The Comicon Advent Calendar 2024 Day 21: A Stragehaven Christmas

Welcome one and all… if you haven’t got those Christmas presents for loved ones by now, you’re really cutting it fine! But stop for a moment and enjoy just another Christmas delight for the Comicon Advent Calendar…

.Today, we’re headed into the mysterious and unusual little English villlage of Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge for a Christmas-ish themed issue from 1997.

Now, I’ve had a long, long love affair with it since first seeing the very first issue in 1995, and subsequently selling the heck out of it on the shop floor of Nostalgia & Comics, Birmingham — the line we all tended to use was “Twin Peaks meets The Prisoner with a soundtrack by The Kinks and fabulous artwork“ — and it worked as we sold a load of every issue and, in time, the collections.

In the end, it took 10 years to publish 18 issues that made up three collections, 18 issues that told a fantastical tale of a village and its inhabitants, Millidge’s photo realistic artwork and fabulously mysterious thriller providing continuing entertainment for so many fans over the years. The third volume of the collected Strangehaven meant an ending with a real twist, a definite cliffhanger, a shocker. Then we had to wait a fair few years until the fourth volume was serialised in the pages of Soaring Penguin Press’ Meanwhile.

For anyone wanting to experience something genuinely wonderful, strange, mysterious, fabulous, go and seek out the current three volumes of Strangehaven: Arcadia, Brotherhood, and Conspiracies. And look for the collection of volume 4, Destiny — hopefully that won’t be another decade’s wait! And of course, before that, we have the recently announced 50-page Strangehaven: Epilogue. For more details on that, head to Millidge’s website and support him on Patreon. And for more info on Strangehaven, have a look at In Praise Of Strangehaven.

Now, back to Strangehaven # 8, where everyone in the village is getting ready for Christmas and where where Mr Hunter is spending his very first Christmas in the village, after literally crashing into things in summer and subsequently finding it strangely difficult to leave… but how the hell is it Christmas, seeing as it’s actually August… well, that’s Strangehaven for you…