“He’s coming to town”

Anyone every had a burning to know the untold origin of the greatest holiday icon of all time: Santa Claus?

No, you say?

Well you’re getting one anyway. From the normally brilliant and wonderous mind of the Mad Scotsman himself, Grant Morrison.

As a humongous fan of Grant’s I feel absolutely comfortable by telling you that this was in fact.. just ok. It didn’t have all the zaniness and creativity that I’ve come and known to love from Mr. Morrison. His runs on Batman and X-Men are among my favorite in comics ever. He certainly is no stranger to handling literary icons (that’s right, comics are literature in my opinion) but something was just missing here.

Given a subject matter with no wrong answer, the famous scribe goes in a surprisingly pedestrian direction with it. Klaus (our future Santa) appears to be a vagabond traveling from town to town, selling pelts and materials to sell and make money to survive. Now Klaus is a rather hulkish man sporting a large beard and of great physique. Certainly he is no Kris Kringle here.

He arrives in Grimsvig Town (interesting enough name) for a pit stop to keep warm and have a drink. He is not well taken to by the local bar keep and notices that the attitude of this once peaceful town has become, well… grim.

The bar keep tells him it’s best not to ask questions and to keep on moving. Being of peaceful nature, Klaus obliges. On his way out the tavern he sees that all his stockpiled goods have been pilfered by the local authorities. He is upset and asks for payment or returning of the goods but the guards laugh at him. They poke fun of him and ask if he’s a wizard. He replies no.

Deciding it’s not worth the fight, Klaus begins to exit peacefully until he sees a young boy playing with a small stone and one of the guards strikes the child. Klaus will not stand for that!

He engages in battle with all the guards as they taunt him. The odds are to great though as he is forced to flee while injured by an arrow. He leaves a trail of blood and the guards begin pursuit.

The remainder of the issue is a confrontation with the guard brigade in the winter wilderness and the introduction of Lord Magnus, a character who appears to be the ruler of Grimsvig Town (far cry from Christmas Town) , as well as his bratty son Jonas who is never satisfied and obsessed with having good toys. (Hmmm I have an idea where this might be going but I’m hoping Grant goes left with it) Also we are left with a trippy cliffhanger which was the only Morrison-like part of the issue for me.

Overall: Not terrible, but not the fantastic paradigm altering epic I was hoping for. Sure it’s only the first issue, so there is lots of room to ramp this up, but it better hit the pedal fast. On the plus side the art by Dan Mora was great. As I read this all too quick read, I couldn’t help but think how great this could be if done in animation or a grander format. I think it suffers from being constrained to the normal 32 pages as it is not enough time for the master writer to stretch his pen. The cliffhanger was good, so I’m cautiously optimistic. Perhaps it’s the lack of yuletide spirit in me at this moment (it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet) but I can’t help feeling a bit like Jonas here, not yet satisfied and just wanting more.

Story: Grant Morrison  Art: Dan Mora
Story: 6 Art: 8.5 Overall: 7 Recommendation: Read

BOOM! Studios provided Graphic Policy with a free copy for review