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Marvel Holiday Specials
It’s Christmas time and one of my favorite activities during the Christmas Season is to go back and read all of the Marvel Holiday Specials I have. I have almost all of them, missing only a Marvel Grab-Bag Treasury Edition book from the 70’s. This review is going to look at the early 90’s Holiday Specials, which ended with the comic book bust in around 1996. Marvel revived the titles in the early 2000’s and continued it up until recently, opting for a Graphic Novel last year and a Holiday Special Magazine this year.
The 90’s – A Tradition Begins
-Marvel Holiday Special #1 - 1991-
After a 15-year hiatus, Marvel decided to bring back the holiday specials and boy did they. This 1991 edition featured an awesome gate-fold cover by Arthur Adams showing the Marvel heroes chasing after Santa Claus. You’d recognize all the heroes on there, except for maybe Ultra Man. This is a massive collection, spanning over 65 pages all for only $2.25. The first story, by Scott Lobdell and Dave Cockrum, shows us a glimpse of the one of the New X-Men’s first Christmases together. They register on Cerebro the most powerful mutant ever in a New York City Department Story and they head off to find him or her. What they find is the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In the end it was Santa that both teams were looking for, but Santa doesn’t want to be found. So he turns the villains into action figures and sends the X-Men to Rockefeller with no memories of what happened. That was a great way to start this off, with the most popular heroes of the time (the X-Men) in a very simple tale involving Santa Claus.
A very touching Fantastic Four tale follows. It was written by Walter Simonsen with art by Arthur Adams. It’s a modern version of Christmas Carol, where Franklin gives up all his valuables to save a ghost that looks like Jacob Marley. He gets a gift in return which he gives to his father and although his family is dubious of his story they can’t help but wonder if there was something bigger at work when Reed finds a shilling from 1843 in the box Franklin received for helping Marley. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with an easy story like that. Those two tales really highlight this volume. There’s a Punisher story that takes place on Christmas Eve where he breaks up a drug deal of some sort and money is showered onto the poor huddled in the slums, a Norse legend of Odin creating a bright light in the sky to guide sailors in a story similar to Christian lore and it was an awesome job by DeFalco and Buscema. I wonder if that was an actual myth or if they made it up. I know that Christianity borrowed a lot from other old pagan legends so it is entirely possible. I should also point out that between each story are pin-ups. There’s one with the FF carrying a tree down Yancy Street as a snowball heads toward Thing’s head, Punisher dropping toys into a chimney, Thor flying o’er the Tree at Rockefeller Center, some of the heavy hitters of the MU in a snowball contest, Cap and Diamondback, a page featuring Merry Mutant Melodies (X-Men Lyrics to popular songs like Vogue, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Jingle Bells and Twelve Days of Christmas), Spidey and MJ, and Hulk holding a gift box of other heroes.
We take a break from the comic stuff to get a three-page essay on the Marvel Holiday Tales of yore, especially those in the Marvel Holiday Grab-Bag Treasury Editions. We pick up the action with a very awesome Kaminski/Lim story that sees Rogers meet Bucky’s older sister at a Veteran’s bar and pays her a visit as Captain America to give her a memento from Bucky’s uniform. Ghost Rider is our next star and he saves a blind boy from kidnappers. Of course, the blind boy thinks that Ghost Rider is Santa Claus because of the boots and the chains jingling remind him of bells. Captain Ultra (with Lobdell writing another entry in this book) makes his appearance and he stops Plant Man from stealing Christmas Trees by agreeing to help him plant more trees. We end with Spider-Man (with art by Ron Garney) stopping by a kid’s party sponsored by JJJ to replace the clown who didn’t show up. JJJ is against it but the kids tell of how Spidey helped their lives so JJJ agrees to have him stay. Unfortunately, Spidey has to go off and save the kids from some burglars who showed up. This first entry back into the Marvel Holiday tradition was just awesome. There were some great holiday themed tales here that centered on morality and how it should be a season for giving to others and caring. I really thought that message was maintained throughout the book and this is why I can read this every year and not get sick of it.
