It’s beginning to feel a lot less like Christmas, as the holiday season runs down and a young man’s thoughts turn from Jingle Bells to “Oh god, how do I pay for all of those presents I just bought?” And in Rob Williams And Pye Parr’s twisted story for 2000 AD, “Tis The Season For Taking,” Santa decides to get a little back.
“It’s a funny story about how grasping and self-serving and commercial people are all the time, but especially at Christmas,” Williams told Comic Book Club over email.
Featured in a 100-page special that is currently out in the UK but won’t hit America until January 22, 2025, the story focuses on a simple proposition from Mr. Claus: times are tough, and he just wants to take a present back this year. Next year, things will be back to normal. As you might imagine, people do not react well to this news.
To find out a little more about the impetus and development of the story (and spoilers for our American audience here), read on.
Comic Book Club: Well! Tis The Season For Taking is pretty hilarious and messed up! Where did the germ of the idea come from?
Rob Williams: Thanks. It’s ultimately a sweet story – no, wait, it’s not sweet at all. It’s a funny story about how grasping and self-serving and commercial people are all the time, but especially at Christmas. 2000AD’s always had that dark sense of humour at its core, with a bit of social satire. I could’ve seen this Future Shock being drawn by the likes of Kev O’Neill back in the day.
It’s got that rather nasty cackle about it. And a moral. It’s ultimately got a bit of a moral to the story which can probably be summarised thus – don’t be wankers. Be a bit more empathetic and not so fixated on getting that cool new THING!
Can you talk about the design of Santa and the elves? What was the inspiration there?
Pye Parr: A lot of that came from Rob’s script which described Santa’s transformation as horror-demon-cthulu-santa… but still in his nice red suit. But also because I like drawing goblins then the elves turned into those – I made them blue because obviously they’re snow-goblins (or something). Then debt-collector needed to be MORE lovecraftian and terrifying than santa, so he just got even bigger and weirder.
Aside from that, one look that changed whilst I was working on it was the town. I had assumed the story was running as a Terror Tale (2000 AD’s name for one-off horror stories), so drew the environments as a traditional Christmas Card village scene, but phoned up Tharg to check and found out it was a Future Shock instead.
It makes no difference to the story at all, but I figured I’d better make the houses and stuff a bit futuristic looking… and also meant I could give Santa a robo-reindeer and pimped out sleigh.
Broad question but what is it about Christmas and intense, graphic violence that goes so well together?
RW: Have you ever spent a Christmas Day with my family?
Debt around the holidays is something a lot of families deal with… Do you agree with Santa here, that’s it not a big deal? Or are you on the side of the people?
RW: We here at 2000 AD are ALWAYS on the side of the people! Apart from when we’re not. We reserve the right to hold both positions… and neither. But yeah, this is a story that is very 2024, I guess. The Cost of Living is a big issue right now. That’s the context our slightly future township exists in. Of course that’s a big deal for people. In our story Santa’s in debt too. It’s a very big deal for him, as we see.
How would you react if Santa came down your chimney to retake your stuff? Be honest, I’ll know if you’ve been naughty.
PP: Depends on what he wanted – The car is playing up a bit, so maybe we could fob him off with that, but I think I’d be quite upset if he tried to take my Playstation.
RW: “Not today, Sack Bastard!” as one kindly old lady says to him. I think I’d react similar. Although I’m not sure I’d open fire with heavy ordinance to quite the same extent.
The 2000 AD Christmas Special is now out in stores in the UK, and will hit stores in the US on January 22, 2025.
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