It´s Masters of Marvel Monday, Submariner !

I hope you have survived Christmas and are ready for the end of the year. To end things on a high note I thought it would be fitting to reminiscence about a comic decade I usually don´t mention very often in my posts.

Or at least not in connection with certain artists. The reason for that is that I recently acquired two new hardcovers from that period of time.

THE DEFENDERS WAR ( which I will probably cover in a post all about one of Marvel´s craziest team books ) and the Marvel Masterworks volume 14 that contains the CELESTIAL MADONNA SAGA ( which will probably also be the topic of a separate post ) which I pimped a few posts ago. One of the links I put in the post was from the MARVEL MASTERWORKS library because it has ten preview pages and like most of the stuff I put on the blog it lead me to other discoveries. By the way, I hope you ordered the hardcover if you are interested in that because it´s no longer available at half price. Anyway, I got the order and while I will write more about the hardcover when we get to the Celestial Madonna Saga I want to mention that the production values are quite good. And it made me go back to the page I posted and look for other preview pages. Because if there´s one thing that´s always hard to come by it´s preview pages to. Covers are okay and even if you don´t always find the ones you´re looking for you know where you can find them. Interior pages on the other hand are a whole different ballgame. So free interior pages are always welcome.

Now the way that usually works is that I save all the pages and put them in folder for future reference. Because it´s always easier to have them in a folder somewhere than to save the link and expect it to be there later when you need it. So that´s something I did the last few days ( just in case you were wondering why there were not so many posts this month ) and while I was going through the pages I noticed that I have had a lot of posts this year about the 80s and a few about the 90s. There are also a few of the usual suspects I mention when I´m writing about Bronze Age Marvel comics like John Buscema. Gene Colan or Jack Kirby. But there are also a lot of other artists that were active in the Bronze Age and before that I don´t mention that often which had a huge part in comics history.

Which is why I picked this beautiful splash page with Namor by Scott Andru. He was a big part of my comic reading since he was the artist on Marvel titles like AMAZING SPIDER - MAN and DC books like WONDER WOMAN and the Superman books ACTION COMICS and SUPERMAN.

Not to mention that he introduced the Silve Age version of Wonder Woman and the Suicide Squad at DC and the Defenders ( in MARVEL FEATURE 1 ) and a certain very popular psychotic vigilante at Marvel.

He also was the artist on two of the most iconic comic stories of all times : the first crossover between DC and Marvel featuring none other than their biggest guns, Superman and Spider - Man, and the first Clone Saga.

I have already written two posts about the Spider - Man comics from my youth but I think I only wrote about John Romita Sr and John Romita Jr because those are two of my favorite artists.  Which in the case of John Romita Sr had a lot to do with the way he draws women as you can see in this early work starring Captain America and Bucky from YOUNG MEN 25.

But back to Ross Andru : he was the artist that closed out the era of the Williams Comics and the one who started off the Condor Comics era.

Because for the longest time there was this huge gap in Spider - Man continuity for the readers of the german publications ( as I already explained in this post ) which fell right on the first Clone Saga. So the first Clone Saga was not published by Williams and Condor started just after it was over which led to a really strange read in DIE SPINNE issue 1.

But I don´t want to get too deep into Spider - Man or Die Spinne comics since I already have a post planned to cover a storyline that includes one of Spider - Man´s most famous - or infamous - moments. You decide.

Anyway, another reason why I chose the Sub - Mariner splash ( no pun intended ) by Ross Andru was to show that there were other artists who captured the essence of Namor, the Avenging Son besides John Buscema.

That´s one of the things I found out going over the preview pages at the MARVEL MASTERWORKS website because most of the back up stories with Namor or Aquarius how he was sometimes called in german comics ( we also covered this in this post ) I remember were drawn by John Buscema.

Another reason why I always associate Namor with John Buscema is that the Williams Verlag used a few of his illustrations of the series for the ads of all the monthly comics that appeared on the back of the comics. Even if for some strange reason they always gave all the atlanteans pink skin.

But this is one of the reasons why for people who read german comics when I was a kid the best remembered Namor image is the cover to SUB - MARINER 33 - by Sal Buscema, this time ( with help by Marie Severin ).

And here´s the inked version of it ( click here for bigger resolutions ) :

Again, in the german advertisement the blue skin of the other atlanteans was changed to pink. But this appeared on all the monthly Williams books of that month and you either saw it then or in the Sammelbände. The text is all about what a traitor Namor is because he shares Marvel´s monthlies with his subjects but he keeps the HORROR title from DC all for himself.

