Comicon Advent Calendar: Day 9 – Elvira Does Christmas!

by Richard Bruton

Time to take another look behind the doors of the Comicon Advent Calendar, our seasonal surprises coming at you every day of the festive season! Today, not someone you’d expect to go big for Christmas, Elvira in the House of Mystery Special #1.

Cover by the genius that is Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Elvira’s House of Mystery Special #1 came out in 1987, with the hostess of horror celebrating the season in her own, unique style!

Four tales, all of them having some wonderfully dark twist to them all, opening, as these things often do, with a riff on Dickens’ Christmas Carol in Elvira’s Christmas Carol, written by Joey Cavalieri, art by Frank Springer.

It’s Christmas and the Mistress of the Dark wants nothing but a good night’s rest, serenaded gently to sleep by a little creepy music on the radio…

But this is Christmas and we all know what happens to the radio at Christmas-time, don’t we? Oh yes, wall-to-wall cheesy Christmas songs…. and it gets worse as the carollers show up on her doorstep…

And wouldn’t you know it, no sooner than you could say “Ebeneezer Scrooge,” there’s the whole ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future showing up in her bedroom…

Off she goes, where the Ghost of Christmas Past gets to see a young Elvira burning her school down after the teacher told her off for making Christmas bat decorations, where the Ghost of Christmas Present takes her to see the delights of Macy’s but only manages to uncover the dark consumerist heart of the modern festive season, and the ghost of Christmas Future really pulls out the stops to show her some post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Which means it’s back to Elvira and a suitably dark change of heart…

Onwards, one and all, to the second seasonal offering, as Elvira presents Oh, What Fun to Laugh and Sing a Slaying Song Tonight – written by Michael Fleisher, art by Jack Sparling – in which a crook dresses as Santa for a little Christmas Eve present taking and then runs foul of Santa ~~slay~~ sleigh…

On the run from the law? What better disguise on Christmas Eve than Santa? One quick Santa mugging later and he’s away, off into the nearest house to grab the loot…

But wait, what’s this he sees before him? It’s a little blind girl asking him if he got her note – all she wants for Christmas is her sight back…

You’re expecting it to go all sweet now, aren’t you? Not a chance, this ain’t that sort of Christmas comic. He strings her along and loots the house, before he’s off up to the roof via the fire escape. Bad, bad man. Don’t you know it’s Christmas?

But this is Christmas and this is Elvira’s Christmas, so expect a twist. Santa’s here for real, with a bit of magic, although his sight’s not all it was and he’s not that great with parking the sleigh…

Serves ya right, ya bum.

After all, what’s Christmas without a bit of vehicular manslaughter, Santa-style?

After this, it’s onto the third tale, my favourite of the lot, “O Christmas Tree“ – written by Barbara Randall, art by Stephen DeStefano – who you just might be seeing again in these Advent posts. ‘Mazing Man ring any festive bells?

It’s another seasonal tale with a nasty twist. Although this one looks just wonderful and is full of all the wonderful wackiness you’d expect from DeStefano’s art.

Your normal couple are out looking for a tree, but with the fake ones just ‘too fake,’ and the real ones ‘too dead,’ they’re about to make a bad, bad mistake by heading off into the wilds to go fetch their own…

Next, we get to see them on Christmas Eve, with their beautiful tree pride of place as they host the best Xmas party.

But you should have paid heed, dear folks, to that sign telling you no lumbering. The trees up in the Wilderness Preserve don’t like being chopped down. Not one little bit…

All that’s left the next morning is the tree, standing fresh and tall and proud where once the house of these two greedy, tree-chopping fools was. As for the homeowners… well, let’s just say they were dead wood.

But, one last twist. What to do with a giant tree in the neighbourhood? Well… there’s always sending it somewhere special…

All of which takes us to our last of Elvira’s seasonal nightmares and “Twas the Night Before X-Mas“ by Dave Manak.

Manak was/is a bloody great cartoonist, with many credits back in the day with his funny style reminding me rather a lot here of Kyle Baker. His work’s appeared in various Warren Publications, DC horror books, Bullwinkle And Rocky, MAD, Marvel’s Alf and The Ewoks, and Archie Comics’ Sonic The Hedgehog.

Here, he’s giving us a send-off for the Elvira Special, in the form of a Christmas poem, all about life on a post-nuclear war Earth.

Cheery, huh?

Visiting aliens come looking, wondering what has happened, shedding a tear for the foolish beings who once lived here. What fools they were: “Our sensors, it seems, show no signs of life, All must have died in the nuclear strife.”

But wait, what’s this? Something blazes through the sky…