for a moment, and then a light snowfall appeared inside the house. From the left hand, a burst of red light exploded, cascaded around Santa Claus, and outfitted him in a very familiar crimson and white uniform.

“You’ve been wonderful to us, Gary. I’ll never forget your kindness to an old man and his bizarre friends, but it’s long past time for me to put things right.”

“You’re leaving, Santa?”

“You’re the best, Gar,” Blinky said, giving the human a hug. Eleanor hugged him too, lingering a moment.

“I’ll miss you, Gary. Thanks for being our friend.”

Gary smiled, and a tear rolled from his eye. “I mean… you’re a friend to everybody. How could I not?”

Santa came up last, hugging him. “We’ll see you again, Gary. Expect a special visit on Christmas Eve.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

Santa raised his hands, glowing scarlet with power that had been absent for almost a year, and the light flooded the room. When it faded, Santa and the elves were gone. Gary slumped into a chair looked around at the empty apartment. And then he went to pack up the turkey and sides so he could go out and find someone to eat with him. It was Thanksgiving, after all, and he had much to be thankful for. It would be a shame to spend it alone.

* * *

The cold wind whipped on Blinky and Eleanor’s faces, almost as if they were back on the sleigh. Instead, though, they were flying through the air, zooming northward, New York vanishing from the skyline in their wake. They went across wooded areas, past a light sprinkle of snow, and finally they were flying over a massive sheet of ice. Eleanor was giddy, Blinky couldn’t contain himself. They were finally on their way home.

Until a long pumpkin vine whipped into the air and snared Santa by the boot.

Once again they fell, screaming, and crashed into the snow below them. Santa held tight onto both of their hands, and neither of them felt real pain in the crash, but the rage in Santa’s face was palpable. Picking himself up, he grabbed the vine and yanked on it. From one of the sparse thickets that appeared across the landscape, the Pumpkinhead stumbled out, dragged along.

“Again?” Santa shouted. “You want to ambush me again? NOW?”

Jack raised his twiggy fingers in a sign of submission. “Santa, please, it’s not what you think.”

“Yeah, Kringle!” The Easter Bunny hopped into view, joining him. Mother and Father were there, Sam, Patty… all of the icons. Even Tom stumbled up from the rear, looking very sheepish. “Calm down! We’re not here to trap you or nothin’.”

“Then what’s the meaning of this? This time?”

They looked around, nerves on their faces. Finally, Cupid rolled his eyes in disgust and fluttered to the front of the pack. “Jeez, you bunch of pansies. Fine. I’ll tell ‘em.”

“Tell me what?”

“Santa, we made a big mistake.”

“No kidding!” Blinky said. “You should have thought of that before all this nonsense started!”

“Blinky, let him talk,” Santa said. “What mistake? What’s happening?”

The Bunny drew an egg-shape in the snow with his toes. “Look, Santa, everybody wanted you to be a little more humble, but nobody ever wanted to ruin Christmas. I mean, we all have the same job, we’re all here to shepherd the humans on their important days… it’s just that we, well, some of us got tired of yours–”

“Would you just spit it out?” Santa shouted.

The Clown stepped forward. “Santa, I was at the Pole a few days ago…”

“Yes, Chanticleer’s birthday. So what?”

“Well… how well do you know your assistant? Edgar?”

Santa and the elves listened in shock as Bonbon explained everything that had been happening at the Pole over the months they had been absent. Blinky’s rage grew, Eleanor’s face was terrified. Santa, however, seemed almost preternaturally calm. Once Bonbon finished explaining about the Edgarbots and how they were targeting Santa Clauses, the genuine article was nodding his head.

“Santa, we never meant for any of this to happen,” Mother said.

“It’s my fault,” Father snapped. “I should have known what good intentions do.”

“Pointing fingers is useless,” Santa said. “I need to get back to the Pole. I need to get past those blasted Edgarbots. I need to stop all of this before Christmas Eve. If Edgar tries to fly my sleigh, there’s no telling what kind of damage he’ll do.”

“Is he that bad at it?” The Year asked. He was no longer a baby, of course, but neither was he the ancient, grizzled figure Santa had met on New Year’s Eve. He looked like someone’s grandfather — strong, smart, but beginning to grow weary.

“It’s not about being bad,” Santa said. “It’s about what will happen when the children see him.”

“I thought children weren’t supposed to see you,” Worth said.

“A few do every year, and that’s by design. It’s how the legend keeps alive. But what happens when children go back to school in January and tell their friends that, instead of Santa Claus, they saw some elf whose face was on that awful robot toy everybody got for Christmas that year? He could do more damage than he ever imagined.”

“What do we do, Nick?” Uncle Sam asked. “We’ll do anything. We’re all terribly sorry.”

“No time for sorry,” Santa said. “We have work to do.”