Comic Book / Klaus (Grant Morrison)

Santa Claus: Year One

Once upon a time. And a place. There was a man. These days everyone knows his name. But few could tell you who he really is or how he got started. This is the greatest untold story of them all.

Once upon a time, there was a jolly old man dressed in red with a belly full of jelly who delivered presents to all the good children of the world on his magical sleigh pulled by eight (nine if you included whatsisname) reindeer. His name was Santa Claus. Over the years since fiction existed, the big guy got tons of proposed origin stories detailing how he came to be.

Then Grant Morrison decided to take a shot at the idea and wrote Klaus, a seven-issue miniseries telling us how Morrison believes Santa came into existence while also cranking the Badass Santa trope as high as it can possibly go. Dan Mora provides artwork.

The series follows a man named Klaus, a former captain of the guard for the once happy town of Grimsvig. Klaus was framed for the murder of the town's Baron but managed to survive his exile thanks to a wolf he names Lilli. Returning to Grimsvig after several years, Klaus finds the town to have become quite the Crapsack World, to the point where even making a wish at a well is forbidden. The day after his anonymous return to Grimsvig, Klaus finds a sack of toys left for him by supernatural beings called the "Shining Family". Unsure of what to do at first, he soon takes it upon himself to cheer the children of Grimsvig up by delivering toys to them in secret. Klaus soon becomes dubbed the "Santa" by the folks in the village, much to the irritation of its leader, Lord Magnus. Thus, the Santa becomes a wanted man in Grimsvig. But as the series progresses, it becomes clear that there is something more that is happening within Grimsvig besides the conflict between the Santa and the village's oppressive leadership. Something is within the rocks of the town's mines, and it wants out...

The series was followed by:

• Klaus and the Witch of Winter (2016)
• Klaus and the Crisis in Xmasville (2017)
• Klaus and the Crying Snowman (2018)
• Klaus and the Life and Times of Joe Christmas (2019)

Not to be confused with the videogame of the same name, nor the 2019 animated movie, though the latter is another origin story for Santa Claus.

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Klaus provides examples of:

