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I hate to say it, but it's getting to the point where Christmas is becoming one of my least favorite times of the year. I know what you're thinking, and you're right. But that doesn't change anything. I mean, yeah sure, when I was a kid, I loved Christmas morning, too. I think that's probably true for every kid. Like you, I loved to rush downstairs and see what Santa brought. Even after I got older, Christmas morning itself was a terrific time to indulge your most useless spirit of avarice. After all, who doesn't like to get stuff? And having family there also getting stuff makes it even better.

But lately things have been getting out of control. Consider the rise of the closely held company Gemmy Industries Corporation. If you're never heard of them – and there's no reason that you should have – Gemmy is the company that makes all of those annoying inflatable lawn ornaments that have lately become the rage all over suburban America. Gemmy's products range from 4 to 12 feet tall and from $60 to $300 in price. The company also does a substantial amount of unique design business for large retailers and others; you've almost certainly seen their inflatable snow globes and other nonsense at your local grocery store or Wal-Mart.¹

Personally, I first became actively aware of Gemmy’s product line this past Halloween when my neighbors bought a giant Pumpkin Man for their lawn. It was weird but not without a certain charm, I'll admit, and had they kept it up properly, I think it might have even been a nice thing. Thus, my real issue isn't with Gemmy trying to make a buck but rather with the fact that the Christmas season is growing in length, breadth, and depth. And as I get older it’s also becoming more and more of a high-pressure event. Gemmy's product line enables retailers to continue to make Christmas more and more overwhelming. Perhaps Gemmy's existence and success are simply a symptom of the problem, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are an annoying symptom.

Traditionally, the Christmas Shopping Season has started The Day After Thanksgiving. If you start shopping like a madman on that day, you'll have nearly a month to get all of your shopping done, and folks, if that ain't enough time for you, then you have either too many friends or too much money that you don't know what to do with. Personally, I think a month probably is enough time for nearly everyone to do their shopping. Unfortunately, most of corporate America makes the very vast majority of its profits in the Fourth Quarter. And that means that the sooner they can get you thinking about Christmas, the sooner they can get you impulse buying the little things that no one really needs. And that translates into higher profits... for the entire YEAR!

Understanding that doesn't make it any easier to take. After all, it's still a week BEFORE Thanksgiving, and already half of New York City looks like Santa's Village. I went to Starbucks earlier this week to find a place to read quietly on my lunch break, and the place was packed to the rafters with chochky elves and red and green ribbon. And Starbucks doesn't even sell Christmas gifts! Things have been getting worse and worse and worse for years, until now we've reached the point where Lowes has a specially designed inflatable NASCAR Santa that I'd bet you can hardly avoid when you walk into their store, and it’s driving me crazy.

It’s become quite a far cry from the King of Kings being laid in a manger because his parents were poor and couldn't find a room at the Inn.

When I was a plebe, the guy next door to us blasted Christmas music nearly every day during my entire first semester at West Point. He did it to torture my roommate and me. In the middle of September, he'd turn on Jingle Bells and then come over and start harassing us about how much it sucked to be a plebe so why don't we just quit so we could go on home to our families. Now I HATE Christmas music. I really do. And that feeling was only exacerbated when I got divorced at Christmas time in 1998. For a long, long time, Christmas just wasn't fun any more. Thankfully, now that I've got kids of my own, I'm starting to find some joy in Christmas beyond its simple religious significance. But even so, I'm still none too thrilled when someone uses Christmas to try to play on my emotions. In my humble opinion, the inflatable Santas are only making things worse.

SUPER REAL #3

Creator: Jason Martin

Published by: SuperRealGraphics.Com for $3.50

I was more than thrilled when I got Super Real #3 in the mail. If you aren't familiar with it, SR is a sort of superhero spoof on reality television. The Extreme Programming Network (XTV) has picked five strangers to live in a house... and get dangerous super-powered augmentations while they’re there. While I thought Issue 1 was kind of a slow introductory issue, #2 was far funnier and faster paced. Now finally with Issue 3, we get to see some super powers and some super snazzy costumes.

