The North Pole - Blue Christmas - Grant McLaughlin

Three rows of panels, two panels of equal size per row.

1 – Santa stands in the doorway of one of his toy workshops. He is sweating profusely, only wearing an undershirt with his jacket draped over his arm. There's lots of melting snow and icicles.

CAPTION: The impacts of Global Warming were being felt all over.

SANTA: My, it's hot.

2 – This is the continuation of the image from panel 1, simply separated by the gutter. More workshops are visible in the background, but the focus of this panel is on Frosty the Snowman. Wearing his signature top hat, he is crawling towards Santa and is in the process of melting. The look on his face is not dissimilar to terror.

CAPTION: But no place was  affected more so than the North Pole.

FROSTY: You gotta do something, Santa!

3 – A meeting room. Santa (still sweating) stands pointing towards a blackboard with “TOO HOT!!!” hastily scrawled upon it in chalk. Sitting at a table in front of him are Rudolf, the Abominable Snowman, an elf or two, and a polar bear. Santa doesn't look hopeful.

CAPTION: Seeing the severity of the situation, Santa called together the best minds available to him.

SANTA: ...

4 – The same room. Everyone is tired. It's clear that some time has past (perhaps a night of hard thinking). However, the polar bear leaps upwards in jubilation: he has figured out a solution.

CAPTION: And just when it appeared as if all was lost.

POLAR BEAR: I've got it!

5 – The panel focuses on a sign above the entrance to Santa's area of the North Pole. “Santa's Village” is crossed out and beneath it “Welcome to the North Pool Resort!” has been painted in below by hand.

CAPTION: A solution was found.

6 – Santa stands in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. There's various people, elves, and reindeer lounging about, taking in some rays or jumping into the many pools. That sort of thing. There is, of course, no snow to be found.  Santa holds a glass of water that contains the remains of Frosty: there's some coal eyes, a carrot nose, and a small top hat on top.

CAPTION: ...sort of.

FROSTY (quietly): This isn't exactly what I had in mind...

SANTA: I'm just amazed they found so much sand on such short notice...

The North Pole - Where In The World Is The North Pole? - Ryan K Lindsay

PAGE 4 - 4 PANELS

1. A S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier fills the sky as we look up at it. Someone whom we cannot see yet speaks within the vehicle.

Voice: You're kidding, right?

2. Nick Fury looks down and out of the helicarrier, the wind from the open door whips his hair around a little.

Fury: You ever known me to kid, Drake?

3. Bobby Drake, the Iceman of the X-Men, looks down next to Fury - this panel might as well be the next section of the same image from Panel 2, just separated with a panel gutter.

Drake: I've never actually known you, sir.

4. We now look down at the helicarrier from above and see it is above pure green and blue ocean.

Fury: Well, I can assure you this isn't some practical joke cooked up by that blue doormat you call an intellectual superior.

Fury: You're to go down there and figure out what happened.

Fury: Maybe even fix it if you can, sure be appreciated.

Why The North Pole?

It’s a merry time of year and we should celebrate by visiting a merry place in this world.

The thoughtballoons wagon doesn’t stop, not even for the gift giving season, and so our gifts to you this week are some one page comic scripts straight from the North Pole. We Tenures don’t like to slow down for anything and so this week we’re still hard at work. Either that or we scheduled our scripts days ago and we’re sitting in a beach house with our loved ones kicking back and relaxing. It’s always one or the other, isn’t it?

Last year, we did Santa Claus and it was a lot of fun, so this year we’ve picked another festive treat. All our scripts will involve the North Pole and that’s about the only parameter to be met. It’s snowy, it’s cold, it may or may not house a slave laboured fat man who can travel faster than the speed of light and who watches you all year round, and it’s a place none of us have been, Well, I haven’t been there and I assume my friendly tenured pals are just as unsure of this location.

What the hell is Wonder Woman holding?
Socks do not have reservoir tips!

What really is at the North Pole? Well, that’s just something we’ll have to make up. I’m sure we’ll cook up some decidedly nasty ideas, as well as some saccharine slush, to get us through to 2012.

We wish you a merry Xmas, all the way from the magnetic north, and we’ll see you all in the new year ready to make with the words. As always.

Thanks for sharing 2011 with us, it’s been a roller coaster ride for us all, and I hope everything only trends upwards as we get past the next end of the world.