A POST-HOLIDAY HELLO TO THE MASSES

     A merry belated Christmas Day to all! And happy Boxing Day to all those across the pond, up north, etc. Cheers to all those good ol' boxes. I hope you all enjoyed the 12 Characterz of Christmas! There may have been setbacks, mainly the occasional skipping of days due to schoolwork before break started, but I still managed to finish in time. Thanks a bunch to all of you who read along and participated in the merry-ocity! What will I be doing now that it's finished? Well, currently I'm enjoying the limbo period of laziness between Christmas and New Year's, and using my brand new phone to give all my family members weird personalized ringtones. But once 2016 hits, things are gonna get pretty crazy around here! I have a lot of fun new projects coming up, not all of which I can tell you about. Pinky promise I'm not Illuminati. So, for now, Merry Christmas and I'll see ya in the New Year! Now if you excuse me, I have some more nothing to attend to.

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#235 & #236: Carol and Eve

      Okay, time for the last two characters of the 12 Characterz of Christmas: Carol and Eve! I've already introduced you all to the person that protects the Christmas spirit, and now it's time for you to meet the ones that distributed it around the world. While the Keeper may hold onto the physical imbodiment of the urivaled cheer of the holiday season, he doesn't hold onto it itself. It doesn't just sit there, still,  permeating the December air without assistance - it has to be spread by those who already have it in their hearts. And their just so happens to be two spirits that always make sure that happens: Carol and Eve! Hailing straight from behind the pearly white gates, these sisters are assigned by the big man upstairs himself to disperse the feelings of peace and love that come with Christmastime. Invisible to any living souls, they merrily perform good deeds and mini-miracles from country to country. Because that's how you spread the Christmas spirit, folks. By doing good for others. Not everybody has happiness in their heart, but if you take time out of your day to brighten theirs, through a deed of any size, they might begin to. And who knows, maybe then they'll be compelled to spread the spirit, too, and the cycle will go on. PS, take it from me, you don't need a wagon full of festivity and spiritual powers to do this.

#234: The Good Mage Abe

     Okay, time for the 10th character in the 12 Characterz of Christmas: the Good Mage Abe! Jolliness doesn't just happen, people. Especially not when said jolliness is enough to spread across the globe and still have oodles to spare for next year. So, ol' Santa Clause must've learned his merry ways from someone, right? Well, he did. From a fellow bearded elder by the name of Abe! Back when Christmas was young, so was Kris Kringle, making knickknacks and befriending the reindeer owned by his foster parent, grumpy ranch owner Mr. Grusk. But one day, an old man came to town. Carrying a faintly-glowing pack over his shoulder, he moved his few belongings into a cabin down the road. Day after day, the curious Kringle snuck over after his ranch hand chores were finished and peaked into the cabin, awestruck by the sorcery the man was performing inside. He was stealthy each time - until he wasn't. The man called Abe could have shooed the boy off his property upon discovering him, but what he sensed in him was something truly for the ages. So he began teaching him a few things. Day after day for years, Kris would come over, mastering the magic that makes things fly and learning lessons of giving and such, until he became the grandiose giftgiver we know today. Imagine the looks on the neighbors' faces when he first made a sleigh fly and took it for a spin around town.

#233: Mrs. Clause (AKA The Tooth Fairy)

     Okay, it's the last day of the 12 Characterz of Christmas and I've still got 4 to post. Holiday game face time. Now, for the first of those final 4: Mrs. Clause (JC-Verse version, of course)! You know the Tooth Fairy? The mystical moler-collector of your kid years? The good ol' gal that leaves crisp dollar dollar bills under pillows across the globe? Yeah. That's Mrs. Clause. At this point you're probably thinking I got into some wonky expired fruit cake, but allow me to give you some background. After a few hundred years of sitting by the sidelines, Mrs. Clause got sick of it. She decided she didn't want to just be remembered as Santa's wife, as the woman behind the iconic beard n' belly. So, she decided to become her own fantasy figure and tap into a market about as reliable as kids' constant yearning for gifts: their loss of teeth. After "borrowing" a bit of the same magic dust that makes the sleigh and reindeer fly from the Clause vault, she began her mission to make a name for herself in the childhood whimsey industry. Santa still hasn't found out for sure, although he does have a suspision thanks to the dollars constantly being withdrawn from their joint bank account.