By far and away, my favorite thing about this title is that it makes fun of so many pop culture clichés even as it wallows in why they're enjoyable. For instance, Jason's story has his characters dressed in ridiculous, over-sexed outfits with giant numbers on the characters' boobs and crotch. They turn on their suits by twisting little tabs on their nipples that actually say “TWIST.” It's crazy. It's obvious. And it's fun because even as we're laughing, we're also leering, and Jason's leering right along with us. He's enjoying the gratuitous tits and ass as much as we are even as he's lampooning it. And that's cool, 'cause God knows EVERY comic fan likes T&A. By now, that must be written into the Constitution. And that’s part of the point.

I wouldn't say the art here is sophisticated, but it certainly fits the story. It's fun and it's over the top. Jason Martin is a man who isn't afraid to delve into the ridiculous. His girls are bouncy, his guys are ripped, and his humor has good timing. You can't ask for too much more than that.

Super Real is a mature readers' title. I'd recommend it to readers who like smart comics that don't take themselves too seriously. And to readers who like sex. Personally, I think that encompasses just about everybody.

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

I was pretty happy to see the results from the election earlier this month. In case you didn’t realize it, the Democratic Party swept the Republicans from both the House and the Senate in what was one of the most fiercely contested off-year elections in recent memory. It was satisfying from any number of perspectives, not the least of which is that voter turnout was quite high. For once, it seems that most Americans realized that they had a real stake in this election, and more importantly, they voted in their own self-interest. That’s something that I think has been sadly lacking in our recent national political life. Virginia’s Senator-elect James Webb had an interesting editorial piece on Wednesday this week in the Wall Street Journal that described briefly what I mean.

For the past decade or so, the richest folks in this country have been getting richer. At a certain level, that’s to be expected because we live in an economy that rewards success and often offers more opportunities to the successful for follow-on success. And that’s fine. But now we’re to the point where the top 1% of wage earners are earning 16% of the nation’s total income, and that’s too much. We’ve come to the point where it’s in EVERYONE’s best interest to find a way to bring some equality back to America.² Like it or not, the middle class has always been the strength of America. Always. Even before the Revolution, America was becoming a strong nation on the backs of everyday farmers who found new and better ways to work the land for themselves and their communities. And when the time came to defend the nation, those same farmers formed the militia that fought the nation’s wars. Before there was a professional American military establishment, there was a long history of America’s citizen-soldiers finding success on the battlefield against the regular troops of the monarchies of Europe and the quasi-democratic Republic of Mexico. That tradition continued right through the end of World War II, when the very obvious strength of the Army lay in the common soldier’s willingness and ability to think for himself and to better adapt to hostile environments than his enemies. Only in the past decade have we seen a move away from both the citizen-soldier and the importance of American labor. Today our Army is an elite organization that exists largely in military families living outside of and apart from the national culture. Today we put celebrity and economic success on a higher pedestal than ever before, and we shelter the richest from many of the burdens of daily life, including the responsibility for defending the nation. Today we outsource and/or hire cheap, illegal, and often under-the-table labor to drive our costs down and damn the consequences. If you can’t keep up, you should have gone to more school.

But these changes are not all for the better. Yes, our Army is the best in the world. And yes, using the cheapest labor makes economic sense while driving down the costs for most everything. But no, it doesn’t make any sense for the richest to see themselves apart from normal society. And for that matter, it doesn’t help anyone for America’s soldiers to see themselves as the modern Roman Legion, either. There’s no need for them to embrace some kind of weird bushido work ethic that asks them to protect a culture that they increasing don’t really understand or embrace themselves. That cuts into the very heart of the Army’s fundamental strength, and it means that the average man in the street doesn’t have empathy for the soldiers who keep him free and safe. That lack of national introspection has lately been just short of disastrous.

The truth is that it really is hard to make and maintain a decent living any more, and it’s getting harder. I don’t know that the Democrats can change that in any way, but I do know that a big part of the problem is that we’re no longer taxing the successful as much as we used to even while we’re spending more than ever. That tends to drive interest rates and inflation up and ultimately makes it even harder on everyone except the VERY richest, who can always find some clever way to make some money off other peoples’ misery. Thus, perhaps it’s best to hope for what’s likely, and that’s gridlock. This country could really do with more than a few years of absolute chaos in Washington. We need to get to a place where no one can get anything done. We need NO spending on ANYTHING for a good long while. And then maybe we’ll get to a place where it’ll start to get a little easier for most everyone.

And yet, as I said, if you have a little money, it isn’t hard these days to get ahead, stay ahead, and pull even further ahead. And here’s the proof:

Of course, if you understand what you’re looking at there, then you probably didn’t need me to explain any of the rest of it, either.

