HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2026!
We open with Donald Duck ushering in the new year with that
little-known Duckburgian tradition (…Golly, Duckburg sure has a lot of little-known
traditions, doesn’t it?) of smashing open the Official Glass New Year’s
Pineapple! It’s kinda like the Times
Square Ball Drop, only more breakable and with a shorter distance to travel
before it’s done!
And, while you’re at it, please join *me* in another year of Blogging – sporadic as it (…and everything else I do) will be until our move is completed and our lives return to what passes for “normal”!
We'll get to the joyous backlog of comments very soon. Please keep ‘em coming, as it remains my favorite part of what we do here!
Finally, I’ve all but abandoned any thoughts of shuttering this humble Blog, sporadic as it may continue to be. Thanks for the support you’ve all given me to arrive at that decision!
Happy Eighth Day of Christmas! Eight maids a-milking...we can watch Remember the Night (with New Year's as well as Christmas scenes) and see Fred MacMurray milk a cow! And Happy New Year to you and Esther, too! May it be a decent year for both of you once the chaos of the move is over. And yes, let's welcome in 2026 with a Fantagraphics Disney cover! I know that one of the few good things I can count on in 2026 (outside of my own circles of friendship, family and church) is a new Disney comic every fortnight or so...translated/dialogued and edited by the good guys, who know their stuff and do it up right. Long may the Fantagraphics Disney comics run continue!
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I'm glad you're willing to continue with the blog, despite the huge annoyance of all the spammy crap you have to wade through to get to our genuine and spiffy comments. We appreciate what you put up with to create this civil online space devoted to your favorite things.
Elaine:
ReplyDeleteYou write: “Happy Eighth Day of Christmas! Eight maids a-milking...we can watch Remember the Night (with New Year's as well as Christmas scenes) and see Fred MacMurray milk a cow! ”
I haven’t seen Fred MacMurray milk a cow yet, but I *can* watch THE SIMPSONS and hear Bart say “Don’t HAVE a cow, man!” …Oh, no… wait… I can’t because my SIMPSONS DVDs are all packed. …D’OH! ...Stupid streaming... Mmmm, doughnuts!
The ongoing ordeal of packing played complete havoc with my traditional Christmas viewings… No LOST IN SPACE “The Toymaker”, no FLINTSTONES “Christmas Flintstone” (the good, original one from 1964), no BEWITCHED “A Vision of Sugar Plums” (also 1964, same week, same network), and JUSTICE LEAGUE ANIMATED “Comfort and Joy”!
All was not lost however, with about 10 minutes left in Christmas Eve, I recalled that my new “TOM AND JERRY: The Golden Era Anthology (1940-1958)" set (Thanks, Thad!!!) was still in the long process of being watched a little at a time. And so, up the stairs I bounded (…yes, with only ten minutes remaining, I really bounded) and popped-in the T&J Christmas classic “The Night Before Christmas” (1941)!
Longer than the av-ver-rage theatrical animated short (Thanks, Yogi!!!) at over EIGHT MINUTES (!), time was of the essence to fit it within the ten-minute window… but I made it!
One quick additional note: Tom and Jerry’s “The Night Before Christmas” has one of my THREE FAVORITE ENDINGS in all of animation!!! Watch it, and you’ll see why! For the record, in order (and reflective of my tastes in animation) those “favorite endings” are 1: Warner Bros., 2: MGM “The Night Before Christmas”, and 3: Hanna-Barbera (not “The Night Before Christmas”)! …If you’re not naughty, but nice, I may be persuaded to tell you what the other two are!
But, seven days later, there occurred a minor New Years Miracle! (Christmas doesn’t have a monopoly on miracles, ya know!) MeTV Plus just happened to run LOST IN SPACE “The Toymaker”, causing that particular Christmas tradition be only delayed by a week! How ‘bout that!
And, yes… the new Fantagraphics Disney comics should be a part of everyone’s New Year’s celebration! 1: Because we waited so long for them to finally appear. 2: Quite frankly, because the world (our country, in particular) has become so shitty (…hey, when I get frank… I get FRANK!) that we need all the cheering up we can get! So, “what Elaine said” only doubled and tripled – one thankful wish for each of the three titles so far!
