It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries. This year, the theme is a Very Groovy 70s Christmas! Each day will be a Christmas comic book story from the 1970s, possibly ones that have a specific 1970s bent to it (depends on whether I can come up with 24 of them).

The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Disco Santa Claus giving out 70s present, like a Simon, while disco dancing with four superheroes with the most-70s costumes around, is by Nick Perks.

Here it is...

And now, Day 17 will be opened (once opened, the door will feature a panel from the featured story)...

Today, we go to Christmas 1979's "Santa Claus: Wanted Dead or Alive" from DC Special Series #21 by Denny O'Neil, Frank Miller and Steve Mitchell.

Frank Miller was only 20 years old (maaaaybe 21) when he moved to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a comic book artist. Once here, he sought out Neal Adams and asked the comic book legend if he could look at Miller's portfolio. Adams agreed and Miller brought his work to Adams' office/studio and, well, I'll let Miller explain what happened next from his intro to Adams' Batman Odyssey back in 2010:

The first thing Master Adams did was duck back and away, cocking his head as I opened my portfolio too quickly, almost clipping his nose. Then he looked at my precious samples of comic-book work, and, with a smile and a few well-chosen words, sent my soul screaming into hell.

I couldn’t draw, said he, his words as clipped as they were genial in tone. Where was the anatomy? What was this room? A tenement, you say? You call this a tenement? What tells me it’s a tenement? Where are the pipes on the walls? Where are the security bars on the windows? Why am I even looking at this?

Get lost. Go back to—where is it, Vermont? Go back to Vermont and pump gas. You’ll never make it in comics. You’re no damn good.

This and worse Neal Adams said to me, time and again, but I kept pestering him with new samples, ever hopeful.

But I learned, very quickly, never to feel sorry for myself.

That’s the thing about Neal Adams. If I showed a trace of self-pity, he’d dismiss it without a thought. His kind—and that includes Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, and my own father, God rest his soul, none of these men had a nanosecond’s patience with self-pity. May we learn from them. Self-pity is for losers.

And every damn time Neal Adams looked at my stuff, he’d give with an impatient chunk of advice, sometimes even throwing a sheet of tracing paper over my tortured sheets of Bristol, showing me fundaments of composition, showing me, with no sign of effort on his part, how to make any scene roar with drama.

And, for all these hard-to-take lessons, he never asked me for a damn thing in return.

I kept coming back, with new pages. That much, he grudgingly respected.

At last he relented, saw something good in my storytelling—“You still can’t draw”—and got me my first job at Gold Key Comics.

Very astutely, Miller then took that published work to DC Comics and was, like, "See! I'm a published comic book artist. Do you have any work for me?" And Joe Orlando found him some back-up work during 1978 and then Miller took THAT work and got fill-in work at Marvel Comics before, of course, he got his first regular gig in early 1979 on Daredevil, a book he would later stick with to some modicum of success.

Of course, while Miller naturally became a superstar on Daredevil, it wasn't right away. It really wasn't until he took over writing duties that it really exploded, and so he still had time for a short-story for DC's 1979 Christmas one-shot. Amusingly, the guy who wrote the comic, Denny O'Neil, would go to Marvel in 1980, take over editing duties on Daredevil and then give Miller the writing gig less than a year after this story.

The issue was inked by the great Steve Mitchell (who inked Luke McDonnell on Iron Man with O'Neil, as well)...

The conceit of the story is that Batman finds out that some crook has stashed a ship ready for a quick getaway in Gotham Harbor (what kind of low level tip, by the way, is that? "Hey, Batman, some crook has a boat waiting"). Batman finds out that the boat was arranged for an old cellmate of his named Boomer Katz, who had seemingly gone straight and become a cook at the soup kitchen. Batman goes undercover at the soup kitchen to find out where Katz is now and, bizarrely, Batman goes undercover in BLACKFACE...

Dude, that was a weird idea for a disguise. Anyhow, now that Batman learns that Katz is working as a department store Santa, he assumes he plans to rob the place, and that's the truth, but the twist is that "Santa" has changed his mind about robbing the store after having such a nice time as Santa Claus, which does not sit well with his erstwhile compatriots. They hold him at gunpoint and force their way into the store to rob it. Boomer, though, decides to fight back. He's shot, but he gets away. Batman hears the shot and comes a running.

Check out this stunning action sequence. Very Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, right?

The main bad guys, Fats Morgan, escapes with Boomer as his hostage. Batman and the store owner head off to find and save Boomer (there's a great bit where some cops ask Batman if everything is covered. He says yes and they just leave him be). And then, suddenly, he sees them! How did he see him? Why, it was by a light shining through where the stolen nativity star was!

But what WAS that light? It's kind of funny to see a Batman comic book story end with a Biblical verse. Anyhow, that was comic book history - Frank Miller's first Batman comic!

WAS THIS A PARCTICULARLY GROOVY CHRISTMAS STORY?

If this was a few months later, it would have BEEN a 1980 comic book and no one would have noticed a difference, so no.

As noted before, I do have 24 stories picked out, but I would be happy to hear from some of you for suggestions for Christmas comic book stories that you can think of that are distinctively 1970s (and, of course, FROM the 1970s). You can e-mail suggestions to me at brianc@cbr.com