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The only Marvel purchase I make all year for fun — not for work — is the
Marvel Holiday Special. It's one of the few places where you can see indy creators such as Roger Langridge work on the characters, and I'm inordinately amused by superheroes gathering together to hit on Mary Jane and remark on Doctor Strange's Kwanzaa display ("Told you my man was down" approves Luke Cage, before going on to admire the Doc's cape).[1]
And even I am not immune to Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin's Kitty Pryde-is-left-all-alone-in-the-mansion-during-Christmas-and-outwits-a-monster
Uncanny X-Men #143. Of course, this year, Marvel didn't publish a
Holiday Special.[2] Where was I to hang my hopes for a holiday-themed mainstream comic?
The answer came in the unlikeliest of places. A few years back I had seen
Manga Claus: The Blade of Kringle (blazing the tagline "Honor٠Loyalty٠Tinsel") prominently displayed in big-chain bookstores; elitist that I am, I cringed at the title and groaned at the badly composed cover, which has poor color work and ugly fonts. I forgot all about it until I went home for Christmas and saw it on my nephew's bookshelf, causing me to reconsider my initial response. In 2008, bereft of the prospect of She-Hulk punching a Christmas tree,[3] I decided to give it a try.
The book is about how Santa must save Christmas —
by wielding his samurai swords — when an elf's dark magic goes awry, animating an army of teddy-bear-ninjas. At first I thought I would try to examine
Manga Claus as if I was a member of the intended audience of 9-12 year olds. Then I opened it, and I was unable to do so[4]; I had to approach it professionally, as I was thrown off by half of the first comics page being taken up by the indicia (and a very stern piracy warning).
I noted that the book was published by Razorbill, a Penguin imprint, which provided a set of expectations: coming from a primarily prose publisher, I figured the book would be impeccably proofread, which it was, but I also knew that the handling of comics elements would be less sure. That was also the case.
Erik Craddock's art, with its thick, uniform line-weight and clean, geometric design, smacks of animation (I could easily see
Manga Claus as a Nickelodeon Christmas special); sure enough, his bio at the end of the book revealed that the SVA alumnus worked on
The Venture Bros.
As I hit the first splash page — which simultaneously helps establish Santa's compound and offers exposition — I became distracted by the word balloons,
which took up too much white space and looked like the font had been shrunk in order to fit the overabundance of words.
Manga Claus is definitely overwritten, and is lousy with unnecessary sound effects.
(I know that sound effects are a manga convention: still, in manga they tend to be unobtrusive or integrated into the art, unlike,
for example, "Grab!" in a panel in which that very same action is taking place.) The writer, Nathaniel Marunas, is "a professional book editor in New York." (I know the hardest thing to do is to edit one's own writing. Marunas thanks his two editors, Kristen Pettit and Eloise Flood, for their "thoughtful and constructive comments," but I think the work could have benefited from a little of their ruthlessness.)
Still, while
Manga Claus is no Christmas miracle, I have to give the creators' credit; it ended up pleasantly surpassing all my expectations. The cover color work is deceptive; the interior art, colored by Marion Vitus and John Green, is an atmospheric black, white and red.
At first it seems as though Marunas underestimates the art's ability to carry the storytelling: but Craddock is capable, and the graphic novel's effectiveness increases as the teddy-bear ninjas (noisily, according to all those sound effects) spread through the compound in dialogue-less sequences. Craddock really begins to shine here: his characters; especially Santa, are expressive; he takes risks with his layouts, but he's adept at guiding the reader's eyes along the page; what I appreciated the most is that, in the action sequences, every impact had a reaction. [5]
This gave the fights a sorely needed weight since after all, they're occurring between rubbery-faced elves and stuffed ninjas with tubular arms. You can see the creators' learning curve; by the end of
Manga Claus, Marunas seems more comfortable, pulling off jokes and adding nice touches (his Santa is Buddhist; the inevitable showdown is handled gracefully).
It's a bit frustrating, because the book really starts cooking in the last 30 or so pages; by the time Santa shouts "Dash Away, All You Freaky Flying Deer!" I wished, now that Marunas and Craddock had it down, that that phrase signaled a new beginning, rather than the next-to-last page.
So: Did
Manga Claus fill that special place in my three-sizes-too-small heart? No, it appears that only an exhausted Fin Fang Foom can.[6] I still have a little goodwill toward the two men, however; I wouldn't mind revisiting
Manga Claus again next year, or better yet, reading about the further adventures of Marunas and Craddock's Santa.
Notes:
[1] From "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santron," written by Jeff Parker, penciled by Reilly Brown, and inked by Pat Davidson in Marvel Holiday. And, by the way, wouldn't a Betty & Veronica-like comic, where readers could send in outfits they had drawn for their Luke Cage and Doctor Strange paper dolls, be awesome?
[2] I still think that Civil War Christmas ornaments are a weird idea though.
[3] Also in "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santron."
[4] Though I did think that the North Pole map with compass in which all points were south was clever.
[5] I noticed that he varied the crowd's reactions, too, which impressed me.
[6] From "How Fin Fang Foom Saved Christmas," by Scott Gray and Roger Langridge in Marvel Holiday Special 2006 #1 (February 2007).
Credits:
©2006 Quirk Packaging Inc.
text ©2006 Nathaniel Marunas
illustrations ©2006 Erik Craddock
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
