This post is brought to you by Ghoultide Greetings: Horror Stores For Christmas. G. W. offers up everything from Victorian style ghost stories to Cthulhu Mythos Horrors with strange Northerns to boot! It’s seventeen tales wrapped in a frame story, perfect for your holiday season and beyond the New Year.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was both a success and a failure. The story has sold over two hundred million copies since 1843, has become part of our Christmas experience (giving us the term “Scrooge” for a parsimonious person and a butt load of holiday movies), and has never been out of print. What writer could have a problem with that? Dickens originally took a cut in the profits rather than an advance and didn’t make as much initial cash as he would have liked. After that though he certainly couldn’t complain, writing more Christmas books in an attempt to strike gold again. He never really did. None of the later material has the impact of Ebernezer Scrooge and the four ghosts. (Yes, there are four. Don’t forget old Marley.) For more on the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens, go here.
It seems you can’t escape Scrooge and his tale of redemption most Christmases. There is the Alistair Sim (the best of the old versions), George C. Scott, Bill Murray, Fred Flintstone, the Muppets (the best of the new), Patrick Stewart, etc etc. etc. I have come to a point where I don’t want Scrooge. To quote the man himself: “Every idiot who goes about with a ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”
Until I saw it live. My nephew had a small part in a live version in Edmonton so I got free tickets. I went reluctantly, then was wowed. The story was born again as clever stage effects made it feel new: like having the lights go out then suddenly a spot with Jacob Marley staring into Scrooge’s face up close. That got my attention and I enjoyed the entire thing even though I could quote as many lines as re-watching The Lord of the Rings.
So it is possible to like Scrooge all over again. I think one of the ways to do this is to focus on the scenes that aren’t usually the most important. Like Scrooge’s back story with his lost love or the spirits in the street outside his house after Marley’s visit. Or the gruesome touches that are sometimes left out of new versions like the cloth that hold Marley’s jaw closed, the hideous children clutching Christmas Presents’ legs, and the sheer Gothic nastiness of the final graveyard scene where Christmas Future says nothing but says everything.
You’ll find some of that here. The comic versions range from lengthy and full adaptations to some very short ones. Boys’ Life, for instance, did the whole book in two pages! Compressing the tale to fit into ten to twenty pages will trim some of the duller bits but you can count on Jacob Marley making an appearance with his chain of sorrow, Ghosts of Past, Present and especially silent old Future, and the big change at the end that is so cathartic.
Golden Age
“A Christmas Carol” (Santa Claus Funnies #1, December 1942) was adapted by any unknown author. This first of all adaptations has a title bar over each page. I think this is because most comics before this were reprints of comic strips which established this look. Read the whole thing here.
A Sears Roebook Freebie from 1944. Very obscure giveaway.
“A Christmas Carol — The Great Story Told In Pictures” (The Children’s Newspaper, 1946) One of several newspaper versions. Thanks to Steve at Bear Alley.
“A Christmas Carol” (Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact #15, December 24, 1946) was adapted by an unknown author. Matthew O’Brien’s art work is wonderfully understated. The gloomy Victorian setting can be overwhelming at times. (See Marvel’s 1978 version.) Read the whole thing here.
Gilberton’s Classic’s Illustrated #53, November 1948. This adaptation was done by George Lipscomb. The version most of us grew-up with, reprinted again and again. Harry Kiefer did several novel adaptations including King Solomon’s Mines, several other Dickens and Silas Marner. Read it here.
“Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol” (Comic strip, 1950) Walt Scott was famous for his Sunday cartoon “Little People”. Dell gave him his own Christmas comic later.
Silver Age
“A Christmas Carol” (Boys’ Life, December 1952) was adapted by an unknown author. Creig Flessel had a long career at DC before branching out into other kinds of illustrating work.
“A Christmas Carol” (A Christmas Treasury #1, 1954) was adapted by unknown author. Another obscure one with art by Mike Sekowsky. (I’ll keep looking for something from this version.)
“A Christmas Carol” (Thriller Comics Library #109, December 1955) was adapted by an unknown author. My favorite comic version because the black & white has a nice Victorian feel to it. That and it reminds me of the black & white film version.
“A Christmas Carol” (Humbug #6, January 1958) was written by an unknown author (Arnold Roth, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder or Al Jaffee or all of them.). Read the whole thing at Atomic Kommie Comics.
“Marley’s Ghost” was an unfinished Harvey Kurtzman piece that might date to around the same time. It finally appeared in The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, 2009.
“The Return of the Christmas Carol” (Esquire Magazine, December 1961) was written and drawn by Harvey Kurtzman. A bit of a coup: selling a comic strip to a Slick.
“A Christmas Carol” (Holiday Surprise, March 1967) was adapted by Joe Gill. Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico worked together a lot, usually on superhero stuff. There is little to recommend them here.
Bronze Age
“The World’s Most Famous Phantom” (Ghosts #46, March-April 1976) was written by Carl Wessler. This one isn’t an adaptation but a story about the story, what inspired Dickens to write that book. An encounter with a ghost, of course.
King Classics #9 (1977) was adapted by Manuel Yáñez and translated by Marion Kimberly. Porto’s work is made up of small boxes but it does allow him to adapt more of the original.
A Christmas Carol (1978) by Pendulum Press was adapted by Tom Fagan with art by June Lofamia. (Another one I’ll keep looking for….) What makes this one interesting is the next comic.
Marvel Classics Comics #36, 1978 was adapted by Doug Moench. Marvel used several of the Pendulum versions at the beginning of Marvel Classics Comics, several by Alex Nino, but later moved away from the European comics. This one was the last of the run with a mishmash of artists to get it finished.
Later Comics
Classic Illustrated #16 (First Comics, December 1990) was adapted and drawn by Joe Staton. There have been several adaptations after the end of the Bronze Age but only this one grabs my attention. It was a masterclass in comics from an artist/writer who is vastly underrated, Joe Staton. Joe worked for everyone, Charlton, DC, Marvel, First, Warren and other independents, but with this adaptation he is in complete control and you should be glad he is. My favorite Christmas Carol of more recent times.
Conclusion
We all have a favorite line, scene or moments in A Christmas Carol. One of my favs is the line “There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” which The Muppets replied with “Leave the jokes to the bears, Ebenezer!” But my most favored scene is a small bit that in retrospect seems too on-the-nose for me now but worked wonderfully when I was younger. This is the part where the Spirit of Christmas Present reveals the two children holding onto his legs.
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Chuck Jones did an animated version in 1971 which was wonderfully creepy. That scene got me back then and has made that moment my favorite in the whole story. I find this scene scarier than the silent, pointing Ghost of Christmas Future. Death is inevitable to us all, but the lurking ills of the world are in stark contrast to Christmas Presents’ boisterous happiness. The contrast is powerful.
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