12 Days of Christmas #7
At the start of every Holiday season, our kids eagerly await the return of our Elf on a Shelf, George. And when he shows up, they get EXCITED! It’s with similar anticipation that every December I start digging around again to see if the indefinitely postponed mini-series Santa Claus vs The Martians is finally being released. If you’re already aware of this mythological creature, I have nothing new to report. If you don’t, get ready to have a new void opened in your life that will possibly (probably?) never be filled.
I first stumbled on the Image Comics mini-series, written by Benito Cereno and drawn by James Harren, in December 2010 (though it’s origin goes back a couple of months, which is where I’ll start).
Comics Alliance ran an article in September 2010, which was an interview with creator Benito Cereno and Santa Claus himself, to discuss the book. According to the article, issue 1 would ship in December 1, 2010. I came across a follow-article that ran on December 23, 2010, wherein the same writer caught up with Cereno again. It was also mentioned here that due to some delays, the book was rescheduled to start the following Christmas, in 2011. As a consolation prize, the CA article contained the entirety of issue 1, with annotations from Cereno. There are also a bunch of Cereno’s Live Journal posts from around that time with pages and pages from the book.
Christmas 2011 came and went, and still no Santa Claus vs The Martians. In a Newsarama article from 2012, Cereno mentions, as an aside near the end of the interview, that he was trying to get the book in the can for the following year, when Harren was not working on BPRD.
In October 2013, during a time that I occasionally used the Bloody Popcorn Twitter (now it is entirely Joanna), I tweeted at Cereno asking about it, to which he replied that the book was indefinitely delayed.
In a December 24, 2014, Tumblr post, Cereno put up the covers to all 4 issues, and he referred to the book as “An unfortunately as yet unfinished four-part story.” He links to the article with the first issue and commentary and he also links to script for the second issue, which he refers to as “as-yet-undrawn”.
And that’s the last that I can find on the progress or eventual release of this book, though it appears that Benito Cereno does yearly Krampus comics on Comics Alliance. Here is this year’s entry.
Will Santa Claus vs The Martians ever see print? I have no idea. But I’ll keep looking every December (I guess I could message Cereno, but I already tweeted at him once three years ago…I don’t wanna bug the dude).
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