-Marvel Holiday Special #1 - 1993-
I don’t know why there was a one-year gap between the two Specials but I think the 1991 one came out at the end of the year while this had a cover date of January 1993, but was on the stands for the end of 1992. For the second year in a row we have a great Arthur Adams cover, with the Marvel heroes literally exploding out of Santa’s Toy bag. This issue starts with an introduction by Renee Witterstaetter and she talks about helping other people during this holiday season. It’s a sweet intro. Larry Hama opens with a Wolverine story called Zounds of Silence with the reveal being this Wolverine is just a toy that some kid is playing with. The New Warriors are featured next (with current writer Fabian Nicieza helming the tale) and it’s just the gang getting together to celebrate the holidays, with Speedball telling them all that he’s their gift to him. Stan Lee writes our next Christmas tale which features Spider-Man taking on Electro in Rockefeller Center. Electro is trying to use all the electricity and holds the city hostage (for, wait for it, one MILLION dollars). Spidey stops him by using the tree light and Christmas is saved again!
I should mention the pin-ups in this issue, too. We have one featuring Excalibur (with Nightcrawler as Santa), Captain America (with his shield as a sled), Deathlock pulling Santa and his reindeer, the FF decorating a tree, Ghost Rider acting as the light that led the Three Wise Men, Dazzler making the peace sign for the holidays, Hulk leaping through the air with presents and spying Santa Claus and finally the end page with a black and white Spidey and Mary-Jane. Moving back to the stories, we continue with Punisher. Micro tells him not to kill or initiate violence for the 48 hours of Christmas Eve and Christmas and Frank obliges. He still manages to stop a string of robberies from sidewalk Santa’s by not throwing a punch. I guess Frank can get into the holiday spirit after all? We return with the second essay of Marvel Holiday tales and this one focuses on the individual issues that holiday tales appeared in. It’s a comprehensive list and I’ll have to track down these titles to review them for next year! Luckily I have most of them already! Samson is the next hero here and his holiday is Chanukah. This marks the first Chanukah tale in these holiday specials. This was penned by Peter David and inspired by an incident from his Hebrew School days. Basically the Samson revs up the tale of the Miracle of Lights to make it interesting for the kids but it backfires on him and the headmistress is not too happy.
Thanos makes a surprise entry into the comic book. Starlin and Lim team up on this tale of Thanos remembering a gift he gave to his daughter, Gamora, and how Gamora saved him that holiday with the toy. Thanos, ever the sentimentalist, rids himself of the toy and the memory. A criminal trying to make it right is unsuccessfully so he dons the Blizzard outfit and takes it to Iron Man. Iron Man decides to offer him a job when he learns what the guy’s problem is. That was very nice of him. Ann Nocenti finishes up this volume with a Daredevil story narrated by the toy lamb he purchases to give to the Toy Drive. This is still a classic for me, but I didn’t find it was as good as the 1991 edition. It was missing a lot of the charm and meaning that the first volume had. The New Warriors story really captured the aspect of friends and family for the holidays, and the Spidey and Punisher stories were representative of both characters and how they would act in the holiday season. It’s still a really good collection.
-Marvel Holiday Special #1 - 1994-
This is the final MHS that has a thick spine and 64 pages of Holiday goodness, and all for only $2.95! The cover features Santa Claus reading Marvel Comics as the elves try to get him back to his job. There are stockings with faces of Marvel characters in the background. Renee Witterstaetter again pens an introduction about the passing of Christmas traditions with the ending of the Sears Christmas Catalogue (which I remember) coupled with her father’s death earlier in the year. Spider-Man stars in the first tale of a fallen angel. Spidey gets drawn into the ongoing war between the Spirit of Christmas and Mephisto and Mephisto realizes that the Spirit of Christmas can never be destroyed. This was a well-written story by Steven Grant that really encapsulates Christmas. Nick Fury is the subject of our next Christmas story. Nick doesn’t like the holidays. There are too many bad memories. His mood changes when he receives a piece of mail from 1943 from his love, Pamela Hawley, telling him to Let it Go, a phrase he heard earlier in the day on his answering machine. This brings Nick back around and he celebrates the holiday with Dum Dum.