Yes, at that time Williams not only published DIE FANTASTISCHEN VIER, DIE SPINNE and DIE RUHMREICHEN RÄCHER twice a month ( I´m not sure if they were adding titles or reducing titles at this point ) but also a horror book from DC and later on DIE GRÜNE LATERNE ( Green Lantern ).

By the way, I have been looking for the backcover above for ages and it´s only Today that I found the great WILLIAMS MARVEL COMIC ARCHIV where they have all the backcovers as well as tons of cool editorial pages from the old Williams comics like this portrait of Namor inventor Bill Everett

or this one on " Gentleman " Gene Colan that I just have to post.

I know, I said it myself : I´m always talking about the same artists and this post is about the ones I don´t mention that often but every time I can bring up Gene Colan I do it. I just don´t care. It wouldn´t feel right to me to write what could possibly be the last post of this year without mentioning him. Especially since TOMB OF DRACULA was big in Germany.

Gene Colan was also on DAREDEVIL but because that was always the second feature we never got those great covers he did. But there still were those great opening splash pages so I didn´t mind too much.

A book where Gene Colan DID get the lead feature was DR STRANGE and we got the full 70s psychedelic mind fudge with the funky face mask.

I love me some face mask Dr Strange. If I ever get the chance to do a comic with Dr Strange he gotta have the face mask. Even Ed McGuiness had face mask Dr Strange in his Red Hulk series and that´s the outfit he had on the six issue mini series THE ORDER where the founding members of the Defenders wanted to rule the world. With covers by Carlos Pacheco.

Sadly I couldn´t find it in better quality but here is the inked version :

And that´s the end of Today´s post but we will return with Bill Everett and more of ATLAS comics Sub - Mariner which is not as boring as it sounds.

As usual I want to give props to the guys who helped me make this post and add a few links for those that want to read more about the Sub - Mariner : INSIDE JEFF OVERTURF`S HEAD has an article on Bill Everett and the Sub - Mariner and our stalwart pal Old Groove´s DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND blog covers everything - or at least everything I write about here - as usual and has a few Namor - centric posts like The Return of the Nautilus from SUB - MARINER 53, SUB - MARINER 57 by Bill Everett , Burn, Namor, Burn by Marie Severin from SUB - MARINER 14 and The Secret Origin of Namor by Ross Andru and Marie Severin from SUB MARINER 38.

But wait ! Groove Master´s not finished yet : for more on Sal Buscema´s Sub - Mariner check out his team up with Captain Marvel in SUB - MARINER 30 , his triple threat match against Stingray and Triton from SUB - MARINER 31, these collection of splash pages from that book or this one from various titles featuring the first version of The Defenders .

Kudos also to GIANT SIZE MARVEL´s post on the evolution of the cover to SUB - MARINER 33 where I found the black and white version I posted here and for more black and white Namor covers go to BIG GLEE ! where you can find the inked covers alongside the colored version of SUB - MARINER 49 and 50 by Gil Kane and SUB - MARINER 69 by John Romita Sr . I´m sure they have more but these are the ones I came across during my research.

But before we come to the video section there is one more thing I have to post. During one of my many research sessions I came across this website where a teacher writes about the comics he reads ( no doubt stolen from poor helpless students like myself ) that shows the difference between the german comic versions of HIT COMICS and WILLIAMS COMICS. First up is FANTASTIC FOUR 55 splash from Bildschriften Verlag´s Hit Comics :

The lettering is done by machine and the placement of the text is not very good. There is too much open space, there are a few typos and some of the letters go beyond the word balloons. The name Silver Surfer was translated as Silberreiter which means Silver Rider and sounds horrible. Also there´s some promotion for a roller skate company at the bottom.

Here is the same Fantastic Four page by Jack Kirby from Williams :

The lettering is done by hand and fits in the word balloons much better.

Unlike the Hit Comics version it includes Stan Lee´s famous nicknames and Silberstürmer sounds much better. Now Stürmer is a word mostly used in football which is the national sport in Germany so everybody can get an idea what the name means. Also, since Stürmer is derived from Sturm, the german word for storm is has kind of a connection with the sea. And the Stürmer being the most aggressive player in a football team it brings that whole daring, aggressive attitude with it. Believe me, far superior.

And so you can make your own conclusions, the original version :

Now in the video section I´m making a switcheroo with my last post because as usual I found all the good Christmas videos AFTER Christmas.

