Truth be told, the inspiration came to me while at church, the sermon had me thinking about other things and I can rationalize my wandering thoughts as it least they were about Christmas.

As the light streamed though the Tiffany stained glass windows that July day, it suddenly hit me why not a Christmas Card with heroes caroling? I guess I should have been paying more attention to the sermon but at least I was thinking about a holy day.

Anyway,it was pretty easy to figure out which archers; my favorite Avenger,Hawkeye and my favorite DC character, Green Arrow.

What was debatable was who to pair them with? Green Arrow was easy, it would be Black Canary, the only other contender would be the 60s version of Miss Arrowette, but when you think of Ollie, you think of Black Canary.

Hawkeye was a bit more difficult, he has had two major romances in his career, Natasha and Bobbi Morse. There was no way I was going to use the simple Black/Romita design for the Black Widow and the fishnet uniform from the 30-40s issue of the Original run of the Avengers seems a bit too similar to Dinah's uniform.

Then it hit me Hawkeye had been married to Mockingbird (Ollie had married Dinah)and now I could have two avian named characters singing... perfect!!!

Now onto uniforms, Green Arrow, no problem...the Neal Adams design, one of the best uniforms ever!, Black Canary...the popular Golden/Silver Age uniform. As for Hawkeye, I have a preference for the Don Heck second revision of the Hawkeye uniform, the look in the teen issues of the Avengers is just a tad different than his original appearance in Tales of Suspense 57.

I am not a fan of the John Buscema revision from the Heck tunic to an elongated breechcloth and the Sal Buscema change to Hawkeye's mask to a simpler,easier design to draw, Heck's original complex design was great, harder to draw,but really neat.

So that left Mockingbird, this was a pretty easy choice, this is a Christmas Card and they were going to be outside in the winter caroling so the revealing, skimpy Mockingbird uniform was out. As was the mullet hairstyle she was burdened with during the Byrne years of West Coast Avengers.

There was never any doubt of what the location would be, the Cathedral of Boston, Fenway Park. A vacation trip took me outside Fenway and you can see the image I shot for reference to be used by Allan Goldman in the final color version gallery. This also allowed me to do what I have in most of my Christmas Cards, reference the city of Boston or my beloved Red Sox.

So now came the next part, who to draw the art? What was key was...who could do the characters justice and also do the complex background of Fenway Park.

I approached one artist and after waiting almost three years I decided it was time to move on. Allan Goldman had done an incredible Justice Society Commission for me where he added an incredible amount of detail in the background without my asking for it, so he was the man.

The Man indeed, Allan hit it out of the park and now came the colorist, Glenn Whitmore had done a me a lovely favor time time back, so this was the perfect opportunity to send him a paying commission.

That is the background to this years card the only thing I can add is...

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

12-25-16

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