Month: December 2016

It’s that time again to round up the comics I consider the best and most interesting of the year. Please feel free to agree, disagree, and recommend others in the comments below. 

30. 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank

By Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss
Black Mask Studios

In an end of the year list, I don’t usually include comics that are only a couple of issues into their run—but it only took one issue of this comic to make an impression on me and on many other readers, it seems, who took a chance on it. 4 Kids is one of two books on this list that fit the mold of “comics that will appeal to Stranger Things fans” even though it chooses to play with crime fiction instead of supernatural clichés. Rosenberg’s smart and funny dialogue reads like a Quentin Tarantino film starring a group of nerdy, D&D-playing kids who end up trying to pull off a bank heist while Boss’ quaint cartooning style and complex page layouts are evocative of a Wes Anderson film.

29. On a Sunbeam

By Tillie Walden
Onasunbeam.com

This September, 20-year-old Tillie Walden won the coveted Promising New Talent Ignatz award at the Small Press Expo for one of two graphic novels she released last year. Right after receiving the award, she began self-publishing a new webcomic called On a Sunbeam and within a few months had posted over 300 pages. It is a sci-fi comic that is split into two separate narratives, both about a girl named Mia, but showing her at different stages of her life: one as she begins a job restoring old buildings in space and the other as a teenager in boarding school (which is also in space). Walden draws beautiful architecture and is adept at conveying the melodramatic emotions of young love, two things her new comic gives her plenty of chances to do.

28. What Is Obscenity?

By Rokudenashiko; edited by Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins
Koyama Press

Megumi Igarashi (a.k.a. Rokudenashiko) was arrested and found guilty by a Japanese court for distributing obscene material when she shared a digital file online that could be used to make a 3-D printing of her vagina. This manga telling of her experience in jail is funny, engaging, and eye-opening.

27. The Nib

Edited by Matt Bors
Thenib.com

Obviously, 2016 will be remembered as the most insane election year ever, but thankfully The Nib returned from hiatus in time to see it out. Originally part of Medium.com, the progressive collective of editorial, non-fiction and journalism comics curated by Matt Bors found a new home and returned with a bang to cover and comment on the election. Some highlights include KC Green taking his “This is Fine” dog back from its fate as an overused meme, Ruben Bolling’s Calvin & Hobbes parody “Donald & John,” Sarah Glidden’s reporting on the Jill Stein campaign, and some very good non-election comics like Sarah Winifred Searle’s comic about body types and how they’re represented in media.

26. Tetris: The Games People Play

By Box Brown
First Second

Box Brown has developed a niche for making non-fiction graphic novels about 1980s pop culture starting with his 2014 biography of Andre the Giant and his latest is about of the most addictive video game ever made. It is a surprisingly complicated tale of corporate wrongdoing, creator rights issues and communism that shows how the idea came from a software engineer in Moscow who originally shared it as freeware. Once it got past the Iron Curtain it went viral and corporations like Nintendo began double-crossing each other to get the rights to it. Brown rewinds all the way back to the dawn of man to illustrate our natural fascination with creating art and playing games and shows how that fascination would eventually evolve into a multi-billion dollar industry.

25. Spider-Woman #5

By Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez
Marvel Comics

Superhero comics are usually not where you’d look for thoughtful and realistic portrayals of parenting, and Spider-Woman, a comic whose recent claim to fame was a questionable cover that caused a media backlash, may seem especially unexpected. Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez are way beyond that controversy, though. With the book’s recent re-launch, Jessica Drew is a pregnant superhero (who refuses to tell anyone the identity of the father) and in the fifth issue, it hit a high point: the baby has been born and Jessica is now adjusting to being a single, working mom. This issue is something really special, full of knowing laughs and heartwarmingly real moments that any new parent will recognize, and Jessica’s embrace of being a single mom by choice is especially unique and refreshing.

24. Deathstroke

By Christopher Priest, Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz and Jeromy Cox
DC Comics

Veteran writer Christopher Priest stepped away from comics over 10 years ago but never intended to be away that long. After becoming a fan favorite on books like Black Panther in the ‘90s, the African American writer began to continuously turn down offers to write black superheroes, finding that these were the only books he was being considered for. When DC began their “Rebirth” initiative this year, Priest got a call to write a new Deathstroke book which he found intriguing and accepted not only because Deathstroke is white but because he is not a hero.

Priest’s long-awaited return to comics has not disappointed. He uses a broken chronological narrative, morally shaded characters and a dry sense of humor to reintroduce this old Teen Titans villain. DC’s new “Rebirth” comics have been mostly excellent so far but Deathstroke is one of its best.

23. Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq

By Sarah Glidden
Drawn & Quarterly

In 2011, Sarah Glidden traveled to Turkey, Syria, and Iraq with a group of journalist friends to interview refugees in hopes of finding a story to tell. Glidden finds her own unique hook by choosing to document the act of creating journalism, showing us the behind-the-scenes decisions journalists make, the technical process of interviewing and the hopes and fears about how their stories will impact their subjects and the people they are hoping to inform. Comics journalism has become Glidden’s passion (this year she also published a comic about her time spent traveling with the Jill Stein presidential campaign) and at a time when journalism is becoming more important than ever, this is a fascinating look at how you report the truth.

22. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye

By Sonny Liew
Pantheon

When this book was first released, some reviewers were fooled into thinking it was really a career retrospective of a famous Singaporean cartoonist. In fact, what makes it so astounding is that it is 320 pages of comics, sketches, life drawings, and paintings convincingly created by Sonny Liew to invent a lifetime’s worth of work. Liew (Dr. Fate, The Shadow Hero) uses the fictional life of Charlie Chan Hock Chye to tell the history and evolution of mid-to-late century comics, while mixing in the social and political history of Singapore. Liew’s commentary on political activism led the government to revoke a national grant given to him to make the book yet it has sold through multiple print runs in that country.

21. Monstress

By Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Image Comics

Set in a steampunk 19th century Asia full of cute animal/children hybrids, talking cats, Lovecraftian monstrosities and a matriarchal society in which women have all the power and men barely factor into the story, Liu and Takeda have done an amazing amount of world-building so far in their new series. Monstress follows a young slave named Maika whose life was torn apart in a great war and she now harbors a destructive and awesome power within her body that makes her a strategic object to be sought after.

Takeda’s gothic, art-deco influenced artwork is absolutely stunning to behold and the epic fantasy that she and Liu are putting together here is complex and brutally violent.

20. Secret Wars

By Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribic and Paul Renaud
Marvel Comics

The nine-issue mini-series at the heart of an epic event that effectively destroyed the Marvel Universe and upended its entire publishing line for over four months had the most massive scope of any crossover book Marvel has ever published. I’m not even talking about the dozens of tie-in series that supported the main story. Writer Jonathan Hickman spent 44 issues of Avengers and 33 issues of New Avengers concurrently to build up to this story, but it’s even bigger than that. He uses this series to satisfy plot points he planted in nearly every Marvel title he has written over the past seven years. If you’re a fan of the “Hickman-verse,” this was a great end to his long run in the Marvel Universe. For everyone else, Secret Wars works as a beautifully illustrated swan song for the Fantastic Four, who, once this book was complete, would find their own series cancelled for the first time in Marvel history.

19. Rules for Dating My Daughter

By Mike Dawson
Uncivilized Books

Dawson has a wonderfully relatable way of pondering and sometimes agonizing over subjects that progressively minded parents will empathize with: trying to be a feminist dad; the ethics of teaching your kids to eat meat; gun control and school shootings; there’s even one comparing the class values of Charles Dickens with the Disney Jr. show Sofia the First. Dawson has been successful shifting from writing longform narrative comics to putting out shorter, topical non-fiction pieces. His opinions are nuanced and well thought out, and his cartooning, even on pieces that he meant to be quick and loose are creative and expertly drawn.

18. Rosalie Lightning/We All Wish For Deadly Force

By Tom Hart/Leela Corman
St. Martin’s Press/Retrofit Comics

In 2011, Tom Hart and Leela Corman experienced the worst horror a parent could ever face when their 1-year-old daughter Rosalie unexpectedly passed away. Being cartoonists, both utilized their disciplines as a coping mechanism to help make sense of this awful tragedy. Hart worked through his emotions in real time through his webcomic Rosalie Lightning which was collected this year into a hardcover. It is a gutwrenching read, one whose purpose seems so therapeutic it is almost as if it is not meant for others to read. Drawn with so much raw emotion it looks practically scrawled onto the page.

Meanwhile, Corman explored her own grief through a comic called “PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals” that she originally published in Nautilus and was included in her short comics collection We All Wish For Deadly Force. In it she describes the pain of “coming back to life after losing my first child” and delves into the science behind Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while offering hope and inspiration to victims of trauma.