#232: Jack Frost (JC-Verse Edition)

     Tomorrow's Christmas Eve! I am both ready and not at all ready for this at the same time. Anywho, time for a new character of the 12 Characterz of Christmas: Jack Frost (JC-Verse Edition)! You all probably know of Jack Frost. Credited with nipping at the collective noses of the winter masses, he usually comes in the form of a mean ol' mischief maker or an aggressively-shipped Dreamworks protagonist. But it would seem the actual version is much different - well, in the ol' Jacob's Characterz! Universe, that is. The creature known as Frost came into being at the beginning of time itself, at the very center of the North Pole, as planet Earth's first fall was coming to a close. As part of the Grand Cycle, the below-zero being was created with the unquenchable annual desire to spread cold across the globe. Us homo sapien folk came to call this time "winter." Over time, Frost became fiercely protective of his polar lair. So, when Kris Kringle decided to build the Workshop right near it, naturally some tops were blown. Eventually, after trying intensely to fight his jolly invaders off in the Frost War, our bitter ol' ice entity finally let them settle in, but still loses it with them over space intrusion every once in a while. (All who now have "Ice Ice Baby" stuck in your heads like me, say aye.)

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#231: Groggnart: The Terrible Tin Solider

    Alrighty, now for the 7th Character of Christmas: Groggnart, the terrible tin soldier! Sorry, but it was only a matter of time before something extraterrestrial penetrated this Christmas shindig. But fear not, because it still comes in the handy-dandy form of an antique tin soldier! On the western rim of the Glarkan System, for over 200 zhargyears, Groggnart the shapeshifting bounty-bot has been doing all his unsavory bouny hunter activities, and with high productivity. With a single touch, his matter duplication application allows his to take the form of said thing no matter what it is. Those Transformer guys? He eats them up with a side of tapioca pudding and pure badness. Not literally, but still, you know. One day, however, he was assigned by his current employer to go allllll the way to a place called Earth for a job. If there's one thing that Return of the Jedi taught you besides "ewoks don't play," it's that jerky ominous bounty hunters always get their comeuppance. That applies to this, too. After a malfunction in his hovering tech while on said job, he went plummeting down to the surface of Earth below, landing directly on a tin soldier for sale at a holiday garage sale. Now, due to making such intense impact, he is indefinitely stuck shapeshifted as the antique figure, causing shame amongst his fellow criminal folk. I know a collector that would love to get his hands on this guy, but unfortunately he's in a different expanded universe's outer space.

#230: Benny Bigsocks: The Christmas Folk Hero

    Okay, time for the 6th character of ye old 12 Characterz of Christmas: Benny Bigsocks! The holiday season is full of most excellent bearded gents, but one of those gents you probably haven't heard of, not being from the JC-Verse and all: the great American folk legend, Benny Bigsocks. Being the large man that he was, Benny wore shirts big enough to use as winter sheets and gloves big enough to wear as trendsetting hats, but the part of his attire that he outgrew most often was his socks. Ahead of his time as far as recycling, he passed them onto the younglings of his town, for them to grow into over time and wear. But there was one problem with that: the "growing into" part. His squatch-like qualities were not shared by his fellow townspeople, so the kids left the unfunctional footwear lying around. But on Christmas day, the kids woke up to an abundance of knickknacks stuffed in these socks by St. Nick! Ol' Bigsocks began to make a profit off of his own growthspurts, and the traditon of the stocking was born. It's a rock fact! (A shiny doubloon to anyone who gets that reference.)

