Let’s face it, Santa Claus is a superhero. He has superpowers, he has animal and humanoid sidekicks, he has an ever-changing origin story, and he has (of course) a bunch of wonderful toys. He wears a costume, flies through the night, and defies the laws of physics and society, all in the name of doing good.

But like all superheroes, Santa has a dark side, and plenty of different pieces of holiday media have imagined what would happen if Saint Nick went too far. While classics like Christmas Evil and Silent Night Deadly Night are well-known to horror fans, comic books have also had their own fun making the holiday hero into a scary super-villain.

Christmas Crisis on Infinite DC Earths

Apropos of a company full of shiny icons, Santa tends to be his usual jolly self when he shows up in the DC Comics universe, using his Yuletide magic to help the Justice League wrap up escaped criminals or even bring presents to Darkseid’s hellish home planet Apokolips.

But when Santa goes dark for DC, he goes really, really dark.

In fact. DC published what might be the most famous evil Santa story, The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special (1991), written by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant with art by Simon Bisely and Lovern Kindzierski. A parody of the extreme anti-heroes that dominated comics in the late-80s and early 90s, Lobo seems like the real monster of this story, especially when he mercilessly slaughters the elves and ends the story dropping bombs from Santa’s sleigh.

But Santa’s no innocent victim here. Dubbed Kris “Crusher” Kringle by the elves he works to death, Santa lives like a third-world dictator, sitting high in his lavish mansion while his servants live in fear and poverty. As imposing as Bisely makes Lobo, with wild red eyes looking out over a bloody grin, he makes Santa equally unsettling, with a grotesque stomach and a perpetual sneer under his white beard. It’s no surprise that this monstrous Kringle holds his own against Lobo — for a few pages anyway, until the Main Man lobs off Santa’s head with a machete.

Although less graphic, the December 1998 issue of Hitman matches the Paramilitary Special for its irreverent Christmas carnage. Like Lobo, Tommy Monaghan is a super-powered killer for hire who agrees to target Santa. However, this Santa isn’t the real thing — rather, he’s a Christmas-hating janitor who gets powers (how else?) after falling into a vat of toxic waste. The janitor uses his new flesh-melting abilities to exact Grinch-worthy revenge, wearing a Santa suit and killing holiday revelers until Tommy shows up to put him down.

Like most comics written by Garth Ennis, there’s a bit of sweetness under all this mayhem, as Tommy uses his earnings to buy presents for friends. The cartoony art by penciller John McRae and inker Steve Pugh, alongside Carla Feeny’s vibrant colors, keep things pretty merry too, despite its gooey Santa monster.

When writer Andy Diggle took over the Vertigo series Hellblazer from Ennis, he kept the original scribe’s dark sense of humor, as demonstrated by his Christmas issue. In Hellblazer #247 (2008) the cynical British mage John Constantine strengthens his magical powers by uncovering a sacred talisman — the bones of Agios Nikolaus, aka Saint Nicholas aka Santa Claus. Not content to simply use the skeleton in a ritual, Constantine grinds up St. Nick’s remains and snorts the white powder, all captured by in smirking splash page by artist Leonardo Manco.

Merry Marvel Christmas Tales

While Marvel also prefers stories about a kind and jolly Santa, they do let their version of the big red guy go bad a little more often than the Distinguished Competition. That said, Marvel’s bad Santa is still pretty light-hearted, the victim of mind-control or mistaken identity more than a full-on heel-turn.

In fact, Marvel’s Santa rarely gets darker than he does in 1986’s Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-man #112, written by Peter David and drawn by Mark Beachum and Pat Redding. Despite the cover’s Terminator homage, featuring a pistol-packing Santa in dark shades, most of the issue is devoted to the soapy-troubles of Peter Parker’s young adulthood. When the evil Santa does appear, he’s just a mall Santa who burgles the homes of the children who visit him. Somehow, this imposter Santa escapes hapless Spidey, but he’s soon stopped by the real thing, who mutters to himself, “Last year it was slasher films. Now it’s this. I’m not laughing.”

