Today, we look at how Spider-Man and Mephisto fought over the fate of the Angel of 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 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, Day 8 will be opened (once opened, the door will feature a panel from the featured story)...

Today, we look at 1993's "Hopes and Fears" from the 1993 Marvel Holiday Special by Steven Grant and Pat Broderick...

RELATED: How Marvel Made Spider-Man’s ‘Hottest’ Relationship Weird – with a Clone Twist

As you may or may not know, one of the most controversial Spider-Man stories ever (probably THE most controversial Spider-Man stories, all things being considered) is "One More Day," a storyline from 2007 where a despondent Spider-Man is searching for any way to save his Aunt May's life after his beloved maternal figure had been shot by an assassin's bullet that had been meant for Spider-Man, but Spidey instinctively dodged the bullet due to his Spider-Sense. So not only was May dying, but dying as an indirect result of Spidey's actions! For a guy who is known to feel guilty for all sorts of stuff, this was especially devastating for the wallcrawler. So he was willing to do ANYTHING to save her. The boundaries of "anything" were revealed when the demon known as Mephisto came to Spider-Man and his wife, Mary Jane, to offer to cure Aunt May, in exchange for Peter and MJ's marriage. Their love, as it seems, was so special and pure that there was a lot of power to it and it was worth it for Mephisto to acquire it. At the end of the story, May was cured but Spider-Man and Mary Jane now had never gotten married.

Well, over a decade before that controversial Spider-Man tale, Spidey had a whole OTHER confrontation with Mephisto, only this one was a whole lot less controversial.

In the third annual Marvel Holiday Special (the 1990s tradition started in 1991), Peter and Mary Jane are out shopping on Christmas Eve for some final presents when they split up so that they could get something for each other. Peter is also supposed to pick up a Christmas Tree on the way home. Well, his shopping is interrupted when it appears that a meteorite of some kind crashed in Manhattan. When Spidey investigates, he learns that it was no meteorite, but rather an ANGEL!

Spider-Man is then confronted by Mephisto, who has the Angel in his control...

Mephisto knows Spider-Man well (they had clashed before) and so he knows what Spider-Man would be willing to do to save the Angel. So Mephisto offers him a deal - Spider-Man has to save the angel/spirit of Christmas and leave with him and if he fails, then Mephisto gets Spidey's soul. It's not much of a deal (notably a good deal worse, really, than the deal Mephisto offers in "One More Day," but Spider-Man is who he is and so he agrees to it.

And then Spider-Man loses pretty easily, forfeiting his soul....

And why would he think that he would be able to succeed? That really speaks to Spidey's heroism, that he really had no true chance here but he did it anyways, as a chance to save someone was worth it.

Luckily, Mephisto wants Spidey to be whole so that he can fully appreciate Mephisto's victory, so he gives Spider-Man his soul back. However, when it comes time to celebrate, Mephisto notices something unusual, the Christmas Angel is gone and yet...Christmas....remains?....

RELATED: Batman’s Last Christmas Present From His Parents Might Make You Cry

As it turned out, the Christmas Angel doesn't power Christmas, he is powered BY Christmas! He then explains that the power of the Christmas Spirit is stronger than even Mephisto could eve imagine, as after all, if it weren't so strong, why would Mephisto make as gallant of a gesture as to return a won soul to Spider-Man like he did? Mephisto says it was to make Spider-Man feel MORE torture, but as the Angel points out, Spider-Man sure seemed to be pretty tortured here with his soul out, right? So was that REALLY why Mephisto did it or was he motivated by the spirit of Christmas? It's not something that could be easily answered, but either way, it really gets to Mephisto, as Spider-Man and the Angel take their leave of the demon.

Spider-Man is sent back to his and Mary Jane's apartment, right before she returns in time for Peter to have to explain what kind of crazy adventure that he went on, but an interesting aspect of this situation is that when you're married to Spider-Man, how can you really tell what fantastic situation is lower-case fantastic vs. upper-case FANTASTIC? "I fought Morbius alongside Archangel" would sadly be a run-of-the-mill Spider-Man adventure, so who is to say that "I fought Mephisto alongside the Angel of Christmas" is anything really different? So she is thinking more about the tree that Peter forgot to buy until they walk in and they see that the Christmas Angel left them a special tree...

Good, trippy stuff. Grant was briefly the regular writer on Spectacular Spider-Man at the time, but Broderick had only done a single Spider-Man story before this one (a Marvel Team-Up issue), although he did a few more after this (including a Spider-Man/X-Factor miniseries written by Kurt Busiek).

KEEP READING: How Did Spawn Become… Santa Claus?