I've been waiting almost an entire year to read this book. Issue #1 debuted in November of last year with issue #2 dropping in December. That would have been okay for me to wait until then to read it. But issue #3 hit store shelves in late January AND the final fourth book didn't come out until Easter! So I waited...
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fully sanctioned sequel from film creators Dennis Whitehead and Scott Schneid. Taking place 40 years after the first film, it appears that events from the second and third film in the series have been wiped away from existence. In fact, this miniseries also changes the ending of the 1984 splatter classic because Billy Chapman is still alive!
At the end of the original film, cops shot and killed Billy before he could exact revenge on the abusive Mother Superior who abused him and his brother as kids. Over Billy's dead body, little brother Ricky, proclaims that the head nun is ' Naughty '. And that's where movie series canon ends.
As Billy's corpse is being wheeled out of the orphanage, paramedics detect a faint pulse and rush to save the crazed Santa dressed murderer. Thus for the next 4 decades, Billy Chapman resided in a low-security insane asylum, keeping mostly to himself, allowing his white hair and beard to grow long like Santa. Every Christmas, Ricky takes his wife and daughter to make a yule tide visit while Ricky wrestles with the demons of his past, fearful that he too might become a sadistic killer like his big brother.
Meanwhile, one of the kids from the orphanage who witnessed Billy's Christmas Eve assault has returned to the town of Eggnog, Utah. Now a famous horror writer, the man hopes to exorcise his own demons from the orphanage and the trauma of Christmas Eve, 1984. Only that's gonna be really difficult as someone in a Santa suit is stalking the citizens of Eggnog, killing those who wind up on this evil Kris Kringle's naughty list.
If you can wade through the fact that this book erases 4 sequels, two of which weren't really even connected to the Caldwell family anyways, fans of the slasher series will enjoy a bloody sequel full of irreverent humor and creepy jump scares. And that's perfectly fine as that's was the intention of the 1984 film that changed the rules for holiday horror. As for the art, it's rough. I don't understand why American Mythology does amazing work with their all ages material; yet their horror stuff looks like it was drawn by the cartoonists at a college newspaper.
For those of you who love their Christmases to be a little bit on the dark side, this is the chilling read for you.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.
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