Outside of that, Marvel Santa only gets scary for a short period of time. When a stop in Latveria leaves Santa stranded, the country’s dictator Victor Von Doom takes his place to prove his present-delivering superiority (What the-? #12, 1987). Likewise, it’s Santa’s poor financial decisions that lead to his brand being purchased by the terrorist organization Hydra in the Howard the Duck Holiday Special (1997), not a turn to the dark-side.

But there is one thing that can make even Marvel’s Man of Merriment go bad. In the 2009 Marvel Holiday Spectacular, Santa finds himself unable to complete his usual rounds. The Illuminati, the secret team of super-geniuses like Doctor Strange and Iron Man, make the decidedly un-genius decision to give Santa the one object powerful enough to deliver presents to all the world’s children in one night: the infinity gauntlet. Overwhelmed by the gauntlet’s power, Santa becomes perfectly unbalanced and turns on the heroes. But despite sexist taunts like “Come and take it, you little girls!”, the heroes prevent Santa from becoming another Thanos, and send him on his way with Stark Industries reindeer.

Independent Clauses

Perhaps unsurprisingly, independent creators can get a little more outlandish in their scary Santa portrayals. And perhaps even less surprisingly, a lot of these portrayals don’t go much further than “Santa, but mean.” The 1996 Rob Leifeld one-off Santa the Barbarian plays out exactly like you would expect — a lot of Santa murdering folks while making bad puns like “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a big knife.” Although they would go on to much better work, Battle Pope #11 (2006) from a young Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore features a brawl between a bitter Santa and a resentful Jesus, before the two bury the hatchet and become drinking buds.

Fortunately, there are some far more interesting evil Santa takes out there, such as a short story from 2017’s Hellboy Winter Special by Mike Mignola, Chris Roberson, and Paul Grist. “God Rest Ye Merry” doesn’t do a mythological deep dive that one might expect from Hellboy comic, but Mignola and Roberson provide a fun adventure in which the 1960s version of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense investigates a cursed talisman that falls into the possession of a sidewalk Santa, forcing Hellboy to slug it out with a mutated monster in a jolly red cap. Grist’s crisp illustrations, accentuated by Bill Crabtree’s muted colors, deliver a fun adventure that fits nicely within the Hellboy universe.

A far scarier Santa imposter figures heavily into the 2013 neo-noir Happy! by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson. The series’ covers alone reveal Happy!’s Santa to be the most disturbing in recent memory, with issue #2 featuring an emaciated man in a Santa suit looking back at the reader with a wild look on his face, as a single child’s eye peers out from the sack on his back. That’s a pretty good indication of what one gets in this story of a disgraced cop teaming with an imaginary blue donkey to stop Santa from kidnapping children and using them for pornography. That’s a pretty nasty premise, and as gruesome as the story gets, Happy! does have a lot more on its mind than mere shock value. But that doesn’t prevent this Santa from being one of comics’ most wicked villains.

As if to balance things out, Morrison offers a far more heroic Santa in Klaus, the 2015-2016 seven-part story of a Nordic trapper who becomes the magical gift-giver. Unlike Leifeld’s take, this Klaus is an actual barbarian, whose red cape and imposing figure recalls Thor more than he does a rotund Tim Allen. Combining Norse and Siberian mythology with the standard Santa Claus story, Klaus follows the titular character’s fight to free the town of Grimsvig from the reign of Lord Magus. In addition to attacking Magus’s men with his broadsword and his pet wolf Lili, Klaus sparks resistance by encouraging citizens to celebrate Yuletide and by delivering toys to Grimsvig’s children.

Despite this more grounded premise, Klaus gets increasingly magical in its later issues and in its three follow-up one-shots. More and more elements of Santa lore figure into the story, including a climactic battle against the Krampus, an adventure alongside a 21st century father turned into a snow man, and even a passing reference to a movie MST3K made into a holiday staple, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Klaus even eventually fights a bounty hunter with more than a passing resemblance to Lobo, establishing himself as, if not the scariest Santa, then at least the most intimidating.

Given all the terror Santa delivers to comic book children, that’s saying a lot!