1 [caption]: It came upon a midnight clear,/that colour out of space,
1 [caption]: From aliens bending near the Earth,/to suck life from a place.
2 [caption]: "Death on Earth, bad will to men,/from heav'n's chaotic things!"
2 [caption]: The world in ghastly stillness lay,/around it evil clings.
3 [caption]: Still through the cloven skies they come,/with rugose wings unfurled,
3 [caption]: And still their discordant music floats/o'er all the wormy world;
4 [caption]: Above its sad and leprous plains/they bend on horrific wing;
4 [caption]: And ever o'er its baleful sounds/the bilious colours sing.

As this comic goes live, I will be with my family, eating far too much turkey and ham and cake. And then tomorrow I have to do it all over again with my wife's family.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a good one. If you don't, I hope you get a chuckle out of this strip.

When I was picking what carol to convert this year, I initially had my mind on Good King Wenceslas, when, while perusing through a list of Christmas carols, I stumbled upon It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. The Cthulhu-esque imagery that the title immediately brought to mind was irresistable.

While corrupting the words suitably, I realised that I was singing the song in my head to the tune of Good King Wenceslas. It was only then that I realised I had no idea what the tune for It Came Upon a Midnight Clear was! And doing a bit of research, I stumbled across the interesting fact that It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is sung to two different tunes.

In England, it is sung to a tune known as Noel, adapted from a tune written by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame). In the USA, however, the same words are sung to the tune known as Carol, written by one Richard Storrs Willis.

And I don't know either of those tunes. I mentioned this to some of my friends at lunch one day, and one of them said, "Yeah, that's true. The American version goes like this: hum hum hum hum hum hum hum. The British version is hum hum hum hum hum hum hum." I was amazed that he knew this bit of trivia, and could hum both versions right off the bat (which I promptly forgot).

Oh, and the creatures in the last two panels are Fungi from Yuggoth. Now you know what Steve's up against.