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Graphic Novel Review: Klaus: How Santa Claus Began by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Dan Mora

Cover art for Klaus: How Santa Claus Began by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Dan Mora

Klaus: How Santa Claus Began by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Dan Mora

BOOM! Studios, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781684153930

 

Klaus arrives in the town of Grimsvig during Yuletide to trade furs, and finds it a sad shell of what it once was. Grimsvig is under the control of Baron Magnus, a harsh man who insists his wife is mad and that Jonas, his ill-tempered and self-centered son, is the only child who is permitted toys…all of them. The baron works the men in the town to death in the mines. When the workers hear voices underground, the baron insists they are hearing things and demands they work harder. 

 

After the guards run Klaus out of town for defending a child merely holding a rock from an armed soldier, he spends time in the forest with his wolf friend Lilli and is visited by spirits. He awakens in the morning with aching hands and finds he is surrounded by small toys. He sneaks through the town, delivering them to the children of Grimsvig.

 

When the baron discovers this, he does his best to destroy the happiness the children have found in the mysterious gift giver, the Santa. The baron, desperate to keep his power and get rid of the Santa, summons an ancient evil from the belly of the earth, a demon hungry for bad children. What will the baron do when the demon’s first target is young Master Jonas? 

 

Morrison delivers a great dark fantasy version of the origin of Santa Claus. The characters are great. Klaus is not what we see in other origin stories. He’s both brawn and brains, outwitting the town guards at nearly every turn. Baron Magnus is devious and terrible, keeping his wife, Dagmar, someone from Klaus’ past, away from the townspeople. Jonas is an insufferably spoiled child. Mora’s artwork for Klaus is beautiful. The characters are well drawn, and the winter landscapes are gorgeous.

 

While not strictly horror, there are horror elements, such as spirits, demons, and humans being horrid to each other. If you are looking for a nontraditional Santa Claus story for the holiday, check this one out. Highly recommended

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on January 11, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

 

Cover art for The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

The Raven by Dani Lamia

Level 4 Press, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-1933769707

Available: Preorder paperback, Kindle edition, MP3 ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I received a .pdf ARC of this from the publisher.

 

Rebekah is bullied horrendously at school, mostly cruel jokes originating with popular Coralie Renner and her friends. Things get much worse when Beka accidentally spills a drink on her skirt at a party and Coralie nicknames her “piss bitch.” Not only does she face name calling and humiliation but someone pees in her locker, destroying her textbooks, clothes, and sketchbook.

 

As a young child Beka had a dream friend, the Raven, who eventually stopped visiting but left her with a special edition of the works of Poe. She starts dreaming of him and carrying the book again. This time her dreams are vengeful. The students who have been tormenting her begin to appear one at a time as she watches, waking up the next day with real physical damage- a broken tooth or arm, hair pulled out in a clump. They claim the damage is from accidents but all remember bad dreams.

 

This wouldn’t normally be concrete enough for a police investigation, but after parents insist, a cop is sent to investigate, who happens to be Beka’s neighbor, Mike Wilson. Mike is a couple years older than Beka and has a crush on her. Despite her being a potential suspect and it being completely inappropriate, they start dating.

 

Meanwhile things with the Raven are escalating inside Beka’s magical Poe-inspired dreams. She asks the Raven, who has stepped things up and is now killing, to stop, and he refuses. She realizes he is not merely a dream creature, but a person who can invade dreams who has taken a personal interest in her.

 

I liked the premise a lot, but I felt like the story started to go off the rails with the police investigation and other plot threads once we got closer to the end.

 

Contains: bullying, brief description of rape, scenes of torture and murder.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 8, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, foreward by Lisa Kroger

Cover art for Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, with a foreword by Lisa Kroger.

Black Spot Books Nonfiction, 2023

ISBN-13: 978-1645481300

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

I read an uncorrected ARC of this book.

 

Unquiet Spirits is a collection of 24 personal essays by women across the Asian diaspora, grounded in the authors’ family history, relationship to their culture, and the supernatural.

 

One of the takeaways from reading this is that the Asian diaspora is far from monolithic. Each of the authors has a distinct background and set of circumstances: one certainly cannot speak for all.

 

Some of the authors include Nadia Bulkin, who is Javanese-American, Geneve Flynn, who is a Chinese-Australian born in Malaysia, Rena Mason, who is a first-generation immigrant to America of Thai-Chinese descent, and Tori Eldridge. who was born in Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Korean, and Norwegian descent, all of whom approached their essays differently.

 

The diversity of the authors and their choices of what each individual focused on is what really drew me in. That I read almost 300 pages in tiny print on a PDF is a testament to the quality of the writing.

 

I learned a lot from these essays: in Lee Murray’s essay on displaced spirits I learned that Chinese immigrants to Australia expected to be returned to China for burial, or become hungry ghosts, and from Nadia Bulkin’s essay that the terms “amok” and “latah” originated in Indonesia, to name just a few. The authors wrote about growing up feeling out of place, feeling unwilling or unable to meet expectations about filial duty, marriage, and motherhood. They wrote about hungry ghosts, fox demons, and yokai
They wrote about finding and using their voices.

 

I read this a few essays at a time. There’s a lot to think about in each one, so I think that’s a good way to approach this book. I highly recommend taking the time to do so.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 7, 2023 by , Reply
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