With that said, I would like to point out that our original strategy had us selling Marvel’s stock on the day before Spider-Man 3 opens in theaters. The movie opens on May 4^th, so we’d be selling on May 3^rd. The stock’s price at that point should already include the company’s projected earnings from the movie, which most “experts” seem to think is likely to be the most successful movie that Marvel can produce in the near future. That’s not a bad point, and I think it is likely that the stock’s price will spike that day. But even if SM3 is the most successful comic movie of all time for the next ten years – and it could be given the success of the past movies and the fact that it’s now part of an established franchise which hasn’t yet suffered from over saturation in the marketplace – it’s also important to remember that the Spider-Man movies are being produced as licensed properties, which means that Marvel’s revenue potential for these movies is capped. Thus, it might earn less from a very successful SM3 than it does from a lesser but still very profitable in-house movie like Iron Man or The Hulk.

Right now, it’s tough to know what the right course of action is, but it’s worth considering that Marvel’s publishing revenue is up this year, which means to me that core interest in the company is probably up as well. Balanced against the solid tear that the company’s stock price has been on lately and the idea that a general market correction is not only possible but increasingly likely, this becomes a complicated issue. It’s tempting to take profits while the profit-taking is good. Certainly it’s something to keep an eye on as we go forward.

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STRAY VOLTAGE

Did you miss me? I missed you. Not so much the first week, but by last weekend, I was ready to come back. I mean, yeah, it was cool to read Richard’s and Ielle’s versions of this column. I enjoyed both and thought both did a terrific job. And, in fact, I’ve asked both of them to come back. But at the same time, a lot happened while I was away, and it was weird to sit there and file away my notes each week but then do absolutely nothing with them. Still, I needed the break, and I needed to get some things done, and honestly, I doubt you missed ME all that very much.

But who knows? Maybe you did.

Meanwhile, I had seriously grandiose plans for my time off but managed to accomplish just a tiny fraction of what I’d hoped to get done. I didn’t do ANY of the web design I’d planned. I did, however, finally manage to finish writing my magnum opus (and third graphic novel) Green Mountain Gunslinger, and that meant a lot to me personally. I sent the draft off to my partner in crime John Fortune and to my editor Richard Nelson on Tuesday. That was cool. Of course it still needs some edits and a few other tweaks here and there, but the heavy lifting is done. Now I’m just waiting to hear back what they think about it before I start editing and rewriting.

The other thing I did while I was gone was to work on my prose. Like it or not, my verbal imagery needs some work. Eventually I started doing some exercises that I found a bit like writing from photo-reference. Weird, huh? I don’t know who’s going to care, but if you’re curious, here’s a sample of the kind of thing I found myself doing a lot:

The Girl in the Fur Coat

A world full of drab-looking gray-coated hustlers headed for the train. Alone among them, one woman stood out. She wore a long fake fox fur coat and a pair of tall white boots with pronounced heels. The coat showed her figure to its best possible advantage. It came down just far enough to be fit for polite conversation, and beneath it, her legs were clearly, gloriously bare despite the morning's chill. They hinted delightfully at what was under the coat in no uncertain terms. She didn't carry a purse. Instead, a bright blue plastic sack hung down from her left arm. Taken along with the fact that she badly needed a haircut - her brown hair hung down well past shoulder length with neither purposeful shape nor any sort of uniform length – one could see at a glance that she hadn't sold her soul for material wealth. Instead, she was the last beacon of hope in a world that had long since given up on whatever juvenile excitement had powered its rise from adolescence. Those around her had embraced too wholly the work-a-day middle class ethic that kept food on tables around the industrialized world but also inevitably killed the excitement in suburban marriages. Totally apart from her fellow travelers, this girl walked her walk on her terms, and she did it with flare.

And here’s the photo-reference: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b209/DannoE/furcoat.jpg

And that’s about it for this week. As always, if you want to contact me about how to get your book reviewed here, email me at dan (at) paperbackreader (dot) com. My beat is Indies in Previews, but I’ll review pretty much anything so long as I can at least save a copy on my laptop.

Have a good weekend and a good Thanksgiving. I’ll see you next Friday.

Until then, stay safe.

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Dan Head is a utilities analyst and occasional freelance writer and editor. His random musings sometimes amuse his wife, but they always amuse his kids.