#229: Gary the Ornament

     Today, my comrades, was my birthday! I am now 14, which fingers crossed is one year closer to my amazing future as a famous filmmaker with a pet half-camel-half-alpaca. Okay, time for the 5th character in the 12 Characterz of Christmas: Gary the Ornament! Think about it: being an ornament isn't the greatest gig. You get your time in the spotlight once every year for a few weeks and are then stuffed back into a box. Not to mention the prickly pine needles poking at you for those several weeks. But Gary is an optimist. So year 'round, he looks at his gig on the branches as a cup of eggnog half full. With a sweetspot on the branch right above Kevin the Heart and to the upper left of the Kringle triplets, this bubbly bauble hums his holiday ditties with glee and waves his imaginary hand at the people of the house as they pass by. (PS, sorry for the black-&-white nature of this post, folks. I'll upload a colored version later, but we're going to see The Force Awakens tomorrow morning, and my mom wants me to get some shut-eye before I have my geek mind completely blown.)

"Hey, guys!" "What." "You wanna hear another classic carol?" "No. Nadda. Never." "Well, if you insist!"

#228: The Keeper of the Globe

     Christmas break has finally begun, friends! Now I can finally focus fully (Holy alliteration, Batman!) on the 12 Characterz of Christmas and start posting them daily. As nature intended. So, without further ado, Christof: the Keeper of the Globe! You probably wouldn't expect that a scruffy old coat-wearing nomad with a snowglobe in hand is one of the most important people in the world. Well, such a man is, and has been for over a thousand years. Allow me to shed some light on this fact. His name is Christof, and for said years he has been intrusted with the position of Keeper of the Globe. Not "globe" as in the enourmous ol' space sphere on which we currently dwell, but as in, well, a snowglobe. No more or less fancy-shmancy than the average one you see sitting atop a shop shelf every holiday season - or the plastic one you snatched up as a last second souvenir on a family getaway. But none of that matters, for what truly does is summed up by a single word displayed on the front of its bronze-colored base. Joy. Inside that snowglobe is the spirit of Christmas itself, the internal glow each non-Scroogey heart experiences when the trees are getting gussied up and your favorite carols are playing on the radio each December. This spirit warms you no matter where you are, and Christof is its guardian, roaming the globe and keeping it safe and sound in his hands. So, if you ever see this man walking down your street, bundled up in his oh-so-familar coat with a globe in hand, thank him for me. The guy deserves it.

#227: Jingles McJustice

     Okay, time for the next character in the 12 Characterz of Christmas: Jingles McJustice! For some people, coal just isn't enough. That's when Jingles comes in. Long ago in the holiday seasons of old (AKA the early 2000s), this diminutive defender once worked as a toy-assembler for our polar pal, Santa Clause. But unfortunately, he was considered a bit too . . . um . . . hard core for the workplace environment, so they let him go. They weren't wrong: apart from his standpoint on naughtiness, he also petitioned to have a newborn reindeer named "Thrashem," and kept taking the liberty to build plastic nunchaku instead of jump ropes. But he was good. He didn't need some cushy job to earn a living, because he knew what really pays in this world. And that's sheer justice. So nowadays, he's taking it to the streets, with a sugary sword in hand and the good fight on his mind. Naughtiness doesn't pay, punks.