There’s a short parody starring Tom DeFalco and Mark Gruenwald and how Tom sells his cigars to get a present for Mark (a comb) while Mark sells his hair for a present for Tom (a match). So they get back the things they sold with their credit cards. I always thought this was a funny story. Captain Ultra makes his second (and last) appearance in one of these. Lobdell brings our hero to a town that has its entire population missing. A mud creature called Mud Pi is behind it all, so Ultra defeats him by using the townspeople’s clothes and a huge toilet. I kid you not. This the first time you have a non-holiday story in the book. I mean, it took place on Christmas, but other than that there’s no reason for this to be a Christmas story. Ann Nocenti contributes another memorable tale of a poor 40-year-old guy with a terribly overbearing mother, and a terrible boss. He has chance encounter with Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider scares him. So Ghost Rider pays him a visit afterwards and scares off his boss (giving our loser a big bonus) and his mother.
We end this with a Hulk story (by David and Lim) and how the Hulk saves a young guy from killing himself on Christmas. The pin-ups in this issue include She-Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot, Elves taking a cigar from Wolverine’s mouth, Wolverine with a present and Santa in the background, Thor wishing everyone a happy Yule and MJ crashing on a sled and wondering where Spidey is. This continued the trend of not really offering Holiday stories and just storied that take place around Christmas. The Capt. Ultra story is the most obvious example of this. The two later tales (Hulk and GR) aren’t really holiday tales but it does send an important message about loving life. The first two stories really power this issue, and they are good enough to make this an easy MHS to recommend.
-Marvel Holiday Special #1 - 1994-
You may be asking yourselves, wait, I just read this review. Well, pay attention. The one above was from January of 1994 (meaning it came out in November of 93) while this one probably came out in November of 1994 and still carried the 1994 year. The cover features a nice George Perez image with Spidey swinging through with a Santa hat with ornaments featuring the characters that appear in the book. There are no introductions this time, except for a Table of Contents page. The first story is a book-length tale featuring the Beast and Iceman. They are not in the holiday spirit as of now and they crave some action. They find it in the form of a lava man (Metoxo) attacking the city and stealing Santa’s. Beast and Iceman stop the villain until they realize they met him in their original X-Men days. Basically it’s Metoxo who just wanted peace and the above world was disrupting him. Beast and Iceman stopped him and told him about Christmas. So Metoxo brought that back to his village but here we are, about 13 years later, and his kids no longer believe in Santa Claus! He was just to get a Claus to show his kids he is real. So Beast and Iceman become Santa Claus and give the guy and his kids a Merry Christmas. You know this is good because Kurt Busiek wrote it and this was an awesome start to this edition and really, that pays for the $2.95 cover price right there.
We hit some other big characters in this holiday special. The first is Captain America. He saves a kidnapped kid that happened to be brought to his grandfather’s old cabin in the middle of the woods. It’s not really holiday related except for Cap’s grandfather looking like Santa and this happening on a snowy day. The third story shows Thing dealing with a young girl not big on the holidays because she’s Jewish and there’s no Chanukah stuff around. This was a really obvious place to mention that the Thing is Jewish but it isn’t brought up. The last message that the holidays are for everyone is appropriate. The Silver Surfer story was very weird, with Surfer saving a girl but she gets taken into Eternity anyway. This was a very philosophical type of story but I must’ve missed the point of it being holiday themed. We end with a Spider-man one-pager featuring Spidey fixing the light on top of Rockefeller Center as Santa flies by in the background. The holiday special concludes with a Visit from St. Nicholas homage, except you could call this a Visit from The Starjammers and the Shi’ar. Sal Buscema illustrated this and did a great job. The X-Men really carry the Holiday Special this year, with a very strong book-length story to open and the Twas the Night version to end it. Everything in-between was nice but it didn’t really hit home in terms of holiday specialness.
