Only one comics reviewer has to work at Yuletime, and that’s me. So as Christmas approaches, let’s take a look back at one of my seasonal favorites, Grant Morrison and Dan Mora’s “Klaus.”
Written by Grant Morrison
Illustrated by Dan Mora
Lettered by Ed DukeshireKlaus is “Santa Claus: Year One.” Award-winning author Grant Morrison (“All-Star Superman,” “The Multiversity”) and Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award-winning artist Dan Mora (“Hexed”) revamp, reinvent, and re-imagine a classic superhero for the 21st century, drawing on Santa’s roots in Viking lore and Siberian shamanism. Collects the complete, seven-issue limited series in an oversized hardcover. “It’s the beautiful art and the unusual blend of grim medieval setting and whimsical fairy tale elements that truly distinguish this tale.” – IGN
As you read above, “Klaus” purports to be “Santa Claus: Year One,” but it’s not actually that. “Klaus” isn’t a Santa Claus origin story so much as a transformation. It runs the Santa Claus mythos through the prism of superhero and adventure comics and delivers a Santa who’s equal parts Superman and St. Nick, creating its own “Santa Claus Comics Universe.”
Perhaps inspired by his then-recent run on “Action Comics,” Morrison positions the titular Klaus, the man-who-would-be-Santa, as a gift-giving champion of the people. Struggling as an outcast fur trader, Klaus finds that tyranny and darkness has overtaken his home. He returns not to save his city, but to inspire its people to save themselves.
At this point, you’re likely wondering whether “Klaus” is brilliant or absurd, and I’m here to tell you it’s both. There are story points and lines of dialogue that will leave you laughing out loud (my favorite of which is “villain” Lord Magnus’s scowling announcement, late in the tale, that he “has a plan. A grown-up plan.”), but Morrison and Mora are in on the joke. They know exactly what sort of story they’re telling: a fun, Christmas-time yarn that doubles as a magical superhero adventure. This is a tale which operates with simple, almost Silver Age logic: anything grim is met with humor, anything sorrowful is transformed into joy, and anything dark is, eventually, brought into the light.
Which, I think, leads us to discussion of Dan Mora. Mora illustrated “Klaus” entirely himself, providing lines, inks, and colors. It’s those colors that have stuck with me most, since reading “Klaus” for the first time on Christmas morning 2016. The city of Grimsvig is indeed, grim – illustrated using stark grays and blacks and whites, especially at night. But everything other than that dire city pops with color. The mountain sunrises, Klaus’s toys, the man himself’s red-and-white suit, all of it is boldly illustrated. Mora’s color work and crisp, kinetic lines are even good enough to carry readers through the sequences in which psychedelic, shamanistic aliens appear to grant Klaus immortality and toy-making powers (which is a thing that happens in this book). For me, “Klaus” established Mora as an artist to watch going forward, and it’s been great seeing him get more and more work as a result of his stellar performance here.
Mora’s dynamism, in particular, makes him a perfect collaborator for this story, in which Morrison moves quickly but deftly. There’s a lot of plot packed within “Klaus”‘s seven issues, but the art is clear and the dialogue is sharp. So it is simple to tell who is who and what’s going on, despite the introduction of many main and ancillary characters, and flashbacks to Klaus’s past. This book feels almost as though it were actually made for children, which is fitting given the subject matter. I expect you could give this story to your eight-year-old, your eleven-year-old, or your eighteen-year-old and each of them would enjoy it equally, and each of them would get something out of it.
That something being this: the message that no one (outside of maybe the Krampus, revealed as the story’s actual villain) is inherently bad. As Klaus says, “There are no bad children,” and if there are no bad children, it’s possible there are no bad people as well. Most all of “Klaus”‘s villains redeem themselves by book’s end, showing that, at least to Morrison and Mora, the spirit of Christmas is truly transformational. And I don’t know about you, but there’s some part of me that wants to believe that’s true, and so loves this story because of it.
The “Klaus” universe has continued on in a series of Christmas-releasing one-shots, none of which I’ve read, though the collection is on my Christmas list this year. In that way, “Klaus” is now almost as much Doctor Who as Superman; the superheroic man in the red-and-white suit now appears every Christmas to lead us out of the dark. And my world, at least, is a little brighter because of it.
