Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone! I hope this strip gave you a dose of yuletide cheer. I was a little apprehensive about it for awhile because it’s the first musical comic that requires previous reading, but I thought the theme of it worked nicely with wrapping up the arcs (plus, it would bother me if Luigi reverting back to his old self was never explained). Special thanks to my wife Sarah for singing and editing, and to Chris for his help with coloring. There’s no way this strip would be up today without their assistance. See if you can find the various game nods in the music.

And that wraps up Brawl in the Family for 2012-the most eventful year of my life. Between getting remarkably sick, getting married, moving into a house, making a successful Kickstarter, working with Howard Phillips and getting the Wii U, it’s been one memorable occurrence after another.

And that’s not all-you may have already seen this link floating around, and it’s true: I’m part of the Nintendo Force team! I can’t divulge many details on the project myself (but if you keep your eye on their Facebook page, you’ll get all sorts of new updates from the project head), but I can say that I’m thrilled to be working with such a talented group of people.

Now for the bad news-it’s time for a break. There’ve been some large house projects I’ve been putting off until a break (in this case, building a fence), as well as a procedure I’m more than a little freaked out about (don’t ever get kidney stones, folks).

The main thing, though, is the assortment of Kickstarter rewards. With over 800 backers, it’s going to take an incredible amount of time to get the multitude of comics, drawings, and songs done, so I need to hold off on the strip to catch up on that as well. So we’ll be back with our regularly-scheduled programming on (don’t kill me!)…Tuesday, January 29.

Until then, I’ll still be hard at work on everything else that needs to get done, and I hope to see you again to greet the new year!

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-By Matthew