Archie Christmas Spectacular 2025 #1

I've said it once and I will say it again: the Archie Christmas Spectacular is the holiday release I look forward to the most. Maybe it's a longing for nostalgia in my getting older. Maybe it's because I love Archie. Maybe it's because I love Christmas. More than likely it's all 3!

This year's offering features Dan Parent, my pick for the definitive modern era Archie creator. Parent has a love of classic Archie while not being afraid to embrace modern norms. Case in point: the fan favorite Kevin Keller, Riverdale's first gay character. While Dan Parent has been quite progressive, his all-new story features a trio of classic Christmas characters from Archies past.

Christmas fairy Sugarplum insults Jingles the Elf when her first pick for her date to the North Pole Christmas Dance- Archie- is snapped up by Santa's daughter Noelle. In response, Santa's helper promises revenge.Jingles snatches up Veronica and he does it by deception, transforming himself into a hunk. Sugarplum ups the ante by turning herself human and bringing Reggie to the North Pole. Soon, it's a love triangle of Yule tide proportions with Archie and the gang smack dab in the middle!

This special also features 4 additional stories which are supposed to be reprints but were all new to me! Dan Parent pens and pencils 3 of them and they all pay tribute to the publisher's rather large and somewhat forgotten cast of supporting characters.

Betty and Veronica flashback to the Little Archie days thanks to being hypnotized. Foes from Sabrina the Teenage Witch's past threaten to disrupt Riverdale's New Year Eve festivities. The last pair of stories star Jughead's cousin Wilbur Wilkins. Wilbur and Archie both go ice skating only to be outdone by Juggie. Then in a story penned by Tom DeFalco, Wilbur has trouble finding the perfect gift for his secret Santa. Featuring dozens of characters from over 80 years of Archie Comics, it was a real Who's Who and it had a great punchline.

I did find that a couple of the stories were a bit clunky; especially the all-new tale. I just don't think 5 pages is enough for an epic level opener. The Halloween special had this problem too. If the high ups at Archie ever read this review, I hope that they might consider devoting more pages for the all-new feature in the holiday specials. I think 8-10 pages would be acceptable and if the cover price had to go up 50 cents to do it, I would be okay with that.

Massive kudos once more to my favorite LCS. They've been managing to get me the classic variant covers for the holiday specials lately. Once again, I got the cover I wanted. It's an all-time Christmas classic by Dan DeCarlo. I must have been really good this year!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars. 

Letters From Father Christmas- J.R.R. Tolkien

For over 20 years, J.R.R. Tolkien would bring magic to his children's holidays by sending them letters from Father Christmas; the name children bestow Santa Claus in England. But these just weren't any old letters from St. Nick. These missives were epic adventures filled with interesting characters, weather reports from the North Pole, and battles with goblins who are obsessed with Santa's inventory of toy trains of all things.

The first letter was sent to eldest son John in 1920. According to a recent graphic novel biography I read about the friendship of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, this was a fallow period for the eventual creator of The Lord of the Rings series of books. Experts say that Tolkien expressed frustration at not being able to write a great mythos for the United Kingdom. But I would have to disagree with this assessment. In my opinion, these letters were the author exercising through the creative process to create what would eventually become 1937's The Hobbit, laying the foundations of Middle Earth. 

The maps, the elvish language and the willowy font Tolkien created for his works involving Middle Earth all take shape here. There's even a very large message written in the alphabet of the goblins, along with a cipher. I'm making it one of my holiday goals to decode it. 

So much reads like a Christmas version of The Lord of the Rings. The runes ans carvings of past humans described in those caverns. The underground lairs of the goblins. The different races of elves that help Santa and how to distinguish among them. The battles between Father Christmas and goblins. The weapons. The gigantic horn that you blow to summon defenders of the North Pole from great distances. The only thing missing is one ring to rule them all...

And we've got the war. The Lord of the Rings was a way that Tolkien would process his way through his trauma that he experienced as an officer during the first World War. The last few years of letters reflect those horrible memories returning with Hitler's constant aerial bombardments of the United Kingdom. Father Christmas bemoans the upheaval of families and the difficulty in securing certain gifts for the Tolkien children. In reality it's the voice of an earthly father worried about his sons who have gone to war and not being able to adequately provide for those who still live at home. 

This is a must for any Tolkien fan who not only loves Christmas but wants to witness the formation of Middle Earth. I think you even see some of the Inspiration for The Chronicles of Narnia, because isn't Father Christmas a character in those? Not sure. But I know that talking animals sure play a part in those works and this collection of yule tide correspondence sure has plenty of those.

Collected and published posthumously, this was a brilliant read that fittingly ends; albeit with a very bittersweet goodbye from Father Christmas. So you might shed a tear or two towards the end. But not before being taken to a magical world of myth, merriment and laughs.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.