Comicon Advent Calendar 2024 Day 10: A Very Different Euro Updating Of ‘A Christmas Carol’

by Richard Bruton

Welcome one and all, grab a mince pie, pour yourself a mulled wine… try to forget for one moment the Christmas stresses, for it’s time to unveil the latest comic treat behind the windows of the Comicon Advent Calendar…

Based on the Dickens classic tale of the festive season, José-Luis Munuera‘s adaptation of A Christmas Carol heads into new territory with something that’s absolutely beautiful to behold and tells a very different version of the tale of ghosts, redemption, and change.

It was originally published in December 2023, but I wanted to highlight this for the Advent Calendar this year because, as is the way of these things, I only got around to telling you all about it in January of this year – and we know that that’s hardly the best time to be talking all things Christmas. So, in case you missed it at the time, I thought it was perfect for the Comicon Advent Calendar for this year.

As you’d expect, it’s a take on the Dicken’s classic story, with all the familiar elements there – Victorian London, snow in the air and on the ground, where Scrooge is a curmudgeonly soul, befeft of the whole Christmas spirit thing. Scrooge has no charity, no sense of looking out for anyone other than Scrooge, whether that’s destitute children or the workers like Cratchit in Scrooge’s employ.

And then there are the ghostly visitations, first the spirit of Scrooge’s dead partner, Jacob Marley, warning Scrooge of the coming visits of three sprits, ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future.

But this is no ordinary tale of Scrooge going through his history, seeing his future, and then changing his ways. No, this is something very different, a visually beautiful thing, where the biggest twist, something that changes the whole tone of the story, is that this Scrooge is one Ms Elizabeth Scrooge.

And that gender flip means so much, that simple change shifts the whole story, opening up to show us all the differences to the story that a Victorian woman brings to things. It’s a shift that’s handles expertly by Munuera.

Of course, the basics of Scrooge are there – she’s every bit the skinflint, the meanspirited and frankly nasty person we’d expect. But it’s when we start heading off with the ghosts that things are different. Yes, she’s given the tour, full of sorrow and sadness, but all with a new spin on the tale, new meaning to things given by want of this being Elizabeth and not Ebeneezer.

Things really shift in the manner of her transformation at the end. This is no change brought on by the shock of all that she’s seen, but a calculation on her part to defy both God and the spirits, to be contrary and decide for herself. And the way things play out in the finale, as Elizabeth wakes on Christmas Day, have an added dimension, whatever change she’s undergone thanks to ghostly intervention all the more real, believable, and nuanced with the person she still is.

All in all, it’s a lovely tale of Christmas, one you should look into gettng to add to the Christmas comic classics on your shelves. It gives the familiar tale of personal transformation something new and unexpected, a really remarkable book.

A Christmas Carol – by José-Luis Munuera, colours by Sedyas. Translation by Jerome Saincantin. Published by Cinebook

You can find all of the Comicon Advent Calendar entries right here.