Apologies to J Otto for aping his style. Actually, it was fun to do something totally different. I did an homage to Olive last year in the snow globe, and was waiting for an excuse to try the cutout style again. Turned out pretty close to the real deal.

Olive the Other Reindeer was great. One of the few specials in the last decade worth seeing more than once. The animated version was created by Simpsons and Futurama alums, so while there’s no drunken robots or Kwik-E-Mart shopkeepers, you do get a kleptomaniac penguin and an irate postal worker. Think you can still catch this on Cartoon Network every now and then, so if you’re a fan of Groening, it’s worth hunting down.

See, everyone forgets the Christmas part of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s an equally Halloweeny, Christmassy film. But do they ever show this between Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life? Nooooo.

Actually, I’ve only recently seen the film. It’s good! So the legend goes, Tim Burton was inspired by the sight of a department store, midway between taking Halloween decorations down and putting Christmas decorations up. See, there’s a good side to commercialism to the holiday.

Remember when I said the Rankin-Bass specials went off the deep end in their later years? This is what I’m talking about.

It’s a crime that the original Rudolph only comes on TV only once a year; it’s a felony that the sequel gets all the replay instead. Instead of Santa and the north pole, you get told the tale of Father Time, Baby New Year, a caveman, a knight, Ben Franklin’s doppelganger, a cranky vulture, and the three little bears. Oh yeah, and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Man, what didn’t they throw at this sequel to make it work?

I don’t outright hate Rudolph 2, we just have a bad history.  Can’t tell you how many times our family was conned into taping this instead of the original… when the TV listings just say “Rudolph,” don’t make assumptions.

With apologies to Kenny Loggins. At least, this is what I heard the first time this came through on the Christmas radio station.

Hey, they all don’t have to be TV specials.

Nation! Okay, my Colbert looks more like The Medic from Team Fortress. Caricatures are difficult.

Playing catchup with the sketchblog tonight. Going to get interesting later this week when I hit the road for home… means I should probably not be drawing these the night before.

Kevin started up a thread in our much-neglected forum for sketchblog discussion.  If you have a suggestion for what special you’d like to see next, let me know!

So if they can remake one of the best science fiction movies ever, surely we can get an updated version of this. It’s public domain now, so why not??

This would be Dropo and… I forget the robot’s name. But he’s cool, he’s a 50s style box robot with dryer hose limbs, programmed to crush kill destroy Santa and little children. It’s a holiday classic!

You knew he was on the way.

Fun fact via Wikipedia: Snow Miser and Heat Miser were designed to resemble Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon respectively. Of course, Wikipedia also said Snow Miser was the Prime Minister of Neptune, so take it with a grain of salt. But hey, something new to look for when you re-watch the show!

Snow Miser has icicles growing off of his nose. That’s kind of gross.

There’s this scene in both Frosty cartoons where the snowman runs across a traffic cop, startling the officer so much that he accidentally swallows his whistle. It’s played for laughs, sure, but as a kid I wasn’t really prepared for an asphyxiation joke in my happy snowman cartoons. I was always like, did Frosty just kill that guy??
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