-Spider-Man Holiday Special #1 - 1995-
Marvel decided not to do a full-blown holiday special for the end of 1995, instead opting to focus just on Spider-Man. As a reference point, this was during the infamous Clone Wars and by the time this was released Ben Reilly had taken over as Spider-Man. The cover features a nice Adam Kubert image of Venom ripping open a present and the two Spider-Men (Ben and Pete) are bursting out with the Torch. So Ben Reilly is the star of the show here, battling old foe the Scorcher in the first story while also saving a woman from killing herself. The woman turns around by the end of the issue and you have to ask, was it the Christmas spirit that saved her? I posed the question, not the book. Black Cat stars in a silent four-page story showing her stealing from robbers to give to an orphanage. Venom is up next and he dresses as Santa Claus to stop a string of Santa’s that had been targeted in the city. Venom Claus manages to stop the ring and an elderly woman tells Venom not to kill them because it’s the spirit of giving. We meet Willie Lumpkin who is mourning the loss of Aunt May (she was dead at this time, too) and May seemingly setting him up with another woman from beyond. The final story is the best one. The Torch is waiting for Spidey on top of the Statue of Liberty and we flashback to a year ago and all the troubles the Torch went through. He is waiting for Spidey, not realizing it’s a new guy! The Torch/Spider-Man friendship was always a unique one and this really plays on their friendship growing over time and as they got older. This was a great story centering on their Christmas Tradition. 1995 was a very bad year for Marvel, as the Clone Saga and Onslaught Saga really wore people down with excessively bad stories that took a wrong turn somewhere. The whole comic book market was in a bad place and this issue was a microcosm of that. The talent on the book wasn’t really there and overall it was a lack-luster effort.
-Marvel Holiday Special #1 - 1996-
1996 was the death knell for the comic book market. All the event fatigue (too many tie-ins, Marvel and DC take note), the special covers, the investor market plummeting (wait, you mean that since I bought X-Men #1 it won’t be worth anything in 15 years? Maybe printing 15 million of them will have something to do with that) led to Marvel eventually filing for bankruptcy and as a result this was the last Holiday Special for quite awhile. After the misstep of the Spider-Man Holiday Special last year and general apathy that the rest of the titles were showing we have this nugget. We have a great Mike Weiringo cover, with the four main characters here bursting out of Christmas Presents. Spider-Man stars in the first story. Peter is taking pictures of JJJ and all the cheap gifts he’s giving out and follows him to the warehouse he keeps all the crap. Well, the roof falls in and Spidey and JJJ are stuck beneath the rubble. The catch is that Spidey lost his mask and is covered in webbing. JJJ wants to wait out the hour to see who Spidey really is before having a change of heart. He helps save Spider-Man but is dismayed when the whole thing is caught by the Globe. This was an awesome start, with JJJ agreeing to help his mortal enemy and the creative team working on it (Waid/Oliffe) really knocked it out of the park.
Kitty Pryde is back home and can’t believe her favorite church was burned down. She never went inside because she’s Jewish but she does this time when a girl is inside looking for a locket her now deceased father gave her. There’s an interesting conversation about racism (the little girl is black) and Kitty uses her powers to get the girl’s locket. It’s a message of acceptance. One could argue it wasn’t really holiday-related but the message captures the holiday is about. Silver Surfer gets another entry into the MHS realm and this time it’s an honest to goodness Christmas story. Surfer is flying around pondering how people could believe in the Star of Bethlehem when in all his travel’s he has never seen it nor heard of it. He goes to a Watcher for more information and he can’t believe when he hears it is true and that not only did it change the course of Earth’s future but it changed the course of many other planets, too. This is the kind of stuff I dig. That the star was that powerful that God put it there to not only affect Earth and humans, but everywhere in the universe. This may be my favorite Surfer story.
