A holiday comic instead of a card says what this year was. Ideas for any winter holiday, how to make one in an evening, and three ways to send it on the day.
Panel & Ink · October 21, 2026 · 6 min read
Most holiday cards say the same thing every year: a greeting, a signature, a photo of everyone squinting into the sun. A comic says what this year was. The house move. The broken arm. The night the oven gave up with the whole family already on its way. Eight panels of that, with your family drawn in them, is a card nobody puts in a drawer.
It works for whichever winter holiday you keep: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year, the solstice, or the tradition only your family has. Name it in the premise and the food, the lights and the rituals follow it.
An issue is six to eight panels with one narration caption each, so you are choosing six to eight moments, not telling the whole year. Some shapes that work:
Write it the way you'd tell it at the table: who is in it, what went wrong, how it ended. One paragraph is plenty. The holiday comic page has two premises you can start from as they are.
Everyone who should be in it gets a card on the cast. Add a clear photo of each person, with their permission, and they are drawn from a model sheet, so Grandma is the same Grandma in panel two and panel eight. Or describe them in words: the reindeer jumper, the glasses on a cord. A comic keeps up to eight regulars, so a big family picks the people this year's story is about.
Choose Everyone for the rating on the first step. It keeps the comic warm and kid-safe, so every relative on the list can read it.
The look is the drawing style, and there are twenty-eight on the wall. A few that suit a holiday:
The studio writes the issue first, and you read the script before a single panel is drawn. Check the names, the in-jokes and the last line, and change any caption that doesn't sound like your family.
Then decide who narrates. The studio's narrator reads every caption, or you can: the storyboard's "just the words" view lets you read the whole issue aloud in one sitting, and each reading takes the narrator's place in its panel. It costs nothing. Pass the phone round the table and let the youngest read the last line.
When the panels are drawn, ask for another take on any that miss, then finish the issue.
A finished issue leaves the studio three ways, and a holiday comic can use all of them:
There is more on giving a comic as a present in how to make a personalized comic book as a gift.
The cast stays on the comic, drawn from the same model sheets, so next year's card is issue #2: the same family, a year older. Something always happens in a year.
An issue on a standard look runs about 20 credits, and a new account starts with 35 credits, so your first issue on a standard look is covered. The premium looks cost more, about 25 credits an issue. The making takes an evening; if you're printing cards, start a couple of weeks before they have to go in the post.
Make this year's issue and send a card that could only have come from your family.
Start with one idea. Panel & Ink turns it into a comic series.
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