• Action Pet: Lilli, the giant white wolf.
• Adaptational Badass: Klaus is already obviously a younger, badass Santa Claus, but his reindeer are now replaced with wolves and his sleigh a mysterious hovercraft.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the original legends, Krampus was a demonic servant of St. Nicholas who kidnapped and punished misbehaving children. Here he's an ancient demon/possible alien who wishes to feed on bad children and is enemies with Santa.
• Adaptation Name Change: Most obviously, "Santa Klaus" rather than "Santa Claus". Additionally, several of the other Santas have distinct spellings of their names; Joulepukka rather than Joulupukki, Mus Gerila rather than Moș Gerilă, and — most dramatically — Papa Nomuz instead of Pére Noél.
• Adapted Out: Despite Sinterklaas making multiple appearances, Zwarte Piet hasn't been so much as alluded to, probably for good reason. invoked
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Dagmar admits to having fallen for Magnus's arrogant posturing before Klaus's actions against his rule opened her eyes to his cruelty.
• All Myths Are True:
  • The sequel one-shots reveal that several other cultures' Santa Claus equivalents are actually separate individuals who've been similarly empowered the way Klaus was, including:
    • Sinterklaas
    • Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and his granddaughter Snowmaiden
    • Father Christmas, depicted with the appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Present
    • Mus Gerila (Father Frost), drawn to resemble the golden age Superman
    • Joulepukka (Master Yule-Goat)
    • Olentzero
    • Papa Nomuz
  • The Crying Snowman features survivors of Ragnarok as the main antagonists.
• Anachronic Order: After the first miniseries, the following one-shots don't follow a specific chronological order.
• Analogy Backfire: The current owner of Pola-Cola tries to argue with his grandfather that trying to make people scared of Santa is like trying to get people to be scared of clowns. Apparently, he hasn't heard.
  Patridge: I hate clowns.
• And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with Klaus promising to come back every year to deliver presents to Grimsvig. When Jonas points out how much time Klaus has and how big the world is, Klaus implies he will extend his promise to the rest of the world. He eventually gave up this mission when the population got too big. Plus, parents were already buying gifts for their children anyways.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Lord Magnus is the Baron of Grimsvig, and oppresses the villages with heavy taxes and forced labor.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Klaus asks Krampus what horrible crime Jonas did to deserve death. Krampus is at a loss for words.
• Back to Front: The Life and Times of Joe Christmas is told by going forward through each day of December, but backwards in the titular character's life.
• Badass Santa: Klaus.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Jonas begins his Character Development and stops being a little shit when he stops accepting Magnus's superficial gifts stolen from the town's children and receives genuine love and care from his mother and Klaus.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lord Magnus and Krampus. By the end though, it's made clear Krampus is the bigger threat.
• Breather Episode: The Life and Times of Joe Christmas is simply a series of snapshots of the life of a man named Joe who had been Klaus's sidekick for more than seventy years.
• Character Development: Magnus and Dagmar's son Jonas was quite a spoiled, forever unsatisfied brat at the start of the story. By the end of the whole thing, he's realized how much of a little bastard he's been and even begs for Krampus to take him rather than the other children.
• Child Eater: Krampus' primary goal is to devour "wicked children".
• Child Hater: Krampus comes off as this when Klaus asks him what Jonas did to deserve his extreme wrath.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Klaus and Dagmar.
• Children Are Innocent: Klaus holds this belief. In his opinion, there are no bad children.
• Christmas Special: Is currently an annual series of one-shots, serving as one of these from Morrison.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Crying Snowman reveals that the Santas need belief in them in order to survive. Father Frost, the Soviet Santa, is slowly weakened and disappearing from existence due to the sudden drop in fame because of, well you know.
• The Corruption: A mere touch from Krampus transforms Klaus's sleigh and its dogs into hellish nightmare version of themselves.
• Cool Versus Awesome: Santa Claus vs the Krampus
• Covers Always Lie: There are various covers and variant covers that show Klaus looking like the traditional Santa Claus, complete with white hair and a white beard. Klaus's appearance never goes that far and his hair remains with a skunk stripe.
• Crapsack World: When the town's leader actually cancels Yuletime (this era's version of Christmas), you better believe it.
• Daddy Issues: It's implied Grandfather Partridge has got a few of these, since his idea of the Pola-Cola Corporation's hypothetical "New Santa" looks a lot like his dead father.