Finally, it’s the thoughts of Elaine (above), and ALL the rest of you to whom I still owe comment replies (and general communications), that have swayed me to keep on Bloggin’! I’ll try to make it good, if you will! Deal?
HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2026!
Oh, glad you got to watch one of your normal four Christmas standards during the Twelve Days, after all! I myself watched "Christmas Flintstone" in your honor (and read the accompanying comic). And yay for Thad, providing the wherewithal for you to see Tom & Jerry's Night Before Christmas in the very last minutes of Christmas Eve. And yay for you, for remembering that in the Nick of time! I watched that, too, among my personal top three Christmas shorts: the other two are Pluto's Christmas Tree and the 1936 Fleischer "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," where I really like the contraptions Grampy makes for the orphans to play with.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy (belated) Boxing Day ... or should I say Boxing *Days* to you and yours, Joe!
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, that Duckburg tradition would be a good tradition for Charleston, SC, to adopt! (If you don't know why, just look up Charleston on Duckipedia!)
May this new year 2026 be a good time for us all - full of peace, love and hope. And good comics, too! :)
ReplyDeleteElaine:
ReplyDeleteYou write: “Oh, glad you got to watch one of your normal four Christmas standards during the Twelve Days, after all!”
Well, one-and-done is better than none-and-done!
Have you, or anyone else reading this, ever seen LOST IN SPACE “The Toymaker”? One wonderful thing about it is its unusually intricate set design! Despite being the first season in color, the overall set designs created for the second season were rather uninspired, when compared with the first and third seasons. …But “The Toymaker” was a delightful exception! …To digress, “West of Mars” was another (though decidedly bizarre) exception, with a puzzling episode title to boot, but that’s a completely different story!
Irwin Allen’s people just went wild (…okay “wild” for LOST IN SPACE, that is) in their creation of the other-dimensional toy shop! Toy props of every sort and size, Christmas lights all over the place, working mechanics, outsized gears that continually turned but powered nothing, cluttered workshop, and even a boarded-up door that looked down upon a Christmas celebration on Earth!
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen this over the decades but, certainly since the era of home-recorded VHS tapes – much less DVD, Blu-ray, and HD TV runs on MeTV – it’s as if I NOTICE SOMETHING NEW in the background every time I watch it! Yes, really! Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone watch it fifty times in succession just to experience my thrill of new-discovery-after-new-discovery, but it’s a great credit to the episode, and everyone who worked on it, that such things CAN be discovered over many repeated viewings!
And, yes, I’ll second that “Yay for Thad” for allowing Tom and Jerry to pull out a last minute “save, of sorts” that avoided a complete Christmas viewing fail!
Sergio:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good wishes! This year it felt more like BOXED-IN Day… or maybe BOXING-UP Day… or TOO MANY BOXES ALL OVER THE PLACE Day! (Groan!) Too pressed to “do the Charleston” right now… somebody look it up and tell us all about it!
T.:
ReplyDeleteYou write: “May this new year 2026 be a good time for us all - full of peace, love and hope. And good comics, too! :)”
Thank you for the good wishes, as well!
Just turned on the TV and it doesn’t look like there’s much “peace, love and hope” out there right now… BUT at least there WILL be “good comics”, you can bank on that!
As proof of this, Fantagraphics MICKEY MOUSE #2 / 332 will be out on January 14, 2026! We’ll be discussing that for sure! …As soon as I get through with the backlog of comments and replies that I owe everyone! (Groan, again!)
Yes, on your recommendation I did indeed watch "The Toymaker" a couple of years back...and that set is definitely a multitude of riches. Reminds me of WALL-E's little home with all the fun junk he has accumulated over the years.
ReplyDeleteBut you did not remark on my pun! That was my little Christmas gift to you: I said you remembered that you could watch "The Night Before Christmas" in the Nick of time!! :-)
Sorry, about the (GREAT, by the way!) pun, Elaine!
ReplyDeleteI’ve always been good at sniffing them out when subtle, but my current state has even dulled my ordinarily blade-sharp PUN-dar!
You might even say that my less-focused state-of-late has PLUN-dar-ed my PUN-dar – leaving me to commit a regrettable BLUN-dar!
…Then again, you might not!