Comicon Advent Calendar 2024 Day 7: ‘A Christmas Bestiary’ Offers A World Of Yuletide Horrors

by Richard Bruton

Welcome once more to our 24 days of festive delights, every day a new Christmas comic is here for you to enjoy, our way of bringing back the joy of opening those advent calendar windows…

Today, something very recent, A Christmas Bestiary from 2023, by John Kenn Mortensen and Benni Bodker, published by Fantagraphics and described thus…

‘A tongue-in-cheek guide to the beasts to watch out for during a cozy Christmastime.

‘In the wintry season, when we all delight in joyful thoughts of family, presents, and sugarplums, we mustn’t forget that the night is dark and full of terrors. Thankfully, bold adventurers Benni Bodker and John Kenn Mortensen have journeyed far and wide to comb through ancient tomes, listen to folk tales, and spy upon loathsome lairs to catalog the most frightful creatures of the netherworld that appear around Christmastime.

‘A Christmas Bestiary is an essential guidebook to all the horrors that await us during the darkest time of the year, from common creatures such as Baba Yaga and the Krampus to the less encountered (but quite deadly) Yule Wight and Gryla. Bodker’s brief text entries include the lore and background of each creature, plus handy info such as danger level that will help you survive (but no guarantees!). Mortensen’s gothic, pen-and-ink renderings bring these bone-chilling beasts to life on the page. Eerie, playful, and practical, A Christmas Bestiary is the perfect collection for the ones who love —or fear— the things that go bump in the night.’

Yep, I’d agree wholeheartedly with all that. There’s page after page of weird and wonderful beasties from the winter season from around the globe… all of them from Europe and Russia, proving that there’s a whole load of very, very, very strange things happening in those cultures… just like this for December 7th…