Every December, heroes and heroines from the superhero world are drawn into unusual seasonal experiences that draw as much on their powers of goodwill and cheer as they do on their super strength. It’s only a matter of pages before Jolly Old Saint Nick himself, Santa Claus, appears and reminds everyone to think good thoughts if they want a happy morning on December 25th.
You don’t want to know rather how many Christmas stories do I have in my comic collection – and yet, despite their overwhelming number, there are those who believe that such stories don’t actually count. People firmly believe, in their two-size-too-small hearts, that any story where Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, or whoever teams up with Santa Claus is not actually canon. I can only say one thing to these people: humbug!
Santa Claus is cannon. And I can prove it.
Santa’s Big Two comic career actually started in DC back in the 1940s Superman’s Christmas Adventure. The one-shot teams the Man of Steel and the Man With The Big White Beard against the wonderfully named Dr. Grouch and Mr. Meaney, two old men for whom Ebeneezer Scrooge was clearly a personal source of inspiration. Christmas adventure – written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, with art by Jack Burnley – manages to create a framework that a significant number of subsequent stories would follow, even if they lacked the gorgeous purple prose that Siegel offers the lucky reader .
“Christmas time! Period of cheerfulness and goodwill among the people! It hardly seems possible that anyone could be so evil as to sabotage such a beloved event, but Dr. Grouch, brooding killjoy, plans to do just that. And that’s only half of the first caption.
Over the next 80 years, Santa Claus has appeared in a number of different DC comics, including titles as diverse as Sergeant Stone And The ghost. He teamed up with Superman again DC Comics gifts (the story is called, wonderfully enough: ‘It was the fear of Christmas!’). In 1985, it was given a grim and gritty 1980s makeover Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer (photo). Perhaps most exciting of all, it came out in 1991 Lobo’s paramilitary Christmas specialwhere he himself fought the eponymous Main Man after he was hired to kill Santa Claus by a jealous Easter Bunny (it was all done with a seasonally generous lack of restraint on the part of Keith Giffen, Alan Grant and Simon Bisley).
Perhaps the comic that most clearly establishes the canonicity of Santa Claus in the DCU in modern times is the one from 2001 JLA #60, “Merry Christmas, Justice League — Die now!.” The book was DC’s biggest superhero title of the time and placed it squarely in what was considered “real” by the DCU. Most of the issue consists of a story that Plastic Man tells a child about a fictional team-up between Santa Claus and the JLA, but the coda shows the real Santa Claus chuckling at what he just saw and seals the deal: Santa Claus is definitively real in the DCU.
When it comes to the Marvel Universe, the argument is even easier to make. In the absence of a significant reboot of its long history, every story Marvel has ever published featuring Kris Kringle is part of the Marvel canon. This also applies to 1991 Marvel holiday special short film in which the X-Men discover that Santa Claus is one of the most powerful mutants on Earth – Jonathan Hickmanthe ball is in your court. And the one from 2016 Power Man and Iron Fist: Sweet Christmas #1, where Santa Claus appears in a flashback and holds off the demonic Krampus, years before Luke Cage and Danny Rand had the same gig. Even Peter Parker, the spectacular Spider-Man #112, a 1985 one-shot in which Santa Claus shows up to shame a thief dressed in a Santa suit, is part of the official history of the Marvel Universe.
Admittedly, there are some stories in which canonicity may be questionable; a short from 1992 Marvel era #109, where Captain America remembers saving Santa Claus from the Nazis in the middle of World War II, may or may not be part of official Marvel history. Not because of the involvement of Santa Claus, but because it was one of the often non-continuity humor strips by, for example, cartoonist Fred Hembeck. (It’s a great idea nonetheless.) Regardless, Santa’s place in the Marvel canon is pretty secure, given the available evidence.
He’s so entrenched in the Marvel Universe that there’s even a non-Christmas comic in which he appears. 1988 Sensational She-Hulk #8 answers the question of what Santa does when he’s not delivering toys around the world every year: it turns out he’s the world’s best detective named Nick St. Christopher – a man who, as he cheerfully explains, “Always knows who there has been naughty…And Nice…” (“I can’t to wait to see how they write this in (The Official Handbook for the) Marvel Universe” says the breakthrough She-Hulk at the end of the story.)
Much to the chagrin of all the super-Grinches out there, the tradition of including Santa Claus in Marvel and DC comics is far from a thing of the past; a 2018 edition of Deadpool sent the Merc with the Mouth after Santa Claus in a story not entirely different from DC’s Lobo special from a quarter of a century earlier – this time, however, it was a few disgruntled children who wanted Santa’s cheerful head on a plate – and last year’s The evil of the new year DC’s one-shot had an appearance by Myra’s Ni’Klaus, a powerful wizard who was literally Santa Claus and used yet another name. Both are, it should be added, canonical appearances.
As long as there are Marvel and DC comics – not to mention the holidays, though that may have to be taken for granted given the context – it seems guaranteed that Santa will continue to appear on an irregular basis in both universes and get good distribution to have. cheer and remind audiences that superhero comics are essentially filled with ridiculous, unrealistic characters created to put a smile on children’s faces. For those who have a problem with that: there is a lump of coal with your name on it.