Heya, it’s Turkey Day once again, even in the middle of a global pandemic, and I’m gettin’ a mite tired of listening to Covid-denying dumbfucks insisting that if they don’t get together with 30-50 mask-hating relatives to eat too much, argue about sports, and work grandma half to death to serve you turkey and pie, it’s an affront to America its own damn self.

Listen, I’ve had plenty of jobs that required me to work on Thanksgiving Day. I’ve been stuck in my grungy apartment because blizzards blocked the way home. I’ve made do with a frozen lasagna, a bag of M&Ms, and a diet Dr Pepper for my all-by-myself Thanksgiving dinner. And I survived it just fine. It made me appreciate my time with family all the more the next time we saw each other.

And I know only a few decades or a century back, when you left your family, you might never see them again. You might live across the country or across the ocean, without no speedy travel to the people you’d left behind. I’ve got an ancestor who left Ireland with her sister, got separated from her in New York City, and never managed to find her again. Now that’s a real tragedy, not “Trumper nihilists didn’t get to kill their grandparents for FREEDOM.”

We live in the modern world now, and we can communicate with distant family by phone, by emails, by Zoom and Skype meetings. Even when we’re apart, we can be together — and we don’t have to run the risk of infecting our loved ones with a potentially fatal disease.

Hey, kids, let’s look at some comics book covers, okay?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and save me a slice of rhubarb pie.

Another Thanksgiving’s come ’round. I hope you’re able to spend it with your family and/or friends, and that you’re well-fed and happy. If not — I do hope that next year is better for you, and better for us all.

And for those of us enjoying the good life, I also hope that you’ll keep in mind those who are struggling through rough times. More and more these days, we seem to be turning ourselves into a less empathetic people, who think the poor deserve their sorrows, that showing compassion is a form of weakness, that cruelty is good for ratings and great for business. It shouldn’t be that way, and I really wish someone would tell the Lubbock City Council that.

Alright, fine, let’s have some Thanksgiving comic covers.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving, hope you enjoy a nice slab of turkey, watch some football, and do some proper visiting with your family and friends.

Hey, it’s Thanksgiving! Hope you’re all able to spend time eating good food with friends and family. And for those of you who aren’t — I seriously hope next year is better than this one, both for you and for the rest of us.

It’s hard to find comics that are specifically about Thanksgiving, so instead, let’s look at some prominent comic book Pilgrims.

Super Pilgrim

Okay, I know absolutely nothing about this guy on the left side of this “Tick” cover. I’ve got to assume he’s a Pilgrim and he’s got superpowers. And since he’s in a “Tick” comic, I reckon it’s a sure bet that he’s very silly.

Just a Pilgrim

An apocalyptic sci-fi Western, this was written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra, and published by Black Bull Comics. Set in a future where the sun’s corona expanded, burning off the oceans and killing most of humanity, the story focuses on Pilgrim, a former cannibal who has burned a cross into his face to represent his renewed faith. He tries to defend some refugees crossing the Atlantic basin from pirates and in a later series, tries to defend some scientists trying to build a space shuttle to take them to another world. Despite Pilgrim’s badassery, the stories don’t often end very well.

Deena Pilgrim

Deena is a character in Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s “Powers” series. She’s a homicide detective partnered with Det. Christian Walker, and they investigate murders of “powers” — superheroes and supervillains. She’s a bit of a goofball, a bit of a punk rocker, and she always plays “Bad Cop” to Walker’s “Good Cop.” At one point, she actually developed contagious superpowers and went on the run, but I understand her powers have been cured now.

Scott Pilgrim

The lead character in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s epic comic series from Oni Press, Scott is a slacker and bass guitarist for a band called Sex Bob-Omb who falls in love with Ramona Flowers. But in order to date her, he must first defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends (which includes one evil ex-girlfriend from college). The whole series has lots of call-backs to video games — all the bands in the series have names based on computer games, and Scott’s battles against the seven evil exes are all reminiscent of video game boss battles. No, I’ve never read this, mostly because I’m too cheap to buy all the previous books.

Solomon Kane

He’s not technically a Pilgrim, but he is a Puritan. He had a series published by Marvel years ago, and a current series published by Dark Horse, but he got his start as a character created by Robert E. Howard, the guy who wrote the Conan the Barbarian stories. Solomon Kane was a dour, near-humorless 17th century swashbuckling Puritan swordsman who adventured across Europe and Africa fighting evil and rescuing innocents. Howard’s original Solomon Kane stories are great action pulp — to be honest, some of the best action prose I can recall reading anywhere — though it can be a bit of a slog to get past the 1920s-era racism that infects them — the more recent comic stories bleed that part out of them.

So there we have it — five different comic book Pilgrims for you to spend your Thanksgiving with. Make sure they get some of the sweet potato pie, a’ight?

A very merry Turkey Day to you and yours! Hope you get a good meal, a ton of tryptophan, some good football on TV or in the backyard with your cousins, and some quality time with your loved ones.

And let’s not forget those of us who don’t have the resources to enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving, especially nowadays, when the economy is tanking, homes are getting foreclosed, more folks are out of work, and money is scarce for a lot of people. There but for the grace of god, as they say…

Let’s look at some comic covers, a’ight?

Save me a little of that pie, okay?

Happy Turkey Day, folks. Hope you all get your fill of turkey and dressing, football, and all the other wonderful Thanksgiving stuff. Our family is having one of our “We can’t all be together, but we’re still eating with family” Thanksgivings — my folks are eating with my sister and her husband, my grandmother’s eating with my aunt and her mother, and I’ll be hanging out at my brother’s house. We’ll be eating pizza, because we ain’t gonna eat no 20-pound turkey.

And if you’ve got the fortune of having plenty to eat and having friends and family, spare a thought for those who don’t have your benefits. There are way too many of them out there, ya know. The poor may always be with us, but that doesn’t mean we should get complacent or satisfied with that fact.