17. Superman: American Alien

By Max Landis with various artists
DC Comics

The best Superman comic since 2005’s All Star Superman once again retells the Man of Steel’s origin (thankfully without any Krypton scenes this time) in a way that manages to be contemporary and edgy yet with the heroic ideals that should always be at the heart of the character. Filmmaker Max Landis teamed with a different big name artist (Joelle Jones, Jae Lee, Nick Dragotta, Jock, Tommy Lee Edwards, Francis Manapul, and Jonathan Case) for each chapter of this mini-series. It begins with Clark Kent as a boy discovering his powers and leads towards Superman’s early days in Metropolis and the revelation to the world that he is an alien. This version of Clark Kent is not the corn-fed innocent we’re used to (he does well with girls and gets into some trouble with his high school friends) but this isn’t an overly cynical attempt to make the character more flawed and gritty for modern audiences. It’s a really enjoyable remix of the mythos with some surprising twists and interesting new relationships between Clark, Lois, and even the other heroes in the DC Universe.

16. Becoming Unbecoming

By Una
Arsenal Pulp Press

The author, working under the pseudonym “Una,” grew up in Northern England in the 1970s while the Yorkshire Ripper was on a murdering spree, killing 13 women, most of whom were prostitutes. The amount of time it took for the police to get serious about catching a serial killer that seemed to prey on sexually active women is a symptom of the problem Una delves into in this dark, brave, and creatively ambitious work. As a victim of both sexual violence and “slut-shaming” by peers at an impressionable and damaging young age, it has taken many years for Una to confront her own experiences and to find a way to talk about the violence and emotional trauma that men inflict on women. She originally never intended this book to be read by anyone else but it is brilliant, revealing and brave in a way that just may help other women.

15. Plutona

By Emi Lenox, Jeff Lemire and Jordie Bellaire
Image Comics

A group of kids hanging out in the woods stumble across a dead body that turns out to be Plutona, the world’s greatest superhero. What should they do? Who should they tell? Their disagreement about what to do next will drive a wedge between all of them. Lemire, one of the most prolific creators in comics, provides the script for a story written and drawn by Emi Lenox of the popular webcomic Emitown (Lemire also draws a backup feature about Plutona’s final adventure before her death). This is a haunting series whose strength is derived from Lenox’s clear and bold cartooning style and her perfectly realized characters, all of whom look and feel like real kids.

14. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

By Ryan North, Erica Henderson and Rico Renzi
Marvel Comics

Marvel’s most unique comic is also one of its most crowd pleasing. Geared towards a teen girl audience that superhero comics rarely aim for and even more rarely succeed with, it stars a female protagonist who looks nothing like comics’ usual hyper-idealized super heroines and is written and drawn with a sense of humor and irreverence that is more often found in webcomics. That’s the world where North and Henderson came from and they bring that fresh, welcome, Tumblr-friendly approach to the more mainstream Marvel. This year has featured a time travel story with Doctor Doom, a choose-your-own-adventure issue and even an original graphic novel in which Squirrel Girl’s evil doppleganger takes on every hero in the Marvel Universe.

13. Nod Away

By Joshua Cotter
Fantagraphics

In the near future of Nod Away, the internet has been replaced by a telepathically streamed “innernet”; the public becomes outraged when is revealed that the network was powered by the brain of a little girl. Dr. Melody McCabe is assigned to an international space station with the task of developing a new source while somewhere on a desolate alien landscape, a bearded and disheveled man awakens and begins a journey. Cotter’s first book since 2010’s experimental Driven by Lemons, the first in a multi-part series, fuses technical sci-fi, humor, strong character development and psychedelic explorations of the nature of consciousness in a captivating way.

12. Panther

By Brecht Evens
Drawn & Quarterly

What looks on the surface to be a whimsical and colorful children’s book about a young girl and a talking panther who visits her bedroom, reveals a dark underside that will slowly get under your skin as it goes along. Young Christine is mourning the death of her cat when she receives a visit from the charming panther but it is the reader, not Christine, who begins to pick up on his unspeakable ulterior motives. The Cat in the Hat quality that Belgian artist Brecht Evens invokes belies and unsettling chaotic chill that you won’t be able to shake once you’re done reading.

11. The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo

By Drew Weing
First Second

One of the best webcomics of the past few years is now available in a print format ideal for reading with your kids. Tough but diminutive Margo Maloo is a monster mediator in Echo City who helps ease grievances when the local monsters lose their cool with the humans that are gentrifying their neighborhood. When Charles and his parents move to the city to restore a rundown tenement apartment, one of those monsters ends up in Charles’ closet, leading him to require Margo’s services. Kids will love Weing’s wonderful, cross-hatched monsters and Margo’s no-nonsense expertise in handling them.