We head to the past with a Rawhide Kid (back when he was still heterosexual in continuity) saving a kid around Christmas time from crooks using future technology they found. What is it with kids getting kidnapped around Christmas time? That’s like 3 stories where that’s happened in these Holiday Specials. So Rawhide saves the kid, a rock monster is pissed that people use his weapons for evil and he flies off. Rawhide actually asks the rock thing to give mercy to the bad guys all in the sake of the spirit of the season and he does. The rock creature may be an angel, since he was heading towards the Christmas star. The ending was awesome, with the kid saying he wants to build a suit of armor like that and Rawhide thinks the kid may be able to. The kid’s name? Isaac Stark. That was cool. It wasn’t terribly Christmas themed until the end but I love how little things like the kid being a Stark made the story that much more interesting. Finally, Wolverine ends this thing looking for the Holiday spirit and finding them in unlikely places, and it is at those times he wishes he got into the spirit of the season. After the last couple of years offered some weak stories this was a complete Holiday Special. It was a diamond in the rough for a really bad time in comics and it stands up to what the first two Holiday Specials did.
The 2000’s – The Tradition is Reborn
-Marvel Holiday Special 2004-
8 years after their last Holiday Special Marvel decided the time was right to start the tradition anew. This entry into the comic book world featured a classic Spidey flying by with the Santa hat on and bells ringing behind it. There are only three stories here, and it is not that much bigger than your average comic though it is priced at Marvel’s special issue price - $3.99. The first plays it safe, sending Jonah through a Christmas Carol type tale where he realizes what’s important in life as he walks through a scenario where the Avengers are killed, Peter is killed, and the world falls apart. Tom DeFalco handles the script and the awesome art of Takeshi Miyazawa burst off the page and this was the absolute right story to kick off the Holiday Specials again. The double-page spread of the Bugle staff and some Marvel heroes wishing everyone a happy holidays creates a memorable image, as does the ending of JJJ going right back to his Humbug ways. We stick with the meaning of the holiday with Scott and Emma taking care of Wither as all the other X-Pupils went home for the holidays and Wither’s parents refused to take him. So Scott and Emma cancel their trip to Pleasure Island and bring Wither to the city to see the sights and Emma gives Wither a great gift of holding hands while she’s in her diamond form. This was another excellent story full of Christmas cheer. We conclude with Franklin trying to find the meaning of Christmas while watching the members of the FF celebrate. He asks his dad if there is a God and Reed’s answer really hits home. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa penned the last two stories and he did an amazing job with them. Roger Cruz and Duncan Rouleau round out an all-star cast and even though this is short compared to the early 90’s standards, this is among the best of the Holiday Specials in terms of content.
-Marvel Holiday Special 2005-
This has a sweet Stuart Immonen cover of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man decorating a tree. The stories on the inside didn’t really match up to the greatness of the cover unfortunately. We start with Mole Man’s Christmas. Basically the Moloids are looking for Santa’s that may help in finding Mole Man. He got depressed and left with the last thing he said was Santa. So the FF get involved, Namor dresses up as Santa, and the Moloids are content even though Mole Man is still gone. Turns out he’s in SANTA Barbara. It was a humorous tale but not much more. The second story is the highlight for me. It’s a modern spin on Yes Virginia, There is A Santa Claus. Here a Virgie Hanlon (same name as the girl who wrote the question back in the late 1800’s) builds a Santa robot from an old Ultron robot and the robot plays Santa well enough, until he goes after the Avengers. The Avengers stop him by having him ingest a cookie and Cap delivers a monologue similar to the editorial that answered Virginia’s question of if there was a Santa Claus. We end with a rhyming story about Hurricane stealing for his kids for Christmas and the FF stopping him and letting him go so the kids would have a nice day. It was tough to get into the flow of the story and I didn’t quite care for the art. For the $4, this is worth it, especially the Santron story.
