Art For Art’s Sake #32: Christmas Edition

It’s Christmas – and that means a time where you probably have better things to do. But here’s some fab art anyway…
But before you go looking for that last bit of Turkey… please take a little time to think of those less fortunate than yourselves this Christmas. If you get chance, donate to a food bank, or a pet shelter, or give something to Crisis or Shelter.
Now… time for that gorgeous artwork…
Kevin O’Neill – Dodgem Logic gets festive…

From the old Vertigo Winter’s Edge series, this from Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson…

 
Jeff Jones does a stunning Death from Winter’s Edge #2…

Dave Gibbons does John Constantine dispatching a demonic St Nick – this time from Vertigo Winter’s Edge #3…

Simon Bisley shows us what would happen when the Bastich takes on Santa…

Nick Cardy – The Witching Hour # 28 – 1973

Cliff Robinson with a festive Dredd…

More Dredd from a master… Mike MacMahon…

And this classic from 1985, Alan Davis doing DR & Quinch…

Ty Templeton is a fantatic artist and a funny, funny guy… and over at his fabulous blog, he used to do some wonderfully funny things… and some wonderfully funny Christmas stuff… this from 2017…

But he’s also delivered some incredibly funny stuff over the years for DC Comics… like this from the 90s… Satan’s Little Helper…

And this all-time classic… Present Tense… It’s Santa Versus Darkseid.


Or Doom Versus Santa…

Ambush Bug Christmas Stocking Stuffer #1 – an old fave from Christmas 1984, fabulously festive funnies and as wonderfully weird and wacky as usual. All thanks to creator Keith Giffen, writer Robert Loren Fleming, and inker Bob Oskner.


We shall end on two of my all-time favourite artists… first up, the genius that is Raymond Briggs… the master behind works such as Fungus The Bogeyman and possibly my all-time favourite graphic novel, Ethel & Ernest, a beautiful, sentimental, magnificent thing. But when it comes to Christmas, there’s a classic in the form of The Snowman… but for me, Briggs’ Christmas classic is Father Christmas, a wonderful thing that mixes the sweet and the sour so beautifully, with a tale of a Father Christmas who’s a far cry from the cuddly Santa of the Coke ads and movies… Bloomin’ Christmas…




And next up, Ronald Searle.  He might be most well-known as the creator of those magnificent St. Trinians‘ Girls, or the artist of Molesworth, but Searle was about much more than that, including plenty of Christmas illustrations over the years. There are many sites online devoted to Searle, but the one I keep coming back to is Perpetua, the Ronald Searle Tribute Site, run by Matt Jones.