10. The Flintstones

By Mark Russell, Steve Pugh and Chris Chuckry
DC Comics

Yes, I’m serious. A Flintstones comic is in the top 10. When DC Comics took on the Hanna-Barbera license, no one expected much from the comics they’d produce, especially when they seemed to be aiming for a gritty, modern spin on these classic kids cartoons. However, Russell, just off his critically acclaimed reboot of Prez the Teenage President is a breakout star who, with Pugh, a superhero artist with a style you would think wouldn’t fit the material here, took everyone off guard with this smart and darkly funny socio-political satire. So far the series has tackled subjects like marriage equality, religion, PTSD, consumerism and elections in smart and surprising ways while reintroducing all the fan-favorite characters like Dino and the Great Gazoo.

9. Black Hammer

By Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston and Dave Stewart
Dark Horse Comics

What happens to superheroes after they’ve been retconned out of existence? The heroes of Black Hammer end up trapped in a quiet rural town in a parallel universe after a “Crisis”-like multiversal event and are forced to live for over a decade under a maddening and stifling guise of normalcy. Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Colonel Weird, Madame Dragonfly, and Barbalien are stand-ins for a variety of recognizable comic book character types from the Golden Age through the Modern Age. Their prickly relationships with each other as they’ve devolved from heroic super team to bitter, dysfunctional family adds some dark humor to an ominous story about being trapped.

Lemire has been producing outstanding work for both Marvel and Valiant Comics this year but his creator-owned comics are even better, and this book in particular, with Ormston and Stewarts’ creepy, understated visuals is one of his best yet.

8. Sheriff of Babylon

By Tom King and Mitch Gerads
DC Vertigo

Tom King draws on his experience as a CIA officer stationed in Iraq to tell this story of an American contractor who finds himself siding with an Iraqi policeman and a former exile turned crime lord to solve the murder of an Iraqi police cadet. Set in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, it is rich with authenticity and gravitas thanks not only to King’s expertise, but to the realism of Mitch Gerads’ artwork. Unbelievably, this is just one of the multiple excellent books King has been responsible for this year and, as part of DC Vertigo’s new wave of titles, it is bringing a renewed significance to the imprint.

7. Spidey Zine

By Hannah Blumenreich
Self-published

In today’s Marvel Comics, Peter Parker is in his 30s and is the CEO of his own research company. He’s no longer what most people picture when they think of their ideal version of Spider-man. In Hannah Blumenreich’s fan comics though (which she posts to Tumblr and compiles some of them into a PDF zine you can download for any price you choose), Peter Parker is still in high school. He falls behind in his school work, gets beat by girls in basketball, always has time for people in need, loves his Aunt May and if you give him a chance he’ll chew your ear off about Gilmore Girls or some other TV show for hours. This is just about the most perfect Spider-man you can ask for and it’s just hard to believe that Marvel hasn’t hired Blumenreich yet.

6. Patience

By Dan Clowes
Fantagraphics

Clowes’s first new graphic novel in five years combines his penchant for disaffected outsider protagonists with nostalgia for 1950s genre comics. Jack and Patience are young, just married and about to become parents when an intruder takes the life of Jack’s wife and his unborn baby. Thirty years later, Jack has the opportunity to travel back in time and stop this from happening but does his artless tinkering with Patience’s past only make things worse? Full of causal loops, trippy time travel and unabashed misanthropy, this is about as Clowesian as Clowes gets, a fun yet disturbing read.

5. Hilda and the Stone Forest

By Luke Pearson
Nobrow Press

The Hilda series of children’s graphic novels will likely get the mainstream recognition it deserves in 2018 when it becomes an animated show on Netflix. In the meantime, the fifth book in this consistently fantastic series about a precocious young girl with a healthy curiosity and empathy for the variety of creatures that populate her small village focuses on Hilda’s relationship with her single mom as the two get lost together in the troll-infested Stone Forest. Hilda’s relationship with her mom has always been the heart of this series but in this volume we see how her mom is always trying to navigate between being a friend and being a mother, a balance that most moms can probably relate to. Pearson is skilled at capturing wonderful little character moments and employing hilarious visual gags. Hilda is one of the greatest characters out there for adventurous young girls to read.

4. Paper Girls

By Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang
Image Comics

Before there was Stranger Things (and really just a few months before), there was Paper Girls, a nostalgia-driven throwback to the 1980s that trades Stranger’s boys on bicycles and horror film tropes for girls on bicycles and sci-fi tropes. Set in 1988, a group of 12-year old paper delivery girls find themselves caught up in an adventure involving time travel, aliens, monsters and the end of the world. Vaughn (Saga, Y: The Last Man) is a master at game-changing plot twists and knowing pop culture references. For Chiang, a longtime DC Comics artist, this is his first creator-owned series, and his sense of drama and characterization makes this read like one of those classic Spielbergian kids’ adventure films it is giving a nod to.