-Marvel Holiday Special 2006-
Irving Frazier delivers a very memorable cover of Hulk as Santa Claus and little Wolverine, Iron Man, Spider-Man and She-Hulk waiting in line. I love the expression on She-Hulk. The two main stories are prefaced by a story called AIM Lang Syne where a woman asks a guy to the AIM New Year’s Party only to have Hulk crash it. Fin Fang Foom saves Christmas in the first story while Mike Carey delivers another rhyming tale featuring Annihilus and Thing battling it out before relaxing and playing video games. The Thing story was a lot of fun, and the Fin Fang Foom one was certainly different. We get an entry for Santa Claus from the Official Handbook and a gallery of old Holiday Special covers. The two storied were decent but there was way too much filler in here. There were cut-out paper ornaments, a brief note from Ralph Macchio thanking us for buying this and the covers. This was the first Holiday Special that was underwhelming. Usually there is something redeeming in one of these issues but this was all bark and no bite.
-Marvel Holiday Special 2007-
Is this the last MHS we’ll ever see? This has another great cover; Spider-Man wrapping up Wolverine in holiday lights. It’s fitting those two are on the cover since they are the focus of the first story. Peter is bringing a cake home for his Christmas Party but the cake is ruined yet again when he teams up with Wolverine to stop a disgruntled department store Santa from using a Sentinel and tearing up the streets. Spidey is a bit bummed about this so Wolverine bakes him a cake. Spidey promises not to tell anyone but when it lands on the cover of the Bugle, Wolvie’s not too happy. This really gives us the lovable loser Spider-Man that we know and love, as well as how nice of a guy Wolverine can be. A reprint from Fred Hembeck of different Marvel characters in Santa guise is next, followed by a Loners story of the gang exchanging Secret Santa gifts. This is one problem of MHS. You can have dated characters. The Loners aren’t even mentioned in the MU now. I was ready to say things like this don’t belong but then I remembered reading the New Warriors in one of the earlier volumes. I said that having this was a problem but it does serve as a time capsule as to what was going on at the time. It’s a sweet tale, and each character really goes all out to give something meaningful to the other person. The final story finds an editor from the Bugle send a writer out to find the true meaning of Christmas and he goes interviewing many people, including Skrulls, and the turn at the end shows a Skrull has taken over as editor in preparation for Secret Invasion. This was here more for the impending Secret Invasion stuff and to get a whole bunch of characters to cameo in here but it didn’t anything for me as a holiday tale. Still, two out of three stories were very timely for the season and this was a big step up from last year’s edition. Will this be it for the traditional comic book holiday specials? Only time will tell.
The Next Wave?
-Marvel Holiday Special Graphic Novel-
This was released in conjunction with the 2004 Holiday Special. It includes the same cover and the same three stories as well as reprints of other holiday tales. Those reprints start with Marvel Team-Up #1. Here we see Torch and Spidey team-up to take on a recently escaped Sandman. Sandman is really just trying to see his mother and the good guys let him. Spidey even gives Sandman the gift he was going to give Gwen. Sandman escapes at the end but Torch and Spidey decide to cut him a break on Christmas and in closing they wish everyone peace on Earth. The Spider-Man 1995 story with the Torch and Spidey references this and Torch thinks that this may be the time when Sandman started to turn his ways around. The classic X-Men #143 is also featured. While not a Christmas tale it does take place on Christmas and shows Kitty Pryde defeating an alien in her first solo story and a real trial by fire. I love the Byrne artwork here and I am pretty sure this was his last issue on the title. Amazing Spider-Man #314 by Michelinie and McFarlane finds Peter and MJ getting evicted from their apartment on Christmas Eve because of MJ’s stalker and Peter agreeing to suck it up and stay with May for the time being. Peter comes to this decision after a meeting with Ben’s grave and May being there, too. Finally Hulk #378 is reprinted. Here the Rhino dresses as Santa Claus but loses his temper and conveniently, Hulk is there to fight him. The kids don’t like seeing Hulk and Santa fighting so the two set aside their differences and play nice for the kiddies. I really liked that Marvel collected this old stories in trade form, collecting three classic stories for a pretty decent price. I hope they can collect more of these stories in the future, especially the She-Hulk and Howard the Duck stories.
-Marvel Holiday Spectacular #1-
Marvel decided to do away with the traditional comic book format this year and opted for a magazine that dropped in stores in October near Halloween. It had a $9.99 cover price, which I am sure scared some buyers away, especially considering the amount of reprint material in here. The cover features Hulk with a bag of presents and the Red Hulk looking pissed about some coal in his stocking. I really enjoyed this cover, it captured the holiday spirit while keeping things grounded in the current goings on of the Marvel Universe. We start the magazine with a story called, “Santa Claus vs. The Illuminati,” an entertaining tale where Santa wields the Infinity Gauntlet and goes mad, but he’s stopped and Iron Man saves the day with some Iron Reindeer he had lying around. It poked fun at the Illuminati and was a great start to the magazine. We move to a more heartfelt story featuring the X-Men called, “If The Fates Allow.” It quotes the great Judy Garland song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” from Meet Me In St. Louis and it shows our merry band of mutants coming together for the holidays amidst all their losses this year, especially Kitty Pryde. We see a final tale (“Last Christmas”) of Skrull being on Earth around Christmastime and claiming they will prevail. This was a Secret Invasion interlude and it seems to be a reprint, but I can’t place from where. There’s a tag one-pager called “Werewolf by Eve” starring Werewolf by Night that wasn’t terribly interesting. There was other new material scattered in these pages, a Hulk wish-list and some gift guides from Deadpool and Henry Pym that served as ad-space for some of their Trade Paper Backs.
We hit the reprints after this (and we’re only on page 16). We start with the Santa Claus Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry, which is very interesting should you read the whole thing, and it includes a lot of accurate information on the legacy and lore of St. Nicholas and Santa Claus. Uncanny X-Men #365 is up next, a comic I never read before (I stopped reading around the time of Onslaught and didn’t come back until around 2004). It’s a sweet tale showing Colossus meeting up with a ghost of his past (who turns out to be Magik) and telling him not to forget her. There’s a sub-plot featuring Marrow, too. The Spider-Man/Electro battle from the 1993 Marvel Holiday Special is offered, as is the Beast/Iceman story from the next year’s special. The final reprint comic is Amazing Spider-Man #166 which featured an uninspiring Spidey tale where he takes on Lizard and Stegron and the only Christmas reference is on the last page. The magazine ends with a Santa Claus interview (which just rehashes information from the OHotMU) and a Franklin Richards Thanksgiving story. Overall, this was a sub-par offering from Marvel. I enjoyed the first two stories a great deal but this was basically 10 bucks for a lot of reprints, and some crappy ones at that. I really hope that Marvel goes back to the comic book format next year. Even though I didn’t really care for the most recent Holiday Specials, at least they were cheaper and weren’t littered with reprints.
-The Bottom Line-
Well, there you have it. That is all the holiday specials that Marvel has released. There are tons of other ones, including a score of Punisher ones, a Moon Knight one, and a horde of single issues dealing with Christmas but these are the main ones people will remember. I think the first two Holiday Specials are still the ones to be measured against and there hasn’t been any issue that hit those levels. The 2004 edition that kick-started the MHS resurgence was very good but it didn’t have as much content as the other earlier ones. The magazine is the most recent Holiday Special and I wonder if that is the route that Marvel will be going in the years to follow. I wouldn’t be opposed to a magazine with reprints as long as there were decent stories to reprint with no filler. I don’t want to see MHS stories reprinted but rather rarer stories from the actual comic books, like She-Hulk with St. Nick or Howard the Duck or anything from the Holiday Grab-Bag. Time will tell what will happen next year, but as it stands this is the tradition of Marvel’s Holiday Specials and for the most part, it’s been a success.
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