We’re well into spring here in North America, but it’s fitting, as I look through my front window at the Toronto morning, and see that there is a touch of the white stuff on the rooftops of houses today.
Winter doesn’t seem to want to let go. Just like that season’s best tidings which are worthy pieces of advice all year round: that it’s good to be nice and show goodwill towards men. After all, every child knows to not get on Santa’s naughty list. It’s a warning we seem to forget the older we become, until Santa and his list are just figments of old stories, passed down to children from one generation to the next in order to make our adult lives slightly more bearable during an undoubtedly busy time of year.
But in an era of “bah humbug” how bearable can life be? And what if Santa decided to make good on that list of his?
That’s exactly where today’s premiere issue of Naughty List comes to the fore!
Created and written by film and television producer and writer Nick Santora (The Sopranos, Law & Order, Prison Break, The Fugitive) and festively illustrated with dirty noir-crime alongside wonderful Christmastime familial gatherings by Lee Ferguson (Sympathy For No Devils, Sam and His Talking Gun), Naughty List is a no holds barred reimagining of the Santa Claus origin…for a more cynical time.
Santora has described his pitch as emanating from the seasonal negativity of consumerism and individuals being put out of their comfortable routines by otherwise friendly gatherings and age-old customs. Really, the Christmas season should be a time that is a joyous expression of mankind’s coming to together, exemplifying that previously mentioned goodwill towards each other.
So, along with the smooth and beautiful artwork of Ferguson, which also heightens the sense of dark tension and violence in the story, Santora has redefined the Santa myth for out times.
Naughty List tells the tale of the immortal Nicholas Sinterklass, the real Santa Claus, who once had a loving wife and child, hundreds of years ago. Today, someone has stolen Nicholas’ naughty list and gone on a killing spree.
And no one steals from Papa Noel!
Naughty List is a sort of John Wick take on the Santa Claus story that traverses old-time euro villages to modern day New York City and is full of magic, mythical beasts and fists and fire pokers and dirt, grim, blood and crime.
Make the good list and run to your local comic book shop today to pick up the Santa origin story you never heard – and never knew you needed to hear – with Naughty List #1!