3. Ghosts

By Raina Telgemeier
Scholastic

The most popular graphic novelist of the 21st century took some chances with her highly anticipated new book. Moving away from the memoir format of the now-classic Smile and Sisters that made her a staple on the NY Times Bestseller list, Telgemeier dips into supernatural fiction with a more diverse cast of characters. Ghosts is still focused on family and particularly sibling relationships but also looks to deal with a tough subject for any all-ages book to cover: death.

When Maya and Cat’s parents move them to Northern California where the sea air will hopefully be beneficial for Maya who is suffering from cystic fibrosis. In their new town, they learn about Día de los Muertos and come face to face with the actual spirits which causes Cat to have to acknowledge her sister’s own mortality. It’s a risky book and Telgemeier is at the point in her career where she’s ready to push to new levels and bring her loyal audience along for the ride.

2. Vision

By Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Jordie Bellaire
Marvel Comics

Tom King has had an astounding year. He has two books on this list and also became the writer for DC’s bestselling comic Batman. The 12-issue Vision mini-series is his best work yet and expands on a successful formula Marvel first landed on with 2012’s Hawekeye—a glimpse at what passes for a normal life when a superhero is off-duty. For the synthezoid Avenger, achieving a “normal” life for himself requires building a wife, two teenage children and a dog and establishing residence in the suburbs. When his wife, Virginia, murders a super villain who threatens the safety of their home, maintaining the sanctity of their domestic life gets harder and harder.

The brilliance of this book is how it uses so many familiar tropes (the often-absent and unaware father, the hyper-protective mother, the quietly rebellious daughter and the eager to please son) but coldly performed by the analytical Vision family. Even as they calculate their every move in an effort to fit in and play their parts, they inevitably succumb to the same pain and tragedy that any “normal” family would. This is a star-making book for Gabriel Hernandez Walta as well who, with Jordie Bellaire, brings a gorgeous and somber realism to King’s almost philosophical and heartbreaking script.

1. March: Book Three

By Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Top Shelf Comics

Each volume of Rep. John Lewis’ graphic novel memoir about his experience as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement released over the past three years has landed with increasing cultural relevance. The third and final volume came out during a bitter election year noteworthy for Black Lives Matter protests, the rise of white nationalism, and numerous incidents of unarmed black men being shot by police. Book Three begins with a shocking scene set inside the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 just before a bomb kills four young black girls. It retells horrific incidents of nonviolent protests being met with brutal violence and builds towards the triumph of the march from Selma to Montgomery that would lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Lewis’s gripping and informative life story will be taught in history classes for years to come but it also should be noted that the way Powell depicts these events with intense drama that never sacrifices historic accuracy is so perfectly achieved that it will probably be taught in art classes as well.

Real-world, 21st century people like us will (probably) never get to experience the joy of watching a dinosaur or dragon hatch from an egg. Luckily, Firebox has the next best thing: Egg-shaped candles that reveal baby dragons and dinosaurs as they melt. Now you can become a proud reptilian parent, without the hassle of becoming Khaleesi or running a futuristic dinosaur amusement park. In fact, you can have both egg versions, because for a limited time, they’re buy one, get one half off.

Both eggs stand at 14 centimeters tall (5.5 inches) and hold small porcelain figurines inside. As the candles burn, the figures emerge dramatically from the flames, covered in black soot (don’t worry—it wipes off easily when cooled). The dragon egg randomly yields a red, green, or black baby; the dinosaur egg always gives you a Velociraptor. Once you’re done with the candle, you can hang onto the toy as a keepsake. Just add both the dragon and dinosaur egg candles to your basket and the half-off deal will activate automatically.

For more cool candles, you can also check out our list.

This year, rock Secret Santa with ease. These 11 budget-friendly ideas are ideal for stocking stuffers, gift exchanges, and last-minute presents.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Thanks for helping us pay the bills!

1. BORMIOLI ROCCO SELECTA DECANTER; $10

Even those with the most discerning taste will appreciate this affordable, Italian-made decanter with matching stopper. Its elaborate cut-glass pattern gives an air of sophistication to any whiskey of choice and it’s even dishwasher-safe.

Find It: Amazon

2. SQUARE JELLYFISH MICRO TRIPOD; $10

Banish blurry photos and shaky video with this foldable tripod. The lightweight gadget is compatible with smartphones, mini tablets, and small cameras—and is perfect for the person who’s constantly capturing moments on the go.

