My Letter to Santa

Dear Mr. Claus:

Long time no see! I hope you and the missus are doing well during your busy season. I know I haven’t written in a while, but it’s not because I’ve been blowing you off. On the contrary; I respect how busy you are, and I didn’t want you to feel obligated to keep bringing me stuff. I’m an adult with a job or two now, and generally speaking if I want something I just whip out the Visa.

Or at least that’s how it used to be. I just had another kid, and I can't go "make it rain" at Dairy Queen anymore. I’m sure you saw me when my car died a few months ago. I know I had kind of a “naughty list” reaction when that all went down. Still, you must admit I’ve been as close to “nice” this year as I ever get. I didn’t spoil any comics for anyone; I didn’t torrent The Social Network, even after I missed it in the theater; I stayed away from almost every flame war that broke out in the comments. I stand by my record.

What I’m saying is this: please bring me presents this year.

What do I want? Well, I could just send you a link to my Amazon Wish List, but since Christmas is a time when miracles happen I figure I might as well dream big and swing for the fences. You’ve got elves and pixie dust at your disposal. See what you can do with this Christmas list:

A new home for the Misfit Toys. Nick—can I call you Nick?—I’m gonna be honest with you: this has been a rough year or so for the ol' enthusiasm. A lot of great stuff came out in 2010, no doubt about it, but real-world economics kept intruding in ways that bummed me out. Not only was the price on the cover the only thing I heard about some books, but it seemed like every new Marvel title I tried got canceled the day before issue #1 left the printers. Several more titles went on “hiatus,” which is really just the publishing equivalent of your mom telling you she sent your dog Sparky to live on a farm. I was going to say “every book without Wolverine in it got canned without a chance,” and then I remembered Weapon X got canned. They’re even canning a Deadpool book, robbing me of my most beloved go-to joke.

What does this have to do with you, you ask? Well, I’m looking at the empty space ‘neath my tree and asking, Why not use your holiday magic to put out a monthly anthology series consisting entirely of the cult books that got axed all year? (On Twitter, I suggested calling it Journey Into Misery.) The main reason anthologies sell so poorly is that buyers don’t know what they’re getting from one issue to the next. This solves that problem and gives everyone back their Little Book That Didn’t. Eight pages of S.W.O.R.D.; eight pages of She-Hulks; eight pages of My Boyfriend Thor. It’s foolproof. I know from your treatment of Rudolph that you always support a quirky underdog as long as there’s something in it for you; imagine the finder’s fee you could get bringing this idea to Marvel.

Sprinkle a little of that Spider-Girl mojo on She-Hulks, actually. More She-Hulks in any form would be great. Have you seen this book? How is this not an ongoing series? How do you not lock down that Wilcox/Stegman creative team? For a character who’s been in one hundred issues of her own comic, She-Hulk can never seem to catch a break. If she has one more unsuccessful attempt at an ongoing, she has to become an agent of Atlas.

ROMnibus.  Howard the Duck and ROM the Spaceknight are usually tied as my pet character from comics. Every reader has their popular favorite characters—you’re a Batman guy, you’re a Spider-Man guy—but then they also have a pet B-lister who can’t hang onto his own book and not a lot of people know. They love Darkhawk. They have every appearance of Freedom Force. They’re into the Green Lantern, but not the regular Green Lantern, the one with the hair who’s kind of a dick to everybody.

In comics, your pet character acts as the little indie band only you are cool enough to follow. If his book is out of print and he’s faded into obscurity just enough to add some mystique, so much the better. My pet is ROM, a robo-warrior with an eight-year-long tie-in comic for a toy I’m still not entirely convinced was ever owned by a child. (You would know better than I, I guess.) Marvel apparently doesn’t have the rights to ROM anymore, giving him the aura of a Clearance Sale Miracleman. I’ve read about half the series, and it is 1981 daffyballs in all the right ways. It is deadly straight-faced and willfully oblivious to its own ridiculousness; it is what people are thinking of when they say comics aren’t fun like they used to be.

A lot of people would ask you for a new ROM series, Santa, but that is a fool’s errand and I have more respect for your time than that. I just want you to get the original series reprinted in some oversized hardcover format that God never intended for it. Please send an elf over to Disney or Kenner or Rupert Murdoch or whoever-the-hell and convince them that they’re leaving free money on the table, here.

Something—anything—new from Brian K. Vaughan. Absolutely anything. Kickers, Inc. Lobo. Keeping Up with the Kardashians: a Choose Your Own Adventure Mystery. I really don’t care. TV and movies don’t need him as much as we do.

Hulk Forever. Peter David’s run on The Incredible Hulk somehow managed to both be twelve years long and end with shocking abruptness. Recently, someone asked him if he’d ever write a book like Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever (in which Claremont picks up the X-Men where he left off in 1991… with sexy results!) and he said he wouldn’t object. Neither would I. Have the elf who’s working on the ROM thing mention it while he’s over there.

I could go on, but I recognize that this is already a tall order. In fact, if you want to spread these out over a couple of Christmases, that’s totally up to you. In the meantime, the flue is clean and we’re baking those snickerdoodles I know you like. Please do drop by this year.

Also, if you could bring some toys for my children, that would be great as well.

Yours,

Jim Mroczkowski