Today, we look at how the world of Max Overacts celebrates Christmas.

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 Comic Strip Christmas! Each day will spotlight a notable comic strip, and three Christmas-themed comics from that strip.

The drawing for this year's Advent Calendar, of Santa Claus giving out presents to comic strip kids (although instead of a present for Charlie Brown, his dog, Snoopy, gets a present instead), is by Nick Perks.

Now, Day 3 will be opened (once opened, the door will feature an image from the featured comic strip)...

The featured strip today is Cannan Grall's Max Overacts.

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WHAT IS MAX OVERACTS ABOUT?

I'll be honest, as a big fan of Max Overacts, I have no problem spotlighting it here, but I probably would have stuck with older newspaper comic strips but, well, to be frank, Nick Perks added Max to the header, and how could I turn down the chance to do a Max spotlight once Nick put Max into the actual calendar (that said, there will be no Rugrats spotlight, as that comic strip only lasted five years).

Max Overacts is about Max, a rambunctious, precocious (and yes, overacting) young boy whose antics drive the series. The other key figures are Janet, Max's "leading lady," a child actor in her own right (who actually works professionally - her mother is an actor, as well), Max's ventriloquist dummy, Curio, his best friend, Klaus, his "unplanned" older sister, Andromeda, and Sir Allan, a formerly famous actor who is hiding in suburbia in Max's neighborhood.

Max's quest for fame drives a good deal of the storytelling for the series, as Sir Allan convinced Max that the best way to create a great role for you is to write it yourself, so Max regularly writes plays for himself and Janet, which is also fertile grounds for hilarity. In general, though, Max is a just a very imaginative and bold young man who gets into amusing misadventures to delight the whole family.

RELATED: Calvin and Hobbes Debate Exactly How Santa Claus Defines the Term 'Good'

HOW DID MAX OVERACTS TACKLE CHRISTMAS?

Cannan's main Christmas strips all appeared in the first year of the series. It began with a scene that reminded me a lot about the film, Love Actually. One of the main plots in that 2003 film was that a boy decides to take part in the school Christmas play so that he can get close to the girl who is the star of the show. In this adorable sequence, Janet (Max's "leading lady") is heading away for the holidays (again, it is important to note that Janet's mom is a legit star, so she lives sort of in a whole other world than the other characters, which is actually pretty similar to the setup in Love Actually, really), and so they're going away and Max and Janet have to say goodbye, but Max gets a bit of a Christmas miracle, as it were...

A classic comic strip trip is using the delayed reaction to a moment sell your bit, and Caanan does a wonderful job here selling the effect of the kiss.

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Caanan is a sharp writer, and while Max Overacts is, in general, a universal story, there is still room in there for some barbed commentary for certain issues in society and/or popular culture, and one of the things that Max's school play tackled (and, actually, now that I think about, was ALSO a bit in Love Actually. I'm sure this is all a coincidence, but it's funny how there are similar beats like this in the first two Christmas strips I've looked at) is the idea that a non-religious school like the one Max attends should have a "Holiday" play and not a "Christmas" play (and then the idea continues to an absurdist degree for comedic effect) and he had a great bit of satire with the Christmas play, which has to be altered to be appropriate...

It's very amusing to see Max essentially work Superman's origin in with the birth of Christ, and somehow also tying it into a pro-Capitalistic speech like this. It shows that there is a certain satirical bite to the series, even if most of the feature is still based on the relationship between Max and his family and friends, which is, in general, a universal one.

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Finally, we see an excellent examination of the relationship between Max and his older sister, Andromeda ("Andi"). Their sibling rivalry is a notable part of the strip. Their mother is a bit of a hippie, hence Andromeda having a name like, well, Andromeda, and her hippie instincts are also what leads to her insisting that everyone give homemade presents to each other. Here, then, Caanan cleverly mixes two important parts of the strip together to form the perfect gift for a sister with an annoying little brother. Max gives her a homemade voodoo doll, and she doesn't see the point until she does something bad to it, which cues Max, well, you know, OVERACTING! But this time, he is is overacting being in agony which, in turn, is music to Andi's ears. It's a really good bit that is based heavily in the character's fundamental attributes.

Very cute. Heck, even the mom not liking such a violent present is a strong look at her personality (Caanan did a Christmas card for fans and the joke on the card is their mom singing "Love is all you need" is a sign that they're not going to be getting very good presents for Christmas.

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