#225 & #226: Penguin & Polar Bear: A Most Excellent Duo

    Slap on a preferably oversized Santa hat and stuff an unhealthy holiday goodie into your yaptrap, because it's time for the 12 Characterz of Christmas! Sorry for starting a bit late this year, but a lot of my time was spent setting up the blog's new arcade holiday jams I got via the Youtube channel 8-Bit Universe! SkyStar approves. Anyway, time for our first two characters of the season: Penguin and Polar Bear! The hub of awesomeness in the North Pole may be Santa's workshop, but there is still much tubularness to be found elsewhere. And by elsewhere, of course, I mean the most radical igloo crib of best buddies Penguin Thompson and Polar Bear Nelson! For most of the year, these bros spend their time chowing down on Fish Pops, rockin' the heck out of their weapons of song, and just generally annoying the "square" adult animals of their icy town. But this year is different. While flipping the channels one most chillaxable Christmastime afternoon, they saw a commercial for something they had never seen anything like before. Something called the New Year's Eve celebration in Time Square. A mondo crowd all in one place, on one night, waiting to have their socks blown off by the most triumphant of jams ever performed. They had just met their destiny. So now these below-zero brothers from the most different of mothers are on an excellent quest 'cross the globe, heading to NYC to fullfil their ultimate purpose of rocking the world! Chilly Bros for life, my friends. Chilly Bros for life.

#224: Noah Harkins & The Ectillican Squadron

     I think that, in life, we should all aspire to be as great as the tardigrade, also known as the water bear or moss piglet:

Anyway, speaking of tiny creatures, time for some new characters: Noah Harkins and the Ectillican Squadron! So, let's just assume that all atoms are microscopic solar systems - which they are - and that one of those micro-systems is called Ectillic and is inhabited by a bunch of self-governing, brightly colored creatures - which it is. Then what, per say, would happen if you spontanously woke up one day in this micro-system called Ectillic? No clue. I'm not a mindreader, people. But I can, however, tell you what went down when that happened to self-centered smart guy Noah Harkins! Having acquired Hawking-level fame in the normal-sized world for his elaboration on the modern atomic theory, Harkins was summoned to Ectillic by the local seer, the Wallowatcher, to be the "brains" of the system's first group of leaders: the Ectillican Squadron. At first, the mustachio'd man of science was ticked at his own inability to figure out how the ever-loving crud this was possible. But after getting to know his new teammates and beginning to realize how much bigger - or ironically smaller - the universe is than himself, Noah Harkins joined the Squadron, and their cause of finally bringing order and justice to Ectillic. As well as some serious 'stache game.

(LEFT TO RIGHT: Noah's teammates Zornicc and Shaugg, Noah Harkins in the flesh, another one of his teammates Drallic, and the all-powerful Wallowatcher just passin' through.)

SPIDER-MAN MCU FAN ART BECAUSE I'M OBSESSED.

     I've come to the realization that their isn't enough good MCU Spider-Man fan art out there on the world-wide web (cheesy pun not intended). So, considering I already draw MCU Spidey costumes in my spare time, because I'm too obsessed for my own good, I've decided to post my own official version. Hopefully this will help quench the Civil War thirst. That is, until we all rush madly to the theaters to see it in May.

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#223: Detective Ray Kennicot

     The Mustache Ninja and I have officially started watching the wonderful hypster-trip oddity that is Adventure Time. We're starting from episode one, which sadly means I'll have to wait 3 seasons to watch Lemongrab/learn to impersonate Lemongrab/annoy MN with my impersonation of Lemongrab. Anyway, time for a new, slightly Twilight Zone-esque character: Ray Kennicot! Ray was 38 and he'd never had the pleasure of owning a fancy car, nor had he ever stared up at the towering buildings of the big cities far east. But in his years, he had been body snatched twice, and had once seen a UFO lift a house clean off its foundation up on Solomun Street. These experiences come about when you're the town private investigator; especially when said town is the most peculiar locale the world had never known: Flummox, Texas. The nature of visits from the Skymen had once been so nice, with the occasional coded scribblings in the crops and whatnot to keep those who were watching closely entertained. But something had changed. People were dissappearing, and the lot that wasn't had high possibilities of being controlled by the extraterrestrial sons o' guns. Whether they knew it or not, the townsfolk needed someone willing to get involved, to snoop around where he/she didn't belong to figure out exactly what on Earth was happening. Luckily, that was a skill Ray prided himself on. So from then on Detective Kennicot was hot on the case - and I'd tell you more, but it's his job to snoop, not ours.