Find It: Amazon

3. CRAFT BEER PRETZEL MIX; $10

An appetizing plan: Just add beer to this mix to create soft, salty pretzels in less than an hour. Include a beloved brew alongside this gift to really show you care. According to the markers, darker beers will create a heartier dough while lighter beers will add more of a citrus taste.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

4. TREE IN A BOX; $6

This tree kit includes everything your loved one will need to show off their green thumb, including a packet of tree seeds, a biodegradable peat pot, nutrient soil pellet, and a how-to guide packed with simple-to-follow steps. There are plenty of tree options available from sycamore to ponderosa pine.

Find It: Tree In A Box

5. OLIVER CHAMPAGNE CORK APPETIZER PLATE; $3

Serve up festive appetizer plates to your favorite holiday hostess. Each microwave-safe dish features a mixed-media illustration, like the one above which shows a stick figure marching with a champagne cork hat and toothpick baton.

Find It: CB2

6. SAKURA BLOSSOM BAR SOAP; $8

Give the gift of relaxation. Apple, citrus, and heliotrope create a calming combination, and best of all, this soap is vegan and cruelty-free.

Find It: Soap & Paper

7. “FRENCH PICNIC” SALT BLEND; $8

Ocean salt combined with mustard, garlic, and herbs makes this artisanal blend a must-have in any foodie’s kitchen. Sprinkle the homemade mix over veggies or chicken to transport taste buds to France. Other available options include the Magic Unicorn blend (salt, paprika, rosemary, and garlic) and Hot Steve (salt, cayenne, chipotle, orange, garlic, and smoked paprika).

Find It: Etsy

8. THE TOCCA TRY-IT KIT; $7

Shopping for a fickle fashionista can be tricky, so hedge your bets and give them four perfume options in this sampler kit from TOCCA. Each scent has its own signature mix with personality, from Emelia’s fruity zest of clementine and fig to Florence’s sophisticated florals of jasmine and iris.

Find It: Birchbox

9. BB-8 DROID COIN BANK; $10

Perfect for the Star Wars fan in your life, this ceramic bank is shaped like the BB-8 droid from The Force Awakens. The slot in the back makes saving for a rainy day easy, and all the painted details turn this bank into a fantastic addition to any Star Wars collection.

Find It: Amazon

10. TOASTER GRILLED CHEESE BAGS; $10

College kids and cheese sandwich-enthusiasts can up their grilled cheese game with these toaster bags. Slide a sandwich or leftover pizza slice into one of these bags and pop it in the toaster. The gooey contents are protected from becoming a burnt mess, thanks to the bags’ Teflon coating. Each bag is dishwasher-safe and lasts for 50 grilled cheese sandwiches.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

11. FUNKO’S POP! TV FIGURES; $7 AND UP

Help a friend or family member honor another year of standout television with these mini figurines. The collection includes characters from The Flash, The Walking Dead, Golden Girls, Game of Thrones (like Daenerys Targaryen, pictured above), and more.

Find It: Amazon

Why do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty? Tolkien gave them different languages, but we gave them stereotypes.
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Feynman’s Building Blocks of Thermodynamics. A simple analogy with a whimsical animation that’s easy to understand.
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Dark Tourism: A Trip to Slaughterhouse-Five. Germany walks a delicate line in promoting World War II tourism.
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The 50 best places to work in 2017, according to employees. Since happy workers don’t quit, they probably have few openings.  
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10 Holiday Gifts for the History Buff in Your Life. You won’t find these at your local stores.
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English for Beginners. It’s two steps forward and one step back, but this man is determined to communicate.  
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The truth about fake news is coming. Stories about established news outlets losing the public’s trust are a bit exaggerated.
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9 Secrets About Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean Ride. The nearly 50-year-old attraction has quite a history.

From Tamagotchis to Teddy Ruxpin, everyone remembers the coveted holiday toys of their childhood. Some parents stood in line for hours or paid premium prices for these sold-out items, while others simply waited out the hype (and the cost) to score one as a Christmas or Hanukkah gift.

Online shopping portal Ebates took a festive walk down memory lane and created the infographic below. It lists the most desirable children’s presents from 1983 and beyond, and even hints at which toy is likely the must-have item of 2016.

[h/t Entrepreneur]

This year, London’s East Village E20 is the perfect location to spruce up your beard with festive decorations and over-the-top trinkets. On Sunday, December 11, the neighborhood will host a stand at the Christmas Makers Market that will offer all the fixings for seasonal whiskers—including colorful lights. The yuletide makeover is totally free and available to anyone with a beard or pocket that needs a little extra cheer.

