Welcome to the fifteenth installment of A Very Merry X-Mas, where I count down my 24 favorite X-Men (or X-Men related) Christmas stories!
Today, we look at #10 in the countdown, "Ghost of X-Mas Past" by Steve Seagle, Chris Bachalo, Art Thibert, Tim Townsend and Aaron Sowd from Uncanny X-Men #365.
I guess it shouldn't be TOO surprising, since Christmas issues almost inherently come out during the last month of the year, but for whatever reason, we've seen a number of creator runs end with Christmas issues. That was the case here, with Steve Seagle's aborted run on Uncanny X-Men. He and Joe Kelly were meant to come in and shake things up in the X-Men Universe after the creative teams had been very stable for the previous five-six years. Instead, they consistently clashed with editorial over a general dispute over who, exactly, was in control of the narrative - Seagle and Kelly...or editorial? As you might imagine, editorial won out in the end and Kelly and Seagle were gone after barely over a year on the two X-Men titles.
One of the last things that they did before departing was to establish a new status quo for the X-Men. A steady seven-person team with a returning Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde and Colossus teamed with stalwart members Wolverine, Storm and Rogue, plus new member Marrow (and occasional member, Gambit). Professor X had also just recently returned to the fold, but the X-Mansion had been cleared out in an earlier storyline, so their home was very bare.
On Christmas Eve, Colossus is haunted by a ghost. Someone is adding stories to his drawings on his drawing board...
He visits the various other members of the team, who are celebrating Christmas Eve late at night in their own ways (like Professor X is bemoaning all of his charges who have died over the years) and he sees Kitty and Nightcrawler deciding to add some Christmas cheer to the group...
Finally, Colossus realizes that the "ghost" was just his memory of his sister, Illyana, who is upset that he has not hung up his portrait of her. She doesn't want to be forgotten...
A now contented Colossus is woken up by the team celebrating Christmas together and he learns that Marrow is the one who had been adding stories to his drawings...
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Adorable. It is kind of weird how the next creative team then sexed Marrow up and gave her and Colossus a romantic relationship.