• Dark Is Not Evil: After his Character Development, Jonas continues to wear dark clothing, but is clearly a much kinder person than he was previously.
• Death by Origin Story: Klaus's mother froze to death holding her baby son, who miraculously survived.
• Decomposite Character: The original miniseries initially touts itself as an Origins Episode for Santa Claus. However, Witch of Winter reveals that the series is only an origin for one Santa Claus.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Magnus is the main antagonist for much of the story, only to be killed by Krampus, who serves as the final threat.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Krampus's modus operandi towards punishing misbehaving children. Klaus lampshades how ridiculously cruel this punishment was for kids who just got a little bit greedy and wanted more toys.
• Doing In the Wizard: A very odd case. Krampus is clearly (or at least acts like) a supernatural being, but the Shining Family (who also act like supernatural beings) that assists Klaus are heavily implied to be alien beings due to both their appearance and the sleigh◊ they grant him, which was described as a "Bright Machine from the 8-Cornered Orb." But it's Grant Morrison, so going by Animal Man and The Invisibles, aliens and supernatural beings are the same thing.
  • Magnus spends most of the series claiming that he's made a deal with the Krampus to free him in exchange for power. Once the Krampus is liberated, it's revealed that it was Magnus' own mental illness and obsession with the arcane that made him unlock the monster's prison and the beast itself had never actually conversed with him until they met in person.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Magnus is not at all a good man, but he still loves his wife and son. As he dies from being burned, he begs anyone who can hear his plea to save Jonas from Krampus.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Milhous Q. Partridge is not entirely thrilled his grandfather's selling children in exchange for alien technology.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Magnus learns this the hard way upon releasing Krampus, who quickly lets Magnus know how little power he truly has.
• Evil Wears Black: Both Magnus and Jonas wear dark clothes. Later averted following Jonas's Character Development, where he still wears black-colored clothing despite becoming kinder.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: With each successive issue, Klaus's hair is shorter and and greyer. By The Crying Snowman, he's fully white haired.
• Expy:
  • By Crisis in X-Masville, it becomes clear that Klaus is one for Superman. In turn, Lilli is one for Krypto The Super Dog. Even back in the original miniseries, Magnus referred to Klaus as "the man who has everything".
  • Grandfather Frost is one for Batman, considering his cave full of vehicles, weapons, and gadgets.
  • The Evil Santa looks and talks like Lobo, even having a space-travelling hoverbike.
  • Going by the Superman thing above, Joe Christmas is rather clearly one for Jimmy Olsen.
• Global Warming: In The Witch of Winter, Klaus returns to Earth after a long absence and notes that the winter air feels warmer than usual. It's also what allowed her to return to the world, the melting ice caps freeing her.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: The Santas work this way. As a Soviet Santa, Father Frost is no longer widely believed in, and so is able to be killed by the Nightborn.
• Hated by All: When Magnus is killed by Krampus, the townsfolk cheers and demand the monster go for his son next.
• Healing Factor: Both Klaus and the Krampus have this.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Jonas begs for Krampus to take him and spare the other children. Unfortunately after he's stuffed into his sack, he goes after the other children immediately.
• Horns of Villainy: Krampus has a pair of long, antelope-like horns sprouting from his skull.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Near the end of the series right before his death, Magnus reveals that all he wanted was to be loved by Dagmar and their son.
  Magnus: I WANT MY PEOPLE TO LOVE ME! I want my wife—and son—to love me...
• In the Hood: Lord Magnus wears one.
• Kill It with Fire: Krampus' preferred method of killing people.
• Knight Templar: Krampus. He justifies killing children by stating that they are greedy, envious and self-centered, and he is merely delivering their punishment. However, he's wantonly sadistic and indiscriminate in who he targets, revealing himself to be nothing more than a self-righteous hypocrite.
• The Krampus: The Greater-Scope Villain of the story. A child-eating demon imprisoned underneath Grimsvig within a coal reservoir, he manipulates Magnus into freeing him, all the while sowing misery amongst the populace so that when he inevitably escapes, he has an entire schmogousboard of "naughty" children for him to eat.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: By the last issue, Klaus has become effectively immortal. The montage of the many Yuletimes to follow show him enjoying himself with a progressively aging Dagmar. He's not all that upset at her timely death either.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Jonas is, at first, portrayed as a Spoiled Brat who hoards all of the toys in the Barony and destroys them the moment they begin to bore him. When Klaus leaves a gift for him, he feels tempted to destroy it as part of a game, only for his mother to goad him into a less destructive form of playtime, implying that he only acts this way because his father expects it from him. By the end, he offers himself to The Krampus in exchange for the lives of the peasant children, and would later grow up to be Baron to a less miserably Grimsvig.