I had hoped to do another post during the holidays so I could post them but I just couldn´t find the time. So since it doesn´t make much sense to post Christmas videos AFTER Christmas here are the videos from my last post - which did not have anything to do with Christmas anyway - and you can find the new Christmas videos in my last post. Everybody confused ?

So let´s start with some clips of latin icon Thalia for my spanish readers.

The first video is kind of a callback to the time period I was talking about in Today´s post which was back when I went back to Spain every year for the holidays. As I mentioned before in my post about The Guardians of the Galaxy every year when I was on holiday in Spain I taped all the hot women on tv I could catch to help through the time when I was back in Germany. There are a lot of really muy caliente massitas on spanish tv and among the hottest are Monica Naranjo ( I will write more about her if I ever find her best live performance clip ), Sabrina Salerno and Thalia.

Our first video is Thalia´s hit MUJER LATINA at a gala at the end of the year 1998. Normally I was only in Spain during the summer but that year I had the luck to be there for Christmas and the end of the year so I could see all the big gala shows like this one where Thalia shows some awesome moves. Sadly the quality of the video is not very good since it´s very old.



The quality in our second video is not much better either since it´s another of her classicperformances  on the show SORPRESA SORPRESA which is where I first saw her. I really had no idea who she was or that she´s bigger than Madonna in the latin world. But I was immediately impressed by her dance moves, her looks, her erotic singing voice ( Ay ay ay ) and her overwhelming stage presence. I also wanted to post some clips of Thalia to show that you don´t always need big breast to be sexy. Thalia does not have a huge breast yet she just oozes sex appeal !



Our last Thalia video Today is of better quality so my readers don´t have to strain their eyes too much. I specifically chose it because it shows another reason why she´s so famous : her incredibly hot stage outfits.



To show that there are not only hot women on spanish tv here is one that DOES have big gazongas : Tatjana Ohm, the Jessica Rabbit of german news tv. It´s been a while since I wrote about her but I finally found a longer video in good quality where you can see her in different outfits.



Since I couldn´t find any information about their cupsizes I don´t know who is actually the woman with the biggest breasts on german tv but here is a video of Daniela Elger´s cleavage so you can make up your own mind.



And to close the post here is an animated video for my german readers. I already posted some Captain Future videos but here is the full video of the first serial DER HERRSCHER VON MEGARA. Viel Vergnügen damit !



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Christmas with Marc Silvestri´s X - Men

It´s that time of the year again and after having a really bad day ( and night ) Yesterday I feel much better and ready to spread some Christmas spirit. As usual I´m doing things a bit different here so let´s get started.

UNCANNY X - MEN 230, written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Marc Silvestri with inks by Josef Rubinstein is an issue that has been covered by a lot of blogs ( I will include some of them in the link section of this post for those who want to read more about it ) especially on Christmas.

The issue takes place after the events of the FALL OF THE MUTANTS storyline and is the first one with the X - Men in their new headquarters in Australia which they just repossessed after defeating a really nasty band of mutant cyborg baddies called the Reavers in the previous issue.

Now this was a time when I was fully immersed into the X - Men universe and Marc Silvestri was my man. I had seen his artwork on other books like the first AVENGERS vs X - MEN mini but here he was on a monthly title.

I´m not quite sure but I think his first issues were not where I did start. Like most of my comic reading in that day I read issues out of order and I think the first time I saw Marc Silvestri on the X - Men book was during FALL OF THE MUTANTS. Naturally I also did not read those issues in order and I bought them at various comic conventions and comic fairs. In fact I think I got the first ones at the first International Comic Salon in Erlangen I ever attended. Or the first Comicbörse in Stuttgart. Man, that was one event that was a big deal for me. Before that I only found some scattered issues at the kiosk at the bus stop or the train station in Ludwigsburg and now there were hundreds, no thousands of these issues. I know I got a lot of John Byrne SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS issues the first time at the Comicbörse in Stuttgart. In any case, I know that I didn´t start reading the series on a regular basis until much later into the Marc Silvestri run because the very first issue I bought at the newsstand at the central train station in Stuttgart was the one with Wolverine and Rogue in Genosha.

It must have been pretty early into my X - Men reading - at least of the original american issues - because at that time neither Psylocke nor Rogue were familiar to me. And what happened to Rogue shocked me.

For those that haven´t read the issue I´m not going to spoil it but as a result of it Rogue became catatonic and the Carol Danvers part of her id took over. Which also was very fascinating. Here was this mutant whose powers were to absorb powers and memories by touch ( thankfully this and most of the other X - Men´s powers were explained in the issue because without it I would have been lost ) who had another personality inside her head as kind of a back up. Okay, not really but since I had no intimate knowledge of Rogue´s backstory that was how it looked to me.

