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So a few weeks ago it suddenly hit me that Christmas Day and New Year’s Day would fall on Wednesdays this year, i.e. that day we do updates. I know, my powers of calendar are amazing.
We’ve taken breaks during this time in the past, sometimes with sketches and sometimes with fan art, and we’ve acknowledged other holidays in our blogs as they come around, especially if they happen to actually coincide with a publication date. But compared to some webcomics, I have to admit we really aren’t all that “festive”. If you’re a regular webcomic reader you probably know what I’m talking about, you open up their site on December 25th or thereabouts and there’s some illustration of the cast in their Santa hats all gathered ’round a tree, sipping eggnog, unwrapping presents, and engaging in all other manner of stereotypical Holiday cheer. Meanwhile, you open up Zombie Ranch today and get a blood-spattered Uncle Chuck with nary a wreath or sprig of mistletoe in sight.
Now mind you that’s a story page where it would make absolutely no sense to shove in Christmasy things, but even when we’ve had fan art or sketches for these times they tend not to be themed. Jeez. Buncha Scrooges over here.
Before you ask: no, we’re not really meaning to make any sort of principled point with this. We’re not being Puritans, even if Dawn did once post a Halloween sketch of Suzie dressed up in Solomon Kane garb. Actually I guess that illustration stands as proof we did tip a nod towards a holiday occurring on at least one occasion. It was also one of the only times we posted something on a day other than a Wednesday, since Halloween was on a Saturday that year. Dawn felt inspired, so she sketched it up. In succeeding years, for one reason or another, it just hasn’t happened, even last year when Halloween did indeed fall on a Wednesday. Suzie did look pretty spooky, though.
I know personally I could argue that holiday shout-outs aren’t as easy for a long-form serial comic as they are for something more gag-a-day, and in fact have the potential to be disruptive. Here’s your complex fantasy world set someplace that’s decidedly Not Earth, and now here’s your Elven Court hanging stockings over a fireplace and leaving out milk and cookies for good ol’ St. Nick… things that are not only specific to our world, but to a specific culture of our world and the specific way they choose to celebrate the Season. Note that I’m not saying you’ve got to have a Menorrah and a Mkeke mat in there, that’d probably just make it more strange to me. Then again, is taking a side trip to present the adventures of a caveman and zombie on Mars any less weird? I suppose I shouldn’t judge.
But then again, there’s the whole issue of holidays, period. Nearly everyone everywhere on Earth has some sort of celebration going on around this time, but there’s plenty of webcomics originating out of Canada (for example), and while they do celebrate a Thanksgiving, it’s on the second Monday of October rather than the fourth Thursday of November. And hey, most countries don’t even celebrate a Thanksgiving at all, or at least not as the Turkey-centric feast AmeriCanada does. This is one of those little thought about quirks that results from having the international audience a webcomic can give you… sometimes not everyone’s going to understand what the big deal is, and you either adopt a sink-or-Google policy in regards to that or devote part of your posting towards explaining the holiday in addition to showing your characters observing it.
Would the Zanes celebrate (American) Thanksgiving? Most probably so, although they’d have to work around some problems like turkeys and pigs being all but extinct. Of course, working that into the narrative means getting there first, which is a daunting prospect at our current pace where we’ve been taking a year or more of real-world time just to get through the events of a single day. It would probably have to be a one-off illustration, and in that case again becomes a matter of Dawn feeling she has the time and inspiration to do it. You don’t want to force an artist to make a holiday image. It will lack joy.
I mean, aside from when I did sort of get sneaky and squeezed in a reference to the U.S.’s Memorial Day on one of our covers. But that’s only fair after she does things like Zombie Charlie Brown. Talk about a guy who’s always caught up in one holiday or another, right? Good grief.