The Comicon Advent Calendar 2022: Day 11 – Seasons Greetings From The Houses Of Mystery and Secrets

Merry Christmas again, time to virtually open another comic-based window of sequential greatness on The Comicon Advent Calendar…

Today it’s Cain & Abel, that original double act of murder and tale-telling. The brothers who look after twin houses in the Dreaming as seen in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and so many more… the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets.

It’s ’97, Vertigo Winter’s Edge and the brothers are prepping for the festive season… well, one of them anyway…

Cain though… well, he’s hardly in the festive spirit, but you’d really expect nothing less…

Cain’s the ultimate joy-killer, the curmudgeon of the season, Scrooge writ large on an immortal scale…

When else can one openly indulge oneself in hypocrisy, vulgarity and alcoholism? When else could one erect a temple to tweeness like this one?

But he’s still a mite ticked off when it turns out that Abel got a card from everyone at Dream’s palace and he didn’t…

Thing is, both Cain and Abel are old enough to know the truth, the ancient ways of the ‘year’s end, the solstice. The very heart of winter.’

And it’s not the “cloying, sentimental, sickly… slush” that Abel’s pushing. No, it’s a lot darker…

Off he goes, getting the decorations out to match the darker side of the season, ready to put Abel in his place. And of course, his place normally means dying yet another grisly death at the hands of the world’s first murderer.

But just this once, because it’s Christmas after all, perhaps the brothers’ tale could end a little better, perhaps just this once there’s a sprinkling of Christmas magic happening in the Houses of Secrets and Mystery…