I think that was one of the reasons why Rogue very quickly became one of my favorite X - Men. Which sounds a bit weird and reminds me of when Jubilee started to hang out with the team ( much later ) : " Why do they call themselves X - Men when there are so many women on the team ? "

With this issue I thought the same, not that I was complaining. I always say, the more hot women there are on a team the merrier ( I become ).

Okay, but as fascinating as you may find my time travel back to the days when I was just starting with the X - Men franchise you probably want to know what all this and UNCANNY X - MEN 230 has to do with Christmas.

Like I said, this was just after the X - Men have set up shop in Australia. They had defeated the Reavers in the previous issue and all the Reaver´s stuff was still there - including the loot from their years of plundering. One of the new X - Men ( at least for me as a new reader ) was Longshot who had the power of psychometry - the power to read an object´s history by touching it. Now he heard the voices of all the valuables in the vault or wherever it was kept and went down there to see what it was. Check out this incredible double page by Marc Silvestri and inker Josef Rubinstein :

And here is the colored version by Glynis Oliver that was printed :

Anyway, overcome by the sheer number of voices Longshot blacks out. At first the rest of the team doesn´t notice this because they are all busy setting up shop in the new headquarters, cleaning up the Reaver´s mess.

After Longshot regains consciousness he insist the X - Men have to give the loot back but the other team members don´t know if they can take this serious. So they all share one of the strange visions Longshot gets when touching an object thanks to Psylocke´s telepathic mindlinking.

After that the X - Men are discussing IF and how they should do this. In the last issue the X - Men´s new status quo just had been established.

After the events in Dallas during FALL OF THE MUTANTS the world thinks the X - Men died, saving the world from evil once more. Which they did.

But unbeknownst to the world at large Roma brought them back to life although with a little catch : the X - Men are now invisible to any kind of electronic device like cameras and the likes except for the ones in their new base of operations. She also leaves the Siege Perilous in their care but that is - hopefully - the topic for another Marc Silvestri X - Men post.

I´m only mentioning this whole " believed to be dead " thing because it is one of the arguments Logan makes for not returning the stolen goods.

Here´s the colored version, well, the part I could find in good quality :

Of course the X - Men decide to go through with it - otherwise this would not be a Christmas story - and after dividing all the robbed items into huge piles for each continent thanks to Longshot they go on a worldwide trip where they even have a little run in with some of the New Mutants.

Now I don´t want to go over the whole issue step by step because that´s not what I do here and there are other blogs out there that already did.

GENTLEMEN OF LEISURE do their usual in depth analysis of the issue and Chritoph Maurer has a long post on it with many pictures at the SEQUART ORGANISATION website where he has many extensive posts about X - Men : To the Outback & Beyond . If you don´t have that much time but still want to know what the story is about Christopher Cummings covers it in his ten panels or less post , it´s number 20 on CBR´s countdown of THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS STORIES EVER TOLD and it´s mentioned in the Psylocke Psunday episode 21 : Everybody hates Psylocke at BULLY SAYS : COMICS OUGHTA BE FUN ! ( I hope I got the name of the website right ).

All I want to say about the story is that it´s really well done and it not only works as a Christmas story it also helps new readers get their foot in. There are also some funny bits like when the X - Men are trying to turn their new homes into an environment fit for a human being / mutant.

Now the reason why I picked this particular Christmas story Today was that it gave me an opportunity to talk about my favorite X - Men period which is not when John Byrne was on the book. Now, don´t get me wrong.

The classic Chris Claremont / John Byrne issues are still the gold standard for me and, well, the reason why they are so classic is that they still work. You can read them now and you will not find anything on the stands Today that compares. Yes, ALL NEW X - MEN is great but it´s not coming close.

And I don´t want to downtalk the new stuff that is out there. Especially since I´m not reading much of it besides WOLVERINE AND THE X - MEN.

There´s like I said ALL NEW X - MEN and - based on a recommendation by Comicbookgirl19 - I just recently got the first trade of the new X - MEN LEGACY series PRODIGAL written by Simon Spurrier and art by Tang Eng Huat ( which I didn´t like that much ) and Jorge Molina, who reminded me a bit of Olivier Coipel on one of his better days. It is a good read.