If you won’t be around for the holiday market, you can settle for purchasing some online.

[h/t Bored Panda]

Banner image courtesy of iStock.

Erik Sass is covering the events of the war exactly 100 years after they happened. This is the 259th installment in the series.

DECEMBER 6-7, 1916: FALL OF BUCHAREST, LLOYD GEORGE TO PM

Following the German Ninth Army’s storming of the southern Carpathian mountain passes in October-November 1916, outflanking the Romanian armies to the east, the country’s defeat was only a matter of time – and not much, as it turned out. Indeed Romania’s collapse came with remarkable speed as the dismal year closed out, yielding another big victory for the Central Powers and making the end of the war look further away than ever.

The autumn of 1916 saw the tides of war turn sharply against Romania, after it unwisely threw in its lot with the Allies in August: as General Falkenhayn’s Ninth Army poured in from the north, the Danube Army under August von Mackensen (commanding mostly Bulgarian and Turkish troops divided into two army detachments, East and West) attacked from the south, driving back the Bulgarian Third Army as well as belated reinforcements from the Russian Dobruja Army.

By early December the Central Powers were closing in on Bucharest, with Falkenhayn’s Ninth Army and Mackensen’s Danube Army converging on the Romanian capital from the west and south, respectively. The Romanian First Army launched one final, desperate counterattack in an attempt to cut the tightening noose at the Battle of the Argeș River from December 1-3, 1916, but were ultimately undone by the absence of reserves at the critical moment (as well as the Russians’ refusal to join the assault). This brave but futile effort barely delayed the advancing Central Powers forces at a cost of 60,000 Romanian casualties, including dead, wounded, and injured.

The approach of Mackensen’s Bulgarians to the outskirts of the Romanian capital replayed scenes now all too common from the war, with yet another panicked mass evacuation from a big European city, adding Bucharest to the list that already included Brussels, Antwerp, Warsaw, and Belgrade, among many others (top, German troops occupying Bucharest; below, German cavalry enter the city).

One eyewitness, Lady Kennard, a British noblewoman volunteering as a nurse with the Romanian Army, described the chaotic scene in Bucharest’s central station, where a train had been designated to evacuate foreign citizens to Jassy (Iași) in northeast Romania, with the unfortunate omission of an engine to pull it:

At the station we found a seething crowd and a strain standing, into which all Bucarest was trying to get… We found the station-master and told him that we were foreigners, and he led us through dark passages (by this time it was six o’clock) to a distant platform, where we found a long line of carriages, engineless, dark and locked. Apparently no notice had been received that foreigners and diplomats were really leaving.

An engine was finally located and the carriages unlocked, but their ordeal was just beginning. Kennard recalled conditions that, if not quite as bad as those experienced by troops in the battlefield, were still very trying by civilian standards:

The key arrived and we surged in, a seething mass of people, moving in waves. The doors were banged on the coat-tails of the last man in, and the train started before we had even formed a proper queue in the passage. Most of the women were offered seats, the rest of the passengers stood or lay on the floor amongst the baggage; there was no water, there was no light, there was no food… One man had bought a string of sausages during those last frantic minutes at the Bucarest station, and a Russian officer produced some bread and a little chocolate. This is all the food that fourteen peopled shared for twenty hours!

With the ragged Romanian First Army beating a hasty retreat to the northeast as well, on December 6, 1916 Bucharest fell to German troops after scattered fighting, beginning two years of occupation and hardship for its residents. Of course the situation was little better for those who fled, with thousands of civilian refugees starving or dying of disease amid the chaotic retreat. Worse, the survivors were crammed into the remaining unconquered provinces of the kingdom’s rural northeast, a backwards region with primitive infrastructure and inadequate housing.

Romania’s Queen Marie, who lost her infant son to disease just as the final retreat began, remembered the horror of these months:

Those who have never seen them have no notion of what Rumanian roads can become in winter, of how difficult is all circulation, how communication becomes an effort almost beyond human strength – and this winter was a winter of terrible snow and frost. Part of our army had to be quartered in small, miserable villages, cut off from everything, buried in snow, transports were almost impossible, untold of hardships had to be borne… Food was scarce, hardly any wood for heating, soap was a thing almost not to be found, linen was a luxury of better days – illness in every form broke out amongst the soldiers and many died before we could give sufficient aid!

