Christmas Comics Cavalcade: The 1994 Marvel Holiday Special

I’ve covered the Marvel Holiday Specials here. They are some of my favorite Christmas comics, owing much to my memories of buying them and reading them around the holidays.

I’ve gone on at length about how much I loved those comics as a kid and still find a lot to love about them now. One of them always eluded me though. I’d never been able to locate a copy of the 1994 Marvel Holiday Special.

…until a few months back when I finally stumbled over it at a clearance sale.

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Spider-Man Holiday Special 1994

1994-1995 was a weird time to be a Spider-Man fan. Marvel Comics was in the midst of an almost three year long storyline wherein Peter Parker found out that he had been cloned. That clone, previously absent from Spider-Man stories for decades, returned under the name Ben Reilly and eventually took on the super-hero identity of The Scarlet Spider. The Clone Saga (as it became known) was by most accounts a colossal misstep for the Spider-Man franchise of books. Fans were disengaged from the shenanigans and became apoplectic when, in a shocking twist, it was revealed that the Spider-Man/Peter Parker character they had been following for years was in fact, the clone… and Ben Reilly was the TRUE, original Spider-Man. Ben then took over the prime Spidey gig, allowing Peter Parker and his wife Mary Jane a quiet retirement… for about 6 or 8 months before readers practically demanded that the ship be righted with the Peter character who had been front and center for most of the comic’s run returning to his role as Spider-Man.

Sound stupid and confusing? Welcome to superhero comics in the 1990’s!

I tell you all that to explain that today we’ll be looking at the Spider-Man Holiday Special, published in 1995 by Marvel Comics. Cover price was $2.99… I got this for a quarter at a comic book convention.

christmas comic cavalcade: the 1994 marvel holiday special

Last year, I wrote about one of my favorite holiday comic books ever, The 1993 Marvel Holiday Special. It was one of the first comic books I bought with my own money and thought it was worth every penny. I was therefore quite excited to pick up The 1994 Marvel Holiday Special the following year.

Unfortunately, ’93 couldn’t hold a candle to ’94. Fewer characters, less interesting creators, and a couple of stories which made no sense added up to a disappointment.

christmas comics cavalcade: the 1992 marvel holiday special

Today we’re looking at The Marvel Holiday Special from 1992.

1992 was one of the first Christmases where I had saved my own money to buy people presents. I bought my father a sci-fi paperback titled The Price of the Stars from the Waldenbooks in the Newburgh Mall. I chose that book as a present for Dad based entirely on the cover of the book, which had a lady in some kind of space-pirate outfit, replete with eye patch. I guarantee Dad never read that book, but I can at least say that my other purchase went to good use, as I picked up this comic for myself.

Adorned in a truly excellent Art Adams cover, the Marvel Holiday Special contains eighty pages of original holiday themed stories featuring Marvel’s best and brightest superheroes. As I grew older and into a more jaded comics reader, I gradually came to the realization that most of the annuals that Marvel put out in the 1990’s seemed to consist of stories they’d had sitting in a dusty drawer somewhere for ten years. Annuals were where younger new artists and writers were given a chance to prove themselves… which as a practice is great for the novice, but not always fun for the reader.