Today, we conclude our look at 1990s Christmas comics with a spotlight on a weird Ant-Man and Wasp one-shot comic book.

It's our yearly Comics Should Be Good Advent Calendar! Every day until Christmas Eve, you can click on the current day's Advent Calendar post and it will show the Advent Calendar with the door for that given day opened and you can see what the "treat" for that day will be! You can click here to see the previous Advent Calendar entries. This year, the theme is a Very Dope 90s Christmas! Each day will be a Christmas comic book story from the 1990s, possibly ones that have a specific 1990s bent to it (depends on whether I can come up with 24 of them).

This year's Advent Calendar, of Grunge Santa Claus giving out 90s present, like a Tamagotchi, while posing with four superheroes with the most-90s costumes around, is by Nick Perks.

And now, the final day, Day 24, will be opened (once opened, the door will feature a panel from the featured story)...

Today, we look at 1999's "Ant-Man's Big Christmas" from the comic of the same name by Bob Gale and Phil Winslade (with a bunch of inkers).

In 1996, Marvel famously farmed out their Avengers and Fantastic Four comic books to the studios of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (and then, midway though, gave all of them to Lee). Those titles retuned to the Marvel Universe in 1998, so it seemed as though Marvel had gotten past the idea of farming their characters out like that, but instead, they just did it AGAIN, only this time while still having the characters remain in Marvel continuity (unlike the Heroes Reborn comics that were set on a new Marvel Earth with its own brand-new continuity, like having Reed Richards and Ben Grimm being soldiers in Desert Storm, which, I mean, isn't that just kind of hilarious to be, like, "Oh man, this reference is way too outdated, let's use a NEW topical reference that will quickly be outdated!"). This time around, rather than going to Image Comics, Marvel turned to the small publisher, Event Comics, owned by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, who mostly published their superhero firefighter character, Ash. The resulting line of books was called Marvel Knights and it was such a great success that Marvel not only kept doing it after the initial year was up, but Marvel just decided to make Quesada the head of the overall company!

In any event, while Marvel Knights WAS firmly part of Marvel continuity, most of the titles involved tended not to get too involved with the rest of the Marvel Universe (Black Panther was a notable exception, but even there, it tended to be later on that the book had more connections to the main Marvel Universe). That, then, is one of the more unusual aspects of this one-shot. It is set during the Kurt Busiek and George Perez run on the Avengers, complete with the then-current roster of the book decorating Avengers Mansion with Christmas decorations.

At the time, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne had recently gotten back together as a couple, with Hank now taking on the Giant-Man identity (while still having other shrinking qualities to his power set). However, he very quickly fell back into his old patterns about getting caught up in his work and he and Janet clash about doing holidays with each other's families...

You can tell that Gale is trying a very different approach to the characters than we normally see, and it's weird, since I both appreciate the attempt on his part while also wondering if he made a bit of a mistake trying to sort of fit this kind of approach on to Hank and Jan. In other words, Hank and Jan don't really talk like they do in other comics. They seem more like a generic middle age couple.

While they are dealing with the drama of whose family to spend Christmas with, they receive a letter from a young boy who writes to Ant-Man to ask him to help him out on Christmas....

Even though Hank no longer IS Ant-Man, the couple decides to give this boy a huge Christmas surprise. They first try to call the boy ahead of time, but of course he thinks that it is just a prank (we saw this way back in Avengers #27, no one Avengers' voices on the phone because most of them just seem like normal folks without their powers)...

So he and Wasp go to the boy's home and surprises him by revealing themselves to him (Hank has gone back to his Ant-man identity for this mission) (along the way we get the conceit that Hank and Jan have lost their access to money, so sort of HAVE to stay with the kid....

And then, hilariously and bizarrely enough, Ant-Man and Wasp proceed to torment the boy's extended family through shrinking and growing them. Honestly, it's pretty disturbing how they take annoying people and then subject to them some messed-up psychical and mental traumas..

Even when it is made clear that the people involved really do DESERVE to be treated poorly, it is a bit of a weird setup, because then the family members look so messed up that it's, like, "Why are we JUST messing with their heads?," know what I mean? Some of these relatives are darn near criminal in their behavior!.

However, Bob Gale is such a good writer that he handles it without it being TOO crazy, and there are some sweeet parts in the story, as well, like the boy's family getting a special trip on a toy train...

Honestly, it reminded e a bit of Home Alone, where overall it is still a heartwarming film, but you still get to a little boy torture two crooks.

Anyhow, this was a weird comic book but a fun one. Phil Winslade did a great job on the artwork of the story. He and Gale also were paired together on pretty much the final storyline in Daredevil before Brian Michael Bendis took over the series.

Merry Christmas, everyone!