I had picked out my last mythcomic for the year of 2021 when something occurred to me: of all the 300 comics-stories I’ve analyzed, I don’t think any of them directly build upon either of the principal myths of this season, be it the birth of the Messiah or the folklore surrounding Santa Claus. I believe the closest I’ve come is the SON OF SATAN story “Dance with the Devil, My Red-Eyed Son," though it’s only of incidental importance that the narrative takes place on Christmas Day. I didn’t expect that the comics medium would have turned out anything on the level of Dickens’ CHRISTMAS CAROL, or even A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (whose storyline was not derived from any PEANUTS continuity, though a few “quotes” from the strip are worked into the tale). Still, I thought that during the long history of comics, someone somewhere must have played with the complex symbolism of the Yule holiday.
Not surprisingly, the figure of Santa appears in commercial comics a lot more often than the Christian savior. But to be a myth in my reckoning, the story must have some epistemological content, and can’t just grind out all the expected Santa-tropes. As it happens, the story I selected touches on one of the less well-traveled of these tropes: “Santa as the Master of the Frozen North.” This was used to some good effect at the opening of the 1985 SANTA CLAUS, though it was pretty much the only good moment in the flick.
“Santa Claus in Trouble” doesn’t have an author attributed, but thanks to the story being posted on Pappy’s Golden Age Blogzine, a reader identified the artist as George Kerr. I will assume for the convenience of my essay that Kerr was the sole author.
Though Kerr never claims that his Santa Claus actually rules the fantasy-land of the North Pole, there’s the suggestion of one-upmanship in the first panel of “Trouble,” in that Santa’s eventual antagonist, “Belinda the Ice Queen,” lives “just a little north of the North Pole,” as if to say that she’s a little “north-ier” than the jolly toymaker. The Ice Queen, who may be loosely based on the folk-figure of Jack Frost, is in charge of crafting all the “snow and ice” that contribute to a “white Christmas,” and her “faithful snow men” mass-produce all of these frosty phenomena—including “26-inch icicles”—in a manner that clearly bites the style of Santa’s workshop.
Santa stops by Queen Belinda’s castle to inquire about the Xmas weather, only to find that the enterprising snow men have begun making “ice toys.” This clearly bugs Santa, who wants Belinda to stay in her own lane. He’s less than diplomatic in claiming that “I thought making toys was my job.” Belinda defends her snow men’s creations against the toys made by “those silly little gnomes of yours,” but Santa astutely points out that if humans touched, or even breathed upon, these icy objects, they’d simply melt. Belinda turns Santa out of her castle, but Santa’s such a jolly old elf that he doesn’t even suspect that she’s going to counterattack.
While Santa goes to bed that Christmas Eve—making a side comment about the complications of delivering toys during “war time"-- Belinda’s snow men abscond with Santa’s sleigh and reindeer. Santa can’t track the thieves in the heavy snow, but he has a winsome weapon in his arsenal: magic snowshoes that allow him to bound above the snow-clouds in order to find his missing possessions. He still doesn’t suspect Belinda of the deed, and when he accidentally steps through a cloud and lands outside the ice queen’s castle, he naively enters her domain, seeking aid.
Belinda and her snow men broadcast their guilt so strongly that even good-hearted Santa figures out what’s going on—though it helps when he hears the jingling bells of his sleigh in the next room. Santa doesn’t exactly become violent, since that wouldn’t have fit with his saintly demeanor, though in taking off in his flying sleigh, he does demolish Belinda’s castle, remarking, “That will teach you to try to keep toys from boys and girls on Christmas Day.” Since we never see Belinda again, the young reader is left to assume that she is duly chastised and from then on will stick to doling out ice and snow. Thus, even if Santa isn’t the undisputed Master of the North Pole, you don’t mess with the jolly elf when it comes to making toys.
No comments:
Post a Comment