Webcomic Weekly: One Last Bit Of Festive Fun With John Allison’s ‘Holiday Harliquinade’
by Richard Bruton
One last piece of Christmas now, as the always misnomered webcomic weekly returns with John Allison doing something very familiar in A Holiday Harliquinade…
Harliquinade in the context of Allison’s wonderful little piece of seasonal silliness means it’s old form – ‘a piece of buffoonery’
And it is, but as it’s Allison doing it, you know it’s going to be class buffoonery.
Allison, as you should know, is the writer/artist creator of many, many fine webcomics, including Bobbins, Scary Go Round, and Bad Machinery amongst others, and the writer of Giant Days, By Night, Steeple, Wicked Things, and The Great British Bump Off. He’s something of a webcomics pioneer, with Bobbins first appearing in 1998, and he’s been making them ever since, with his seriously impressive output definitely feeding into this short but fabulous take on A Christmas Carol.
We meet Allison with two weeks to fill before his ‘court-mandated Christmas break. But what to do? How to quickly come up with a couple of weeks’ worth of comics?
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It all means we get six episodes of fever-dreaming Allison, visited by the traditional ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, all with that very Allison twist, including cameos from plenty of familiar faces. There’s even a sly reference to Allison’s aborted Conan comic — public domain in the UK but having very litigious folks in the USA who objected pretty strongly to the whole thing.
Anyway, have a read, enjoy this last bit of Christmas.
How will it all end? Well, you’ll have to head to Allison’s site to see just how great A Holiday Harliquinade turns out. And then go check out more of Allison’s comics, online and in print, buy the books and the merch here and here — they’re all well worth a look from one of the UK’s very best comic creators.