On today’s Tenth Blog of Christmas, we take a look at Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle. I first became aware of Paul Dini’s work through the Batman animated series, which he script-edited. I loved his episodes, and it was always a treat when he contributed to DC’s Batman Adventures, the comic based on the show. However, it was even more of a treat when his own character—Jingle Belle, Santa’s rebellious teenage daughter—began appearing in stories of her own.
(Apologies for the poor scanning quality. I don't own an electronic version of this book, and it's really pretty thick and hard to scan easily.)
If memory serves, she first appeared in short stories in the early issues of Oni Double Feature before getting her own miniseries from Oni Press. Since then, she’s appeared in all sorts of one-shots, anthologies, and miniseries from Oni, Dark Horse and Top Cow. All of the Jingle Belle stories to date have been collected in the nice Jingle Belle: The Whole Package from IDW.
In her earliest stories, Jingle Belle comes across as more of a one-note, stereotypical rebellious teenager. (“Santa’s daughter is a brat, geddit?”) As we see pretty quickly, though, part of that comes from the family she’s raised in; she’s the one kid on earth who never gets to spend Christmas with her father. And, because she’s Santa’s kid, she gets held to an impossibly high standard, and always ends up on the naughty list.
A lot of the fun comes from seeing Belle act like, well, a teenager, even though she lives at the North Pole, and the family business is making toys for kids and delivering them all around the world in one night. Seeing the sweet, sentimental Christmas stuff juxtaposed against a rebellious teenager, without just coming across as cynical, takes some skill.
While very much its own thing, these stories really feel influenced by things like the Rankin-Bass holiday specials and the Sheldon Mayer Rudolph comics. They depict the same sorts of Winter Wonderland worlds full of communities of elves, narwhals, nasty frost-creatures, and all sorts of other winter characters. Only Dini and his artists (these stories are illustrated by a wide variety of creators, but mostly written by Dini) put a comedic spin on them by showing how Jing reacts to having to live in the middle of it all.
The comic reaches its most post-modern feel when Jingle Belle decides its time to create her own Christmas special about her.
Along the way, Dini introduces some other creations, including teen witch Holly Green, and sheriff of the town of Mutant, TX, Ida Red. Ida actually got her own miniseries from Oni, back in the day. At one point, it was announced that Dini would be getting his own comics imprint from Top Cow, where he would publish comics featuring all of his creations. Sadly, that never came to pass.
Along the way, Jing crosses paths with other characters and creators. We see her meet the characters from Blue Monday, by Chynna Clugston-Flores, and they meet Kyle Baker’s family from the pages of the Bakers, co-written and drawn by Baker himself. We also get a nice story written and drawn by the creators of Groo the Wanderer, Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones.
Jingle Belle is a true modern holiday classic. I would love to see Dini return to her stories (and Ida Red, and Polly Green, and all the others). In the meantime, I’m glad that they are collected in this nice edition.
And that’s it for today. Tune in tomorrow for more holiday goodness!
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