The Comicon Advent Calendar 2022: Day 14 – Thor Vs The Grinch… Oh Yes, It’s As Bonkers As You’d Expect
by Richard Bruton
Welcome one and all to another festive feast of comics as we unveil the latest Comicon Advent Calendar, with a new Christmas comic behind every virtual door…
Today, it’s the bonkers delights of seeing Marvel’s God of Thunder take on Marvel’s version of Dr Seuss’ Grinch from 1991’s ‘How the Groonk Stole Christmas’ from Thor #444 by Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, and Al Milgrom. Yes, Thor versus The Grinch… oh the weirdness…
Now, for this one we have to skate over the typically ’90s insanity of Thor not being Thor here. It’s one of those ’90s things where everything changed and everyone got new costumes and pouches and stuff. Anyway, Thor ended up being exiled and instead of being Thor, Thor was actually some bloke called Eric Masterson, who first was a friend of Thor, then got mortally wounded and was saved by Odin when he merged Thor and Eric together in one of those shared body things (like Odin can’t just save someone without screwing up the whole character’s existence) and anyway, eventually Eric got to be Thor when Thor was exiled somewhere… seriously, the ’90s wasn’t a great time for so many reasons and this was one of them – with Eric/Thor eventually becoming Thunderstrike – a terrible 90s version.
God, just trying to explain the stupidness of ’90s comics is tiring. I need to replenish the eggnog – in the meantime, here’s page 1 of the Thor comic as Thor/Thunderstrike/Eric/I really don’t care goes Christmas shopping…
Anyway, now I have more of the eggnog in me, I can cheerfully tell you that all this rubbish about this Thor and that Thor doesn’t matter a bit – all that really matters here is that Thor – whatever version of Thor it might be, gets to have a big fight with The Grinch…
Oh, okay, it’s the Groonk here. And the Groonk is robbing people of Christmas presents. Better yet, the Groonk/Grinch happens to be a huge bloody great mutant who shoots lasers from his eyes. Oh yes, it gets better and better.
Sure there’s some nonsense here about Eric and his son and Christmas gets thrown in there somewhere with things coming good in the end and all that stuff that happens in Christmas tales. And we get to find out that the Groonk was a Morlock living down in the New York tunnels who made friends with a group of homeless kids and tried to give those kids his own version of Christmas by stealing those presents. It’s all very schmaltzy and meant to be all kinds of cute.
But let’s face it, some Christmas tales are great things, of melancholy or of happiness, capturing the twin elements of the festive season, the sadness and the joy that can occur. And then some Christmas tales are just so wonderfully bonkers where we have THOR AND THE GRINCH HAVING A FIGHT…
Yep, this one’s definitely all about a bloke who might be Thor and something in the Marvel universe that’s definitely meant to be the Grinch. And they’re knocking seven shades of magical Reindeer droppings out of each other.
Merry Christmas Everyone… pour me another eggnog…
