This would not, as it turned out, be the last holiday season during which we offered up new Guilded Age comics. But the next time around, we’d be in the middle of our climactic battle that saw our heroes basically fighting God, so it wasn’t the best time to stop and pass the eggnog.

What we have here is mostly a nod to our Chapter 3 cover, certainly one of our best, with another spread of food that says something about the people likely to be sitting down and eating it. In this case, it has more to do with a shared experience than individual preferences. A lot of the food looks fairly familiar, but I wonder what those blue fruit slices taste like, and the gray gelatin for that matter.

I feel like we’ve come a bit full circle with these holiday tales. At first they were a break in the action for our heroes from the big megaplot, then they became a chance to spotlight characters who weren’t currently getting as much attention from the megaplot. Now the megaplot has turned around to the point where it’s a breath of fresh air just to (mostly) focus on the once-and-current Big Five. They’ll stay pretty central in the last five chapters, but this is the last story they’ll have that I’d call a cozy one.