The Night After Axemas Annotated 2
Ah, there’s a detail I forgot here: it seems that Grayl did do the practical thing and spent much of his middle age as a Gastonian soldier.
I’m not going to bother pointing out the various Visit From St. Nicholas parallels in the text. You guys know what’s what.
I will say that I had to rewrite this a time or two to make sure those parallels were as strong as I could get them without actually repeating rhymes like “such a clatter/what was the matter.” Something you don’t realize, maybe, until you’re forced to think about it is that How the Grinch Stole Christmas is already a pretty solid spoof of Visit, down to the rhythm and meter, and I didn’t want this story to feel too much like we were rehashing the previous Axemas special. Of course, that was before I saw the art style, which definitely sets it apart.