• Love Makes You Evil: Magnus's Start of Darkness is implied to have been kickstarted by him seeing Klaus and Dagmar too close for his comfort and wishing that she loved him instead.
• Mama Bear: Dagmar picks up Magnus's sword and threatens to kill Krampus if he didn't let Jonas go.
• Meaningful Name: Klaus means "victory of the people."
• No Name Given: Krampus is never given a name but anyone who knows his appearance and what his deal is knows who the child-eating demon is supposed to be.
• Noodle Incident:
  • There are so many repeated references to a "Lunar Civil War" and Klaus having fought Martians that it might as well be a Running Gag at this point.
  • "The Life And Times Of Joe Christmas" is a series of these, including but not limited to: Klaus and Joe chasing after the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come in a DeLorean, surviving in a Nineteen Eighty-Four style dystopia ruled by Sinterklaas, having to eat an entire asteroid-sized fruitcake before it can collide with the Earth, fighting a Not Zilla on Joe's wedding day, and helping The Beatles change a flat tire.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Krampus claims he's merely punishing wicked children, but Klaus sees him for the self-righteous bully he really is.
• Obliviously Evil: Dagmar is shocked to learn that Grimsvig's people see her and Magnus's family as tyrants.
• Off with His Head!: Klaus defeats the Krampus by chopping off his head.
• Origins Episode: The whole series for the Santa Claus mythos, but issue 4 shows us Klaus's past and how he ended up outside of Grimsvig to live as a wild man.
• Papa Wolf: Klaus towards the children of Grimsvig, even spoiled Jonas.
  Klaus: I say this—THERE ARE NO BAD CHILDREN!
  • Gunnar Mikkelsen, a miner, stabs Krampus in the back with a pickaxe so his children and their friends can flee.
• The Real Spoofbusters: In "The Life & Times of Joe Christmas", we see Klaus, Joe and his wife chasing after the Ghosts of Christmas in a car similar to Ecto-1, firing at them with proton packs.
• Recycled In Space: The sequel.
• Sadist: "TO RUN IS FUN! WHEN THERE'S NO ESCAPE!"
• Science Fantasy: The series firmly sets its foot in this genre following the mostly Sword and Sorcery-style miniseries.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Throughout the story, Krampus was trapped in both the rocks of Grimsvig's mines and an ancient book. Once he's freed, his portrait in the book vanishes.
• Shout-Out:
  • Klaus fought some Martians at one point.
  • Klaus makes reference to a Man in the Moon, and that he was trapped in a glass maze under his left eye for decades. One has to wonder if his other eye has a rocket lodged in it.
  • The villains of Crisis In Xmasville are The Partridge Family, with the current grandson being named Milhous.
  • The titular character from The Crying Snowman is a workaholic father who died and was resurrected as the snowman he and his son built. He also gets smarter as he gets colder.
• Skull for a Head: Krampus.
• Spoiler Cover: Issue five's cover features Klaus battling the Krampus, a whole issue before his true form is unleashed and revealed.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Magnus and Jonas look alike.
• Take That!:
  • One of Klaus's sworn enemies is a soda company called the Pola-Cola Corporation, who wished to use Klaus's likeness to sell their product.
  • The family who owns the Pola-Cola Corporation wanted to get rid of Klaus and replace him with their version of Santa, i.e., New Santa. It's hard not to read the idea of replacing something classic with something new yet shoddy as a Take That! towards the failure of New Coke.
• Troubled Toybreaker: Jonas is the Spoiled Brat son of Baron Magnus. Under Magnus's rule, all toys are confiscated and given to Jonas, only for the boy to bore easily and destroy them in his tantrums. Later his mother teaches him how to play with the toys less destructively, showing that he's just a Lonely Rich Kid whose destructive behavior is because his tyrannical father is the only role model he has.
• Villainous Breakdown: Magnus becomes more and more unhinged as Krampus's arrival drew near. As the demonic being laid waste to Grimsvig and began going after the children, Magnus desperately yells for him to grant him the power he promised so he can avoid what he believes to be the king's incoming wrath.
• Villainous Crush: Magnus had his eyes on Dagmar since they were children.
• Weaksauce Weakness: One of the most potent weapons in the Krampus' arsenal is a fiery Breath Weapon that is rendered useless in the upper atmosphere where the air is cold and thin.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Jonas is given a toy by Klaus, who is said to only give toys to good children. Jonas clings onto the implications of Klaus's gift when the Krampus abducts him.

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