Moonstone’s Holiday Super Spectacular is a collection of five short Christmas themed stories featuring Moonstone universe characters The Phantom, Kolchak, The Spider, Sherlock Holmes, and Buckaroo Banzai.
The first story in this collection is called Silent Knight and stars The Phantom doing what he does best protecting the innocent. Silent Knight starts off with two men in charge of delivering some boxes to a missionary that is located across the path of a hazardous stretch of road infamous for rebels and slavers kidnapping those who cross through it selling them to the highest bidder as slaves. Honestly my only real exposure to The Phantom was the 1996 film featuring Billy Zane not the best way to get exposed to the series but I must confess he appears to be much more interesting in the pages of a comic book. To be fair I was never a fan of Billy Zane the only film I can think of that I enjoyed him in was Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, but none the less I found this story entertaining and now want to do a little more research into the world of The Phantom.
Next up we have A Christmas Story staring my favorite investigative reporter and magnet of the paranormal the legendary Carl Kolchak. I love the start of this story a nod to the classic film with the same title Kolchak becomes the owner of his very own leg lamp a major prize as you should already know, this is one of a few references to the film that are hidden throughout the story a real treat for long time Darren McGavin fans. In this tale Kolchak would find himself teaming up with a very famous holiday icon to do battle against a small little package of pure terror a really fun and creative Kolchak Christmas special that fans will have a blast reading.
Story number three features The Spider in a tale called City of Bleeding Snow, the city has been blanketed in a coating of steel melting flesh eating snow and the diabolical Snow Man has taken Nita captive onto of all the mayhem. Prior to this I had only seen The Spider in the pages of From the Vault: the Pulp Files the last book I reviewed where I mentioned he seem the most interesting to me out of the ones showcased in the collection character biographies. I was right in assuming this as I have fallen in love with The Spider and now find myself wanting to learn more about him and his origins. As I have said again and again I love vigilantes and The Spider is one ruthless deliverer of justice. This Christmas themed story arch was cleaver and a fun read thus far this has be a very solid Christmas oriented collection.
The forth story stars the world famous detective Sherlock Holmes in Holmes for the Holidays in which the super sleuth would be approached by a woman who is worried that something may of happened to her husband who has been gone for three days and never arrived at the location she was told he was traveling to. In the typical Holmes fashion he adds up all the clues and figures out just where the man has been in this heartwarming addition to the collection. The ability to bring all these stories to a happy and holiday inspiring end in continuously interesting ways is a testament to the writing ability of those involved with Moonstone comics.
Finally we have a story staring Buckaroo Banzai called Christmas Corral by far the strangest story in the collection revolving around a species of giant worms from outer space that have traveled to earth to pay tribute to Jesus, yes you heard me right giant alien worms come to earth to pay tribute to Jesus Christ. A truly odd and fitting way to bring this holiday themed collection to an end I suppose, if you are a fan of all things Moonstone I’d go out of my way to track down this special issue you will have a ton of laughs and makes a comic to revisit each Christmas season.