No, what I mean is that there are a lot of different periods in the X - Men´s run from the earliest stuff to when Neal Adams stepped in, to the John Byrne issues, the John Romita Jr stuff, the Paul Smith issues then John Romita Jr again ...... I could go on ad infinitum, you get the idea.

There are those parts where we can all agree on that were the best. And then there´s the one that´s special to you. For some it´s connected to a storyline, it may be AGE OF APOCALYPSE which I´m also a big fan of. It´s one of the rare cases where the fans won over the critics because at first the critics hated it. But because it´s beloved by so many fans over such a long period of time now it´s one of the classic eras in the X- Men history.

For me that special time was the outback period. The John Byrne issues came out before my time and even the few spanish issues I got were old. I read a lot of them in trades ( the DARK PHOENIX SAGA and DAYS OF FUTURES PAST were two of Marvel´s earliest trades ) and in the X - MEN CLASSIC edition and before that I had to rely on Condor pocket books.

With most of the Paul Smith or John Romita Jr issues I was also behind.

One of my favorite Marvel crossovers was SECRET WARS II ( as longtime readers have probably noticed by now judging on the number of posts I have already done on the subject ) but that also was a time where I had to look for those issues at conventions and just got one or two issues at a time because I didn´t have a regular comic shop where I could get them.

Well, all of that changed when Marc Silvestri came on the book. It´s true, I also got the FALL OF THE MUTANTS and the issues before that at comic conventions but with the Genosha issues I got them at the newsstand in Stuttgart and soon after that I had my first subscription at a real comic shop where I got all the issues I needed. Times were good and when I got my monthly package the only thing I did that weekend was read comics.

And then one day my brother came back from the Art Academy in Erlangen and brought me two brand new issues of UNCANNY X - MEN.

It were two issues from Marc Silvestri´s run and the issues were far ahead of what I was reading at the time. Also it came out twice a month.

Two issues in one month by Marc Silvestri ( he has drastically decreased his monthly output since then ) and it introduced me to creepy new villains in the X - Men universe : the Brood. At this point I hadn´t read the X - Men issues by Paul Smith so the Brood were all new for me.

My brother got the issues at that comic shop in Erlangen, SAMMLERECKE and the rest is history. Okay, some people may think that I got my X - Men comic buying timeline confused since the Genosha story came out after that and I bought it at a newsstand and had my first comic subscription after I discovered I could get them there. What you have to understand is that buying comics back then was much like reading comics - which means non linear. You were used to read comics out of the normal order because that´s how you got them. It´s not like nowadays where you have dozens of online comic shops and when you have found one that´s where you get all your comics. No. Even if you had a regular comic shop where you could get your issues you never knew if they would not skip an issue or two or not get an issue from their supplier. So while I had my monthly comic subscription I still got the issues I could from the newsstand or anywhere else and if some of them were comics on my list I just phoned the comic shop ( yes, that´s what we old folks did before the internet ) and told them that I already had issue such and such and they should take it out of my regular comic order for that month. Which happened quite a lot now that I think back on it. I guess I was a really difficult customer.

Anyway, it took a few months before I finally switched to the comic shop in Erlangen but when I did UNCANNY X - MEN was one of the titles on my pull list and it soon became the first one I read every month. I guess most comic fans who have a monthly subscription have a special order in which they read their comics. My order was always that I read all the good stuff last and the other books first. Except one book. There was always one book that was the best of the best and that was the book that earned the top spot on the reading pile. Because that was the book I read first.

And for the longest time that was X - MEN, in fact together with NEW MUTANTS those were the books I read twice or even three times. Yes, I had much more free time then. Like I said this was before the internet.

So if you ask me about my favorite run on X - Men it´s the outback years by Marc Silvestri. It´s FALL OF THE MUTANTS and INFERNO, it´s Reavers and the Brood and everything that came after the Siege Perilous, it´s Longshot and Jubilee, it´s grim and gritty and Storm´s leather outfit.

Like with GIANT SIZE X - MEN 1 this was a team with a lot of members I knew nothing about and Chris Claremont was still at the top of his game.

There were epic storylines, new twists around every corner, a lot of crossovers with other X - books and the brilliant art by Marc Silvestri.

I have often said that we buy the same books over and over again and Marc Silvestri´s X - Men issues ( or his Wolverine issues which is where the shot of Storm above is from ) are what would indeed get me to buy an Artist´s Edition. So far I have only seen a few of them at german online comic shops - they are practically non existent on amazon in Germany - but so far there is none where I would think I absolutely have to have it.

