Art For Art’s Sake #85: A Boxing Day Knockout

by Richard Bruton

Here in Britain, the day after Christmas Day is called Boxing Day. Something to do with all the rich folks giving their servants the day off after Christmas and giving them a Christmas box to take home to their families.

Well, here at Comicon, seeing as it’s Boxing Day…

Perhaps the greatest boxing comic there has ever been or will ever be… Superman Vs Muhammed Ali by Neil Adams & Denny O’Neil, telling the tale of the time a de-powered Supes fought Ali in the ring for the fate of the Earth…

And whilst on a boxing thing…

Reinhard Kleist’s The Boxer

Wonder Woman by Rodrigo Lorenzo

Superboxers cover by Bill Sienkiewicz (trust me, that’s the best thing about this particular graphic novel)

Ok, okay, enough with the Boxing. Nowadays, of course, Boxing Day is spent in something of a post-Christmas Day food coma, where you feast on leftovers and eat way too many chocolates.

It was also the time, in my childhood, when dad would settle down and read his Giles collection, something he got every single year.

Carl Giles, if you don’t know, was a British newspaper cartoonist who spent most of his career at the very right-leaning Express Newspaper Group. Lord Beaverbrook, owner of The Express, recognised not just Giles’ remarkable skills and incredible draughtsmanship, but also saw something important for the war effort; that unfailing ability to laugh in the face of terrible times. Despite disagreeing with the paper’s politics, Giles succumbed to sustained persuasion and joined the paper, with his first cartoon for his new employers appearing in the 3rd October 1943 edition of The Sunday Express. He worked there until 1991, creating wonderfully funny cartoons that entertained millions.

So, in honour of my dad and a wonderful Christmas tradition, a little Carl Giles, starting with some of the best winter-themed annual covers from 1957: