GFT Retrospective #123: Christmas Edition 2012
a.k.a. The Retrospectre.
Merry Christmas in June, Ticketholders!
Some of you might be disappointed to notice that I didn't have a second season update for Frieren on Monday, and the reasoning there is two-fold: I decided that I wanted to watch the first season over first, and I didn't have the time, energy, or emotional bandwidth to cram thirty-eight episodes and a review into a weekend.
So I moved it to the last AniMonday of the month for my own sanity (which is currently a bit frayed by the extremes of human incompetence and my own diminishing capacity to cope healthily with its consequences). I need a vacation, I've earned a vacation, and dammit, I'm taking a vacation from professional life whether or not anyone likes it!
You'll be happy to know, however, that I've already written my Godzilla vs Mothra review for Friday, with the exception of some links, edits I decide on as I re-read my work, and the ending call to action. So, yeah; happy early Juneteenth, and merry Christmas in June.
GFT Holiday #4 (2012)
Here Comes Santa Claus
You might notice (if you notice these kinds of things) that the A Cover by Giuseppe Cafaro and Ula Moś was used as the cover for Different Seasons Volume Three even though this issue wasn't collected until Volume Four (which never got a digital version, so the only way I know this is because of eBay, and since I try to spend as little as possible so I'm not financially crippled any further, I don't have a physical edition to be able to speak on its quality). The B Cover here (which, if you recall my Godzilla vs Biollante review, is something I would have to touch strategically for empirical body horror reasons) by Marat Mychaels and Juan Fernandez was used for the Different Seasons Volume Four cover.
The format for this Christmas issue follows a horror anthology structure with three stories and a wraparound, much like the 2010 edition, all written by Pat Shand, so you know you're in for a real gift in this Present time.
The frame, "Here Comes Santa Claus," sees a mall Santa telling the other three tales to a group of five teenagers with attitude, and one creepy college delinquent (Maddie, Tiffany, and the older Dylan are the only three who get named) who have broken into a mall for an after-hours scavenger hunt.
"Frosty the Snowman" begins in medias res of an act of domestic violence gone wrong (not that they can go right, but murder is wrong, so you know what I mean). Edgar has had it with his wife's constant nagging and goes...Mad, bludgeoning her to death. It doesn't help Hatters—eh; matters—that his favorite stovepipe hat looks a Liddle familiar, or that his dead wife possesses a nearby snowman and Returns the favor (Wonderland puns!).
In "I'll Be Home For Christmas," Tara misses her dead twin sister, Hannah, and so visits a voodoo priest who looks like a Zenescope villain, in hopes of speaking with (or perhaps reviving) her. It works, but the twins learn the Law Of Equivalent Exchange the hard way and discover the circular logic it takes to keep a goldfish busy.
In "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" (which was a memory game with chaste Truth Or Dare penalties before it became the song we know and forget today), Lilian has dumped her possessive boyfriend Kevin [insert "Home Alone is a Saw prequel" and We Need To Talk About Kevin references here] for a sweet, hairy Chad named Ben, who has to spend the days leading up to Christmas on a business trip (the original twelve days actually started with Christmas and ran through the Epiphany, but things change as we think they must to make us "comfortable"), promising to send her a gift every day while he's gone. Unfortunately, when the gifts start showing up, Lilian learns that Kevin is more unhinged and...motivated than she expected, and the gifts (made from, and/or containing pieces of, Ben's body) were actually from him. It feels like there's a massive amount of disbelief to suspend and/or a corporate analyst level of logistical gymnastics required to justify Kevin being able to surgically process a grown human body and sculpt and paint twelve art pieces of the depicted quality from parts of said body in as many days, but that's just ruining the gory, sensationalist fun of Zenescope taking folk content like this and making their own twisted gift out of it, which they've had a good track record with in their yearly specials so far, this tale included.
Less interesting, however, is the ending of the "Santa Claus" wraparound, where we find out (as was the case the last time one of these issues had a mall Santa present for an act of Christmas B&E) that he was Krampus in disguise the whole time (the dark nature of the stories also kind of gives it away), and instead of each story causing its in-Universe audience to turn over a new leaf, Krampus just used the gory endings to kill them and make a diorama for his slutty, feral hench-elves because the world sucks (just wait fourteen years, Krampy-pie; you have no idea how good we all had it in 2012 compared to the senile circus of fuck that this past decade has defecated on our once-great country) and he's too impatient to wait for things to get better. Is this perhaps evidence that Corruption and Hate should have let Malec stay dead? Perhaps.
Whatever the case, Sela shows up to save the suggested statutory Acrobat-cum-conspiratorial grand thief and his barely legal sidepiece from the orally fixated turd-demon of Christmas fear and his ho-ho-hos. Krampus will return in Realm Knights: Doomsday, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars, the end. It's somewhat important to note here that Sela is using the Gold offensively rather than the Red (maybe Mystic energy works better against holiday mascots?), and she has her sword (which won't reach its final form or get any concrete lore for some time to come).
I suppose I could try to go in depth about why each pair of characters got the stories they did in an attempt to flesh them out more, but when half of them don't have names and the pacing is as brisk as it is for most of the page count here, even Pat Shand can only do so much, and I can only respond in kind. Perhaps Shand's weakest work for Zenescope? Perhaps. But it's not a non-starter as Christmas specials go. Enjoy in joy.
Stay Tuned for me to power-scale Heisei Godzilla's durability on Friday, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because I would like to pass go and collect two-hundred dollars, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
48
Retrospectre,
Out?
Perhaps.
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