Christmas 365 #4

Mikey Way's 2024 holiday satire comes to a close. I wish I could say that I was a big fan of the ending. However, things got a bit too surreal at the end. 

After a war between Peter and his supervisor for the best year-round Christmas pop-up theme park, a Mr. Beast type influencer gets involved and promises to fund a mega-sized theme park for Christmas if the two men will bury the hatchet. The social media star buys up Peter's entire neighborhood and does put on quite the extravaganza. But he pretty much chokes out Peter and his boss from any real say in the project. That might actually be a good thing because to this media guru, it's safety be damned. Especially when he insists on having a real life Yeti at the park: a very ornery gorilla that has been painted white and itching for an escape.

I think I get what Mikey Way is trying to say here. It's easy to try and make a huge display for your community and lose yourself in the details. Plus with how obsessed with clicks and likes, our society will basically do anything for that endorphin rush of digital popularity. Its just once the Christmas Yeti escapes from his cage that things go seriously off the rails. 

Issues 1-3 were entertaining social commentaries on modern Christmas celebration excesses. It ends with a surrealist farce that has holiday magic wrapping everything up like a Frank Capra movie. I just don't think we had to trounce through a Marx Brothers movie to get there. 

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.

Christmas 365 #3

Peter's slimeball supervisor stole some of his holiday ideas and attempted to make his own year-round Christmas theme park. But he lacks the Christmas spirit and creativity of Peter and his family. The small attendance at the rival Christmas festival really shows that. However, that hasn't stopped Peter from becoming obsessed in creating the greatest Christmas themed pop-up ever. His Halloween themed Christmas is scaring the neighborhood children. He's sent his son out to spy on his rival. And Peter is shutting out his family, especially phone addicted daughter, who was the creative force behind the Rockwell family's success at all this. 

Perhaps the most heartfelt issue of this 4-issue miniseries. I know what it is like to want to create the best, most memorable outdoor holiday display for your wife and her family and get bogged down into competing with the other neighbors. It's a combination sin of coveting and pride that I can get carried away with. Trying for a perfection that will never come is another issue I succumb to. 

I also understand how it is too feel unappreciated at your job. Perhaps you have a rival and they crap all over you and yet if you confront the billy, it's you who gets in trouble. For Peter, crushing his supervisor by putting on a much more popular holiday display is his way at getting back at his boss for all the conniving and taking of credit for his work. Nobody can fire him for waging an off-hours war to top his boss with bigger and better displays. The only problem is that when you let loose of your principles and convictions, you lose yourself in the process.

Plus Peter has unresolved dad issues. Don't we all.

I'm looking forward to the conclusion. But with a cover that shows Peter and his boss being attacked by a ramping gorilla atop a Rockefeller Center sized Christmas tree, I have no idea what Mickey Way has in store! It promises to be wild!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Christmas 365 #2

Issue #2 takes place a couple months into the Rockwell family journey into a year's worth of Christmas celebration. To celebrate a dozen Christmases is expensive; what with the decorations, the food, the gifts, the trips to the emergency room.

Dad Peter is accident prone. He makes Wile E. Coyote appear like a safety monitor. Thankfully, his daughter has been recording everything and posting the content online. But that income can only go so far and with Memorial Day approaching, it's going to take the Rockwell family to think outside of the box to add to the holiday appeal. In response, they create a Memorial Day Christmas theme park, complete with water slides, reindeer burgers and Santa's salute to Veterans.  

No sophomore slump here. The opening which shows all of the accidents Peter has received since the Christmas when the tree caught fire in the living room, was hysterical. His doctor was a great supporting character. 

The artwork is really good. Lots of creativity, which is essential of you are tasked with developing Christmas themes for Valentine's and St. Paddy's. Piotr Kowalski does a remarkable job that conveys so much life and action.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Christmas 365 #1

This issue came out in time for Christmas. However, issues #2-4 did not. Since I am not a fan of cliffhangers and the month long waits in between, I sat on this miniseries until the 2025 holiday season. But upon finishing the first issue and looking back on things, I can understand why the follow up issues came out after Christmas 2024!

The premise is simple really: a man who is overworked at his job thanks to a clueless owner and a manipulative supervisor has had enough. After having missed his daughter's high school holiday concert and gotten into a fistfight with another dad at Santa's village in the mall on Christmas Eve, the father decides to make up for not being there for his family by vowing to celebrate Christmas once a month on the 25th for the whole year. That means Valentine's, Easter, even Independence Day are all going to have a Christmas feel to them!

Working late into the night for Christmas #1, the house looks like a Winter Wonderland at first. I say at first, because the sparklers used to decorate the living room with have just set the Christmas tree on fire, taking all of the presents underneath with it. So, the plan isn't off to that well of a start...

Written by Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance, this wasn't quite what I had been expecting as I waited until now to read this series. That's not to say that I didn't like it. Its just from the cover as well as the opening 3-page preview I saw last year, I thought that there was going to be a magical element to the story. I thought that some forgotten arcane spirit was going to make it Christmas every day for a year. Maybe a child wished that their Christmas would never end. Or maybe the evil spirit was mad at being forgotten and was punishing the world for their collective amnesia. The opening where a young boy is chased by evil looking snowmen really perpetuated this wrong assumption. 

Instead, Christmas 365 is more like a cross between National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and the unsettling down-trodden man takes revenge pic, Falling Down. Not a bad premise for a story. Just nowhere close to my original idea for the story.

I really hope the main character's supervisor gets what's coming to him. He's such a slime ball opportunist. He reminds me of somebody that one of my loved ones is having to deal with at their job. I hope that I get to live vicariously through this story because I don't want to risk my family member getting fire because I get my revenge on their foe for making whomever's life hellish at the moment.

Although, if Mikey writes anything like his brother Gerard does, I'm not expecting a happy holiday ending to this tale. We'll see...

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.