Top Cow Holiday Special (2024)

This comic was made up of 3 super short stories. The first one was linked to the Witchblade series. This story was way too short. Also it mixed up and got wrong classic witch folklore which annoyed me. I know that stories take liberty with things, but people in the know will just roll their eyes at super obvious mistakes. In this case they were trying to pull in normal witch folklore into the Christmas Witch mythos. Just wrong and annoying. I remember when the Witchblade series was popular and even had its own TV show, but it had been years since I really noticed anything new (this comic) and it was a let down.

The second story was amazing cute and funny. It was a play off of The Night Before Christmas. The goblin/darkling commentary was great and helped to develop a connection with the characters very quickly. Confused as to why Santa would have a gun, but I guess he has to be worried about being attacked. I wish this story would have been longer and that the 'replacement' Santa would have taken the trouble maker with him to finish the deliveries. Just so much expansion material.

The third story as well should have been expanded to show you all of the '12 days of Christmas obstacles in detail. It would also have been interesting to see how Santa got locked up and for them to expand which 'naughty' person locked him up.

Overall the comic was ok. The art work was good, but I think that the publisher made some big mistakes. First the second and third stories should have been expanded into full length holiday comics of their own. The first story should have been left on the editor's floor for many reasons (like no real story and miss use of folklore). I felt like it could have been better if all those involved would have just put more time and thought into what they were doing. The end product felt like a rush job where they were just trying to get a holiday issue out in order to try and compete with other comics.