The Batlord

Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest was an anthology series (that might actually have been an anthology of an anthology series) from back in the eighties. As there have been more DC and Marvel anthology series throughout the years than hairs on my back, I do not care one bit about this particular one, but while I was trolling around Google, looking to see if there were any Christmas comics worthy of note, I stumbled upon a story from this particular issue called, "The Seal Men's War On Santa Claus", and decided that I wanted a piece o' that. However, I have no particular desire to explore the other hundred pages of this comic, so if you're curious as to its other contents, then I invite you to do it your damn self.

Unfortunately, this story's charms don't extend much past its name and first page. It's just kind of lazy. Jack Kirby (!) was clearly just collecting a check on this one. You'd think that a story with such an outrageous name would want to sell its outrageousness, but Jack apparently couldn't even be bothered to draw the actual seal men. See the seal dude at the bottom of the panel, right under "POW!"? That's as good as you're gonna get. A few over-the-shoulder half shots of featureless faces that kind of suggest sealishness, and the rest are just heads being covered by helmets or hands or whatever. It's almost like Jack Kirby is as scared of drawing seal men faces as Rob Liefeld is of drawing feet. The rest of the comic isn't much better.

Oh yeah, apparently this is some lost story from an incarnation of the Sandman that nobody gives a **** about. So far as I can tell, this Sandman is just some guy with a lame costume, who polices the dream world or something. Our tale starts with some kid, who's like some sad, Cinderella-dude, whose family is dead, so he's got a bitchy stepmom, but who ****ing cares cause she's only in like two pages of this whole story? Somehow it's Christmas Eve and his bitch stepmother has sent him out into a blizzard to get some cheap, old fart to give money to some Christmas charity or something, cause phones don't exist in 1982.

But the child (Jed or something) is in luck! For no apparent reason, the discussion with the old man turns to Santa Claus...




For whatever reason the kid has an old timey whistle with the purpose of calling Sandman, who literally drops from the sky instantaneously and whisks Jed off to his "Dream Dome" to begin their search for Santa Claus (apparently a good friend of Sandman). From there they get on/in the "Dream Stream", and it's a hop skip and a jump to the "Fantasy Forest" of the "Nightmare Wizard", who gives them a "sky sled" to take them the rest of the way to the North Pole. How exactly they're going to get from one dimension to another by flying, I have no idea, but this would have to be a much better comic for me to care. Unless they're not actually in another dimension, but if Sandman can get from one place on Earth to another using his "Dream Stream", then why doesn't he just use it to get to the North Pole? It's not like it would lose any of the plot. They just show up, get the sled from the Nightmare Wizard, and leave. Even for filler this is half-assed.

But hot on their trail is the old, rich guy's douchebag nephew, who is trying to stop Jed and Sandman from getting his uncle's million dollars. Not that he really does anything of interest throughout the whole story, but a scene with him almost being eaten by a maneating plant called "Samantha" in the Nightmare Wizard's forest is one of the only redeeming things about this gatbage.




Cut back to Sandman and Jed, who arrive at the North Pole only to be assaulted by stock Christmas elves, before being rescued by Mrs. Claus. Apparently a race of anthropomorphic seals has kidnapped Santa for reasons unknown, and now Sandman and Jed must rescue him. Blah, blah, blah, they get captured, blah, blah, blah, they escape, blah, blah, blah, they get captured again. Then we learn that this whole thing is because there was a mixup, and the seal men got the wrong gifts from Santa last year, and being a bunch of ingrates who complain about the quality of free stuff, they decide that if their Christmas is going to suck, then so will everyone else's. Santa promises to get them better stuff, blah, blah, blah, the seal men let Santa, Sandman, and Jed go, blah, blah, blah, and then they all go back to Santa's workshop to save Christmas.

But the douchey nephew is waiting for them, and pulls a gun on them. I'm assuming he's planning on shooting them, but he doesn't get past the "I'm not about to share the money with the likes of you!" portion of his villain speech before Sandman throws some magic sand at him which puts him to sleep. Finally, they all head back to the old guy's house, he meets Santa, gives Jed the check for a million dollars, Santa lets the him drive the sleigh, the end, Merry ****ing Christmas.

The comic really wasn't any more interesting than how I just described it. It's pretty obvious that Marvel just told the team on a subpar series (apparently soon to be cancelled) that they needed to make a Christmas issue, and this was the rushed result. I know I can only expect so much from a Christmas issue of a comic, but with a title like, "The Seal Men's War On Santa Claus", I was expecting for it to be the comic book equivalent of dosing the eggnog with acid on Christmas Eve, and then sitting back to watch the family carnage. All I got was twenty pages of tedious boredom. Good thing Jack Kirby had some other series that I hear was pretty good. Spider-Kid or something. Either way, **** this ****.

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