12 Days of Christmas - Day 2: joy to the world

Today we have a little nugget of holiday cheer, in the form of "A Slay Ride with Santa" which appeared in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #15 (February-March 1974).

Ten-time loser Bill Digby ekes out a marginal living as a street corner Kris Kringle...


The pay might not be the best, but the job does make things easier for him in his other profession...


...as a murderer of children. (Feeling the Yuletide joy yet?) Given Digby's propensity of leaving the corpses of his victims hanging from the rafters of his flophouse apartment, it's only a matter of time before Johnny Law brings the hammer down...


...so he seeks refuge in a conveniently-parked sleigh (left with the reindeer idling) in a dark alleyway. (Gee, I wonder what's going to happen next.)


The real Santa Claus, having taken a quick pit stop for a large coffee regulah and a couple of Hark the Herald Angels Scratch lottery tickets, hops back into the driver's seat and jets off to attend to his yearly gift-dispensing rounds. The perplexed stowaway fugitive stands up in an attempt to get his bearings...


...only to discover that the someone has left a neatly-wrapped package full of ironic justice for him under the tree this year.


It's a Christmas miracle! Though I pity the poor family that wakes up on Christmas morning to find Digby's battered and frozen corpse draped over the inflatable snow globe in their front yard...

The Damned - There Ain't No Sanity Clause (from a 1980 single; collected on Eternally Damned, 1994) - Barnstorming punk with Marxist (Chico Marx, that is) overtones? Just the thing to kick the holiday festivities into gear, I've discovered. (Well, that and stained glass cookies, but those are a hassle to make.)