As with any hastily improvised movement of masses of people, accidents happened – with gruesome results. Later in December Lady Kennard described the fate of a train full of refugees that plunged off the rails:

Last night we visited at sunset such a scene of horror as can never, and should never, be described. A train from Bucarest – the last to start… – collided and derailed… No one knows how many hundreds died there by the roadside, some in the flames of the engine’s exploded petrol tank, the greater number crushed into one huge formless mass of flesh and horse-hair, splintered bones and wood.

Kennard added that this was just the final horror endured by the hapless refugees:

The train had started from the capital three whole days before. Family groups clustered on the roofs of carriages… Many died prematurely from exposure, and the few survivors from the final tragedy told nightmare stories of children’s corpses brushed past the carriage windows when the train swept under bridges whose height no one had had the though to measure mentally before they braved the roof.

As Romania’s armies collapsed, Romanian and Allied officials scrambled to deny the country’s wealth of natural resources to the enemy – especially its supplies of petroleum, the largest in Europe (outside Russia’s Caucasus region), which were critical as a source of both fuel and industrial lubricants. Conscious of the growing food shortages afflicting the Central Powers, they also worked to destroy huge quantities of wheat and other grain.

The project of wrecking the Romanian oilfields was organized by a British engineer and member of Parliament, Colonel John Norton-Griffiths, who traveled to Romania and led a team of foreigners and locals in a desperate campaign of large-scale industrial sabotage. Using techniques like filling wells with cement and setting them on fire, Norton-Griffiths and his men managed to destroy 70 refineries and 800,000 tons of oil, or roughly 3.5 million barrels (below, oil wells burning). However with typical efficiency the Germans were able to return many of the wells to service within six months.

The wrecking campaign, unfolding amidst the chaos of a general retreat and mass refugee movements, certainly made for some spectacular scenes. Yvonne Fitzroy, volunteering with a group of Scottish nurses in Romania, recalled the sights as they fled a burning town in eastern Romania in her diary entry on December 8, 1916:

As soon as carriage was past, we got the door open again. The horizon was in a blaze, oil-tanks, granaries, strawstacks, everything burnable was set light to. It was very terrible and very beautiful. Peasants, men, women, and children were running alongside the train in a panic, trying to clamber into the already overcrowded trucks, others had given up the struggle, and collapsed by the side of the line, or had settled down into that familiar dogged tramp with the blazing sky behind them.

LLOYD GEORGE REPLACES ASQUITH

Meanwhile December 7, 1916 saw the Great War claim yet another political casualty, as British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, who had presided over Britain’s entry into the conflict, resigned amid growing criticism of his handling of the war effort. He was replaced by David Lloyd, the Welsh Radical who had previously served as Secretary of State for War, and before that Minister of Munitions (below).

Lloyd George had first joined the government as Minister of Munitions in the spring of 1915, when Asquith was forced to reshuffle his cabinet and form a coalition government by the “shell crisis,” a scandal involving ammunition shortages in the early part of the war. Lloyd George’s energetic maneuvering subsequently helped depose Sir John French, replaced by Douglas Haig as commander of the British Expeditionary Force, and sideline Secretary of State Lord Kitchener (whom Lloyd George succeeded after his death in June 1916).

By now however the fiery Welshman had come to view Asquith himself as the main obstacle to the successful prosecution of the war – in large part because the Prime Minister was more given to plodding deliberation, preferring to adjudicate disputes between rival factions rather than take a position himself. This approach was reflected in the unwieldy War Committee, a special group intended to take executive control of the war effort, which had however ballooned from its original three members to sometimes over a dozen participants, and tended to defer more decisions than it made.

Beginning in November 1916 Lloyd George engineered the overthrow of Asquith with help from political allies including the Unionists (who advocated Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom) Bonar Law and Edward Carson, as well as Law’s ambitious young protégé Max Aitken. In the end it was a palace coup, revealed to a mostly unsuspecting public when On December 7, 1916, King George V asked Lloyd George to form a new government.

Lloyd George would see the British war effort through to the end, and played a major role in crafting the punitive Treaty of Versailles, which many historians believe set the stage for the Second World War. In the short term, however, his appointment was viewed as another indication that the war was destroying the old political order – and there was no end in sight. One ordinary soldier, Edwin Abbey, an American volunteering with the Canadian Army in France, wrote in a letter to his mother on December 10, 1916:

We have a tendency, I think, to be too optimistic and too comfortable and sure of things. That is especially so in England. As a matter of fact, though we shall win in the end, there is struggle and bitterness ahead for us all. I think the new English Premier will be a great advantage to us. Every one has been inspired with his ability to get ahead with things. The crying need everywhere to-day is for leaders, and they are pitifully few.

See the previous installment or all entries.