Krampus: Christmas used to be really weird
Last year I read Krampus as it was released as single issues, but didn’t get around to writing about it. Recently I was thinking about Krampus as we moved into the holiday season and it seems to coincide with Image releasing the book as a trade collection on 3 December at your local comic shop or 16 December everywhere else. We have a lot of traditions that come from long ago - so long ago that they seem a bit odd today. A lot of this is due to a change in our sensibilities. In my daughter’s Little Red Riding Hood, no one is eaten. The wolf just gets grandma out of the way for a while. In the old Cinderella, the stepsisters are mutilating their feet to get them into the slippers. And in many European traditions Santa used to go around with a helper to punish the bad kids. One of those was Krampus, a demon. Wikipedia claims this still goes on in some countries. In the story as told by this comic, Krampus has been jailed for being a little too over-enthusiastic in his punishment of the bad kids.