But if there was an Artist´s Edition with Marc Silvestri´s X - MEN, some FALL OF THE MUTANTS stuff, some INFERNO issues, some Brood pages and the likes - I would totally get that. Even right now I´m thinking about investing the amazon gift certificate I got for Christmas in the INFERNO PROLOGUE omnibus hardcover although I already have all of the issues.

I thought about getting the FALL OF THE MUTANTS omnibus but I saw a copy at a comic convention or at the Sammlerecke and the production value and the printing is really not good on that one. Besides I already have that story in a spanish edition because it was in a bigger format.

But I really could go with the INFERNO PROLOGUE omnibus because it not only has six issues of Marc Silvestri´s UNCANNY X - MEN run including the Brood story which I have to cover at length in another post ( the other four UNCANNY X - MEN issues were done by Rick Leonardi ) , it also has seven issues of Walter Simonson´s X - FACTOR and nine issues of NEW MUTANTS including the aftermath of the Birdbrain story by my favorite artist Bret Blevins which also ties in with my DEATH IN COMICS theme.

Man, I really have to be careful with all this comic pimping because I end up buying all these great comics ( I totally went and got the Avengers Marvel Masterworks volume from my last post ) and now I have to get a new porn shelf. And I really don´t want to help Disney filling its pockets.

So despite of the fact that I´m probably buying the same issues again in an expensive hardcover collection ( 125 dollars is the regular price but it´s only 75 bucks at amazon ) you should still check out the UNCANNY X - MEN issues by Marc Silvestri. I think you can still find most of them in dollar bins and if you don´t have a comic shop near that has a dollar bin you can get the ESSENTIALS. I got two ESSENTIALS at Erlangen at a real bargain price and volume 8 which has all the issues after the FALL OF THE MUTANTS I mentioned here is one of my favorite ESSENTIALS ( I used it as a resource for preparing the material for this post and the next ones about Marc Silvestri´s X - MEN run ). Most of the issues are out in this format and now that Disney has switched to the Epic Collection format I think that´s your best chance to read it. With the newly released INFERNO PROLOGUE and the stuff that´s already in the FALL OF THE MUTANTS and INFERNO collections ( man, I should have bought the INFERNO hardcover when it was offered at amazon at half price ) I don´t think there will be any of that material put into any Epic collections any time soon. And they are still far away from it with the X - MEN pocket books from PANINI UK.

But that´s the topic of another post that will be all about the nice pocket books from PANINI UK. For now it´s time to come to an end because it is already late and even if Tomorrow is a holiday there might be other things you wish to do. But don´t be afraid, we will continue this topic. There are too many pages of original art I want to post and so many things to say. 

I hope my ramblings were not too boring and you enjoyed the black and white pages I found at various websites like Comicartfans without whom making this post would have been impossible and I wish you a Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Fröhliche Weihnachten and Feliz Navidad !

Now there are a lot of Christmas videos on YouTube but I thought this time I´d pick some of my personal songs that just HAVE to be part of every Christmas. And the first one is Do they know it´s Christmas by Band Aid. When I was still working at the printing company we were doing a lot of 10, 12, 20, 24 or even 36 hours shifts often working through the holidays. Now if we would have gotten paid the overtime this would have been quite a bonus but since our boss didn´t like to pay us the extra hours they just kept accumulating. So this song became our special Christmas anthem and we sang the refrain - Do they know it´s Christmas time - especially loud because we would be thinking about our bosses.



As a child that grew up during the german disco era my second pick is Boney M´s MARY`S BOYCHILD - no contest there. I picked the group´s appearance on Top of the Pops in 1979 because that has the best quality.



My next video is a more recent one from one of Michael Bubble´s Christmas shows. I have to admit that totally passed me by and I had no idea that this was kind of an annual tradition. Like no Christmas is complete without singing Feliz Navidad here is a duet with Thalia. It´s kind of a substitute for the Thalia videos that were here and have now moved to my next post ( kind of complicated but trust me on this ).



And we continue with the Michael Bubble duets because I just couldn´t pass All I want for Christmas with my favorite Santa, Mariah Carey.



If like me you haven´t seen one of Michael Bubble´s Christmas specials here is a full show from 2013. Naturally I picked the one from which the clip above is. There is also a second appearance by Mariah Carey later on.



I also want to add an animated video for my readers who are not that into music videos and because nothing quite says " Merry Christmas ! " like giant robots and senseless violence here is VOLTRON - THE MOVIE from 1984. According to the title it´s the violence restored version but since I have not seen the movie before I just have to take them at their word.



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