animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

Mr. C has decided to grace us with 30 festive frames per second of animated (and puppetized) Christmas cheer.

One of the prime franchises in Christmas specialdom is the animation outfit heralded by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass. Produced in Japan, these animations have lasted through year after year, airing in broadcast, then licensed to cable networks, and are now on DVD and appearing online.

This will be a quick-and-dirty naive analysis of the political leanings of many of Rankin-Bass Christmas specials from the 1960s through the 1980s.

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Mr. C has decided to grace us with 30 festive frames per second of animated (and puppetized) Christmas cheer.

Who doesn’t want video games for Christmas?

Who doesn’t want video games in their Christmas specials?

You see, sometimes a princess needs saving. Sometimes it’s poor children. And sometimes it’s Santa Claus.

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We’ve all been quite busy lately. Mr. Murray is working studiously in sunny Pennsylvania; Mr. Dorison recently got married and has his own (NSFW) comic; Mr. M resides far away from us in the precipituousness of Seattle, with a comic of his own; Ms. Babcock and I are both wrestling with the demons of not-too-far-off Ph.D.dom (and she her comic as well); Ms. Schnelbach is furious on her own work, novel, and future plans; and Mr. Gniewek is telling tall tales in other locales at the moment, as well as gearing up for a big move of his own.

Regardless, I feel the need to poke my head around here once more, albeit in a different capacity. Inspired by the illustrious Raina Telgemeier, of Smile, X-Men: Misfits, Comics Bakery, and All-Around Awesome Person, I’ve decided to revive the stagnant SAC Blog to prime myself for the joys of the fantabulous funitude of the “holiday” season. The Telgemeister¹ mentioned on some-or-another social networking site that she is the proud owner of many, many animated Christmas specials. As I do not believe I’ll be viewing many specials this year (due mainly to a drastic uptick in the ratio of work needed to finish my dissertation vs. time left to do so) I feel the need to at least talk about them.²

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