Through the Boughs: A Yuletide Offering Review: Not Your Typical Christmas Stories

Holiday anthologies aren’t uncommon in direct market comics. DC puts out a cleverly named anthology issue for practically every major celebration, and Marvel Comics has a superhero-stuffed Christmas-themed anthology set to hit shelves later this year. However, DSTLRY seems to be making a play to turn the most popular holidays into opportunities to showcase top talents working outside of the superhero or corporate-owned comics ecosystem. The Halloween-themed Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering proved much more artistically ambitious and impactful than your typical, breezy holiday comic book showcase even as it reveled in the spooky season’s ominous atmosphere.

DSTLRY will attempt to do the same for the winter holidays with Through the Boughs: A Yuletide Offering, a Christmasy anthology that is no less ambitious than Come Find Me but goes against the grain of the traditional holiday spirit more than it embraces it. 

That subversive disposition is displayed from the start with the anthology’s opening story, “The Man in the Blood-Red Coat” by Patrick McHale and Jim Campbell of Over the Garden Wall fame. As the title hints, it’s a story about viewing Santa Claus from a perspective inverted from the one most holiday revelers assume. While young human children anticipate Santa Claus’s arrival as they expect him to bring a reward for their good behavior throughout the year, goblins, for whom supposedly naughty behavior is the norm, tell a different tale of a home invader who leaves odd, unwanted gifts. It’s a playful story, with subtle depth, drawn with off-kilter charm — you’ve never seen true joy until you’ve seen these goblin children relishing a frozen frog treat.

Sweeney Boo’s “The Yule Beast” follows and couldn’t be more different in tone. The story of a mighty cat-like beast hiding in the winter woods and meeting a wandering woman and her infant child as they each attempt to evade pursuit is beautifully drawn with bold visuals and icy polish. Still, the plot feels underdeveloped, unfortunately coming to its close only as it seemed to be beginning.

[RELATED: Come Find Me: An Autumnal Offering Review: A Collection of Dark Delights]

James Tynion IV and Jensine Eckwell’s “Crumbs” reads like a twisted holiday fairy tale. Thematically similar to “The Man in the Blood-Red Coat,” it tells the story of a town that has come to dread Christmas rather than find joy in it as each year its citizens are tormented by an elf with strange and unsettling predilections. The story stands out as much for its presentation as its subject matter, looking like traditional woodblock prints with added crimson accents, primarily used on Crumbs himself.

“Sol Saunter” by Molly Mendoza feels like something meant to be read in a winter haze. Its zodiac-themed story meanders through pages reminiscent of Little Nemo strips, each with an inventive layout that the characters within often choose to ignore as they lean into the adjacent openings, all colored with muted warmth. The dreamlike quality of the tale leaves a mark and the pages are worth poring over on return visits.

“The Goat King’s Son” by Ryan Andrews is built like a winter myth. It’s the tale of a royal family locked in a cycle of death and rebirth. Its patriarch must chase a goat god around the globe and ultimately behead it to release the light that ends 12 days of darkness, only for the goat to be reborn again, stealing away the light once more and bringing back the darkness. Like the strongest stories of myth, it packs a lot of meaning and subtext into its economical plot. The artwork gives the story a lot of energy, especially the colors that deftly use light to emphasize its themes dramatically.

The book closes with “Pulsar” by K. Wroten, another story with a touch of fairytale and myth but of a more ominous nature. Set in a world whose sun has seemingly become dangerously unstable, forcing most people to live entirely indoors, it plays with generational memory and the tension between faith and science. There’s wonderful detail in the art, and thick textured linework, and while the story’s ending may be too opaque for some, it will likely linger with readers for a while after they’ve flipped to the back cover.

Through the Boughs is a Christmastime anthology that draws on a different time, before holiday entertainment became all good cheer and Hallmark Channel movies, back when the coming of winter still came with a hint of dread. It’s an anthology for those who remember that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story and appreciate it all the more for it, and it’s likely best red by a fire — preferably one built outdoors beneath the trees on a night when the snow is falling. 

Published by DSTLRY

On December 11, 2024

Written by various 

Art by various

Colors by various

Letters by various

Cover by Jenn Ely