[Content/Trigger Warning: Suicide]
At the tender age of 16, I was deeply depressed.
My childhood, from about age 8, had been a stressful mess full of fear, anxiety, sobbing, and obsessive worrying. And by my teens, I’d found that I had managed to somehow keep on, if not necessarily ‘cope’ with the circumstances that never seemed to go away. There was a ‘numbness’ as I call it, which helped me take, accept and endure all the rubbish life seemed intent on throwing in my face.
It was tiresome, but it was also, as I came to understand it, life. I’d never known any other beyond it. I could scarcely imagine beyond it. Any alternative I had heard was in stories- hearing others speak, or in fiction. I’d hear it all and feel a deep sense of envy.
Ah. Normal.
I wish I had that. [Read more…] about All-Star Superman: The Man Of Action
is rooted in the idea of Bruce Wayne transcending his limitations as a human hero and overcoming challenges that cannot be defined by logic or reason. But when Wayne is disintegrated by Darkseid’s Omega Beams during “
” and placed back at the dawn of man, it’s up to his friends and family to pick up the pieces and live up to his legendary legacy. 
is the story of Bruce Wayne being confronted with threats older than time and greater than reality. It’s the story of one man’s struggle to defeat evil that may come at the cost of his sanity.
with Kieron Gillen, you may know him from his 
He has his own super-team, his own Justice League or The Avengers, who formed way back in the ’50s and are all still around in some capacity, albeit changed by the course of time. They’re like the International Batmen crossed with the classic superheroic archetypes, with members like, but not limited to Grandfather Frost, Snowmaiden, Father Christmas, Sinterklaas and more. This is a complex Christmas mythology of superheroes and we’re only on the tip of the iceberg.
or Birthright or Secret Origin, basically. It’s the birth of the hero, the inception. Klaus is a wild man in the 1600’s Europe and he arrives at a settlement called Grimsvig, which is a totalitarian town run by a tyrant Baron. So what you get is a sort of Robin Hood-esque spin on the hero, as he strikes against the powerful and the privileged by bringing joy and gifts to the poor. You see him hunted and he’s very Batman-esque, as he perches on rooftops, flees authority and has his own Jim Gordon in his version of Gotham.
The epic apocalypse, the end of days. Or so it seems. Tackling Norse myth, dropping more hints as to what really happened in the past, Morrison basically does an ‘everything is canon’ approach to Santa, to create a rich texture and sense of history for the hero. He’s fought Pola Cola in the ’30s, he faced The Martians in the ’60s (because of 
The great legacy story. The whole lifetime of Klaus’ sidekick, Joe Christmas and his relationship to his mentor/father figure/older brother/best friend. It’s also very much The Doctor and The Companion story. Joe ages and changes, as Klaus stays ever the same. It’s a bit of Up, as you see a whole life, its ups, and downs and see what the Santa means to this one young man, who becomes not so young with time.
