Resurrecting a tradition from the old Topps comics, IDW’s “X-Files” Season 10 comics have also featured special issues alongside the regular series, starting with 2014’s Annual (April) and X-Mas Special (December), both of which feature two stories. While Joe Harris, the writer of the main title, writes one story, he mainly gives other wordsmiths a chance to tell standalone yarns set during any era of the saga.
Frank Spotnitz, who last contributed to the “X-Files”-verse in three issues of the Wildstorm comics, makes a welcome return on “The Priest” in the annual. Co-written by Gabe Rotter and Shannon Eric Denton, the tale – like Spotnitz’s Wildstorm work – reads like storyboards that could be easily adapted into a first-rate episode. The art by Stuart Sayger is not my thing – although I adjusted to it – but I dug the story about a guy who still communicates with his wife despite being dead. Rather than a typical ghost story, we get the “ghost’s” confused perspective, and clever deduction by Mulder, who theorizes that a guardian of the afterlife is trying to keep the man from communicating with his wife lest humanity have proof of the afterlife.
Hopefully, Spotnitz – who sat out the 2016 TV miniseries due to his commitment to “The Man in the High Castle” – will get to write “X-Files” TV scripts again. He hasn’t lost the touch.
Dave Sim, who I know best from his guest turn on Issue 8 of the old Mirage “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” comics, steps in for another very smart tale, “Talk to the Hand.” Set during the 1990s, evidenced in part by the beautiful Scully likenesses by artist Andrew Currie, Sim wonderfully encapsulates a dream state where Scully must work out what she loves more: high school boyfriend Adam, or her FBI job. It’s interesting to think about how major life choices can be made by our subconscious selves.
Harris’ entry, “Season 10 Greetings,” kicks off the X-Mas special, which resurrects the “X-Files’ ” relationship with Christmas. While there was only one Christmas episode in the series – the beloved Season 6 entry “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” – the very first “X-Files” comic (Topps Issue 1, “Don’t Open Until X-Mas”) also took place at Christmas.
Like “G-23” (Issues 19-20 of Season 10), this effort is somewhat weird and experimental, although not quite to that degree. Mulder sees aliens, but they keep wiping his mind, much like in the series’ second episode, “Deep Throat.” Meanwhile, for a more overtly comedic angle that almost borders on a dream state, Skinner is throwing a Christmas party. He gets sloshed while the Lone Gunmen try to take various pictures of people under the mistletoe with an old box camera. Doggett and Reyes appear just for the sake of appearing, nicely summing up their underuse by IDW so far (although it’s better than ignoring them). I don’t entirely know what to make of this story, but the jokes are timed well and it’s nice to see the whole gang of “X-Files” heroes together.
Writer Karl Kesel revisits Special Agent Bing Ellinson and Special Employee Millie Ohio in “Merry Christmas, Comrade!,” which he actually teased on the last page of “Year Zero,” which came out just before this issue. This story squeezes into the timeline at Christmas 1946, after the denouement of “Year Zero” but before the epilogue. This is their first case on the regular X-Files beat – in the sense that they know it’s an X-File before they arrive on the scene of a Detroit war munitions factory menaced by a gremlin.
Ellinson takes somewhat of a backseat here as Millie catches up with an ex-soldier named Hardin, whom she romanced when they were both stationed in Europe in World War II. Having a gremlin on an airplane is a classic use of the creature – before “gremlins” were re-popularized in the 1984 movie (also set at Christmas) — and it may remind some readers of “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” In another holiday touch, Ellinson dresses up as the creature Krampus (roughly, the anti-Santa) in order to scare and capture the gremlin.
When Ellinson gives Ohio a present – a lucky bracelet – it calls to mind Mulder’s and Scully’s present exchange in “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” and alludes to yet another relationship between FBI partners. Still, it’s nice to see Bing and Millie again as the early X-Files become more fleshed out. In a nice continuity nod to Season 5’s “Travelers,” Ellinson notes that because Hardin is a suspected communist, “Dales and Michels would be my first choice” for the case, rather than he and Ohio.
In my next post, I’ll take a look at the 2015 Annual and X-Mas Special.