“It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s SUPER SANTA!”
On the joys of publishing an illustrated novel with my best friend, plus a sample first chapter of our hybrid comic book adventure
Partnership Plenty
I was born and raised an only child, which meant I didn’t have to fight for food at the dinner table, but never learned vital negotiating skills.
Growing up essentially alone, I’ve always yearned for a sibling-type relationship, especially for creative projects.
My many attempts to co-create have come up empty, though. You can likely relate: one person ends up doing most of the work.
All that makes me appreciate working with Rusty Yunusoff. We’re on a roll with our SUPER SANTA book trilogy, and having a blast!
About the Authors
I’m the son of Hungarian refugees, Rusty is a Tatar emigre from Crimea, and we both love this wonderland called the United States of America.
Both of us learned the language and culture from friends, television, and movies. This country and its people continue to fascinate!
I’m a writer, having penned theater reviews to medical textbooks. Rusty is an illustrator, a pro at comic books to videos.
The SUPER SANTA Trilogy is our homage to the amazing experiment called “America,” and we’re eager to share our enthusiasm with the world.
About the Books
Entertaining stories often start with the premise: “What if…?” and then explore the many possibilities, exciting readers’ imaginations.
Here we ask the question: “What if Santa Claus discovers that the Superhero-loving kids of today no longer think that he’s cool?”
We’ve had a blast answering that question in book one of the trilogy, and draw out its implications in the next two books in the series.
Our Christmas Wish is for you to love reading it as much as we loved writing and illustrating it!
About the Story
Join jolly Santa Claus, his feuding elves, and the combative Grey family as their fates entwine this crazy Christmas season.
Things get wild when teenage Tommy catches Santa delivering gifts underneath their tree.
Instead of being surprised, the boy just wants his present, and poor Santa realizes that kids today love their video games and Superheroes.
Convinced by his loyal Elf that if he can’t beat them, he should join them, Santa turns himself into Super Santa, and all hell breaks loose!
Book Sample
SUPER SANTA: THE RISE OF SUPER SANTA is a 460 page adventure, packed with more than 180 illustrations.
Here’s the first chapter…
Gift 1
Ready to Roll
In which Elf and Santa Claus get ready for what turns out to be the craziest Christmas ever
Elf around, and find out.
Meet Santa’s right hand elf, Mixail “Elf” Miquassidyn, nowadays known as Elf Prime. He’s the Grand Poobah of Elves, Elf Deluxe, the Elfinator.
An elf among elves, an elven dynamo, Elf is the one and only Elf, the sole elf who counts, at least according to Elf.
Don’t you dare call him the Elf, though, at least not to his face, because he demands to be known simply as “Elf,” and will tell you that’s in his contract.
Elf started as an everyday elf, and has risen through the North Pole Workshop ranks, promoted from gofer and gift wrapper, to tinkerer and toy maker, into management and marketing, all the way to the leadership summit of Chief of Operations.
He’s been at Santa Claus’ close side for generations, and together they’ve kept the Spirit of Christmas alive for millions of American children and their families across the country.
Whirling down a winding hallway on his spindly legs, notepad in a bony hand, sharpened pencil behind a pointy ear, Elf is eager to brief Saint Nicholas before launching their opening salvo of deliveries this Christmas Eve.
At first blush, this year’s holiday seems no different than any other, everything on point and in order. The Workshop Elves have been in gear for months, immersed in a frenetic but well-choreographed dance of relentless preparation. Countless presents now roll along packed conveyor lines, through rickety but reliable wrapping and distribution machines grinding gears and puffing steam, and into overstuffed canvas bags stacked into mountainous piles flush with the icy launch area.
Santa’s magical red painted and gold trimmed sleigh beckons, with nine flying reindeer fed, hitched, ready to blaze through the Arctic sky, and down across the entire country. Children are already asleep and dreaming about what they will find the next morning underneath their Christmas trees as Prancer prances, Blitzen blitzes, and Rudolph’s red nose glows, knowing where to go, awaiting only Santa’s “Ho, ho, ho!”
The toil of the North Pole crew is not, nor has it ever been, in vain.
Elf stops in his tracks for a moment, and sees a leather overalls clad Mechanic Elf dangling on a creaking and swaying ladder, tool kit at his side, screwdriver in hand, trying to fix the Grandfather Cuckoo Clock perched at the center of the Workshop’s main floor.
For as long as anyone can remember the tall, polished dark walnut clock has functioned perfectly. At the stroke of every hour the round door at the top has swung open, and the robotic Yellow-billed Cuckoo bird has strutted out to the end of an extended plank. After doing its exotic dance, the jittery automaton then belted out its distinctive two syllable coo-coo call like clockwork, as many times as the hour is struck on the device’s ornate face, its chime resonating throughout the entire facility.
Yet tonight the glossy metal hands on the heirloom’s face and its bronze plumb below are frozen, its unseen mechanisms silent. The small hand is stuck at a Roman twelve, the large hand at a minute before, the pendulum and the gears it drives now motionless.
Elf wonders if today’s dysfunction of this classic timepiece is a sign, and experiences an odd, uncomfortable feeling, a mixture of unwelcome surprise and heeby-jeeby deja vu. He can’t quite put his long, bone-thin, nail-bitten finger on it, but something is wrong. The creeping subtlety of his paranoia reinforces its impact, justifies it. The more he thinks about this anomaly, the stronger that eerie feeling becomes, unsettling an otherwise unshakable Elf.
On the surface nothing seems changed, all systems a predictable, assuring, and definite “Go!” Every Christmas Eve since American kids first received presents, the North Pole Workshop routine has relied on the same process, producing the same amazing outcomes. By Elf’s own admission his leadership and operational acumen have made this possible, thank you very much. Assuming that his uncanny yet proven intuition lies at the heart of everything running so well for so long, Elf senses he needs to trust his Elf self, if not his confrontational management style.
Kissing ass above him, kicking ass below, Elf wakes up every morning eager to fix things and fight. This evening isn’t any different, shit in the North Pole Workshop always snowballing downhill.
“What time is it?” asks Elf.
“I have no clue,” frowns the Mechanic Elf.
“You’d know if the clock would work.”
“Are you telling me it’s my fault?”
“If you’d fix it we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“What do you think I’m doing up here?”
“I can’t tell,” snarks Elf, pointing an accusatory finger. “The clock is still broken.”
“Newsflash,” snarks the elf right back. “This must be why they pay you the big bucks.”
“Look into my eyes…” says Elf, forcing open an eyelid.
“You going to let me do my job?” scowls the Mechanic Elf.
“Go right ahead,” says Elf. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
“Thanks so much,” quips the Mechanic Elf, itching his nose with his middle finger.
Nagged by doubts, Elf is compelled to double-check his sanity and his team’s readiness, and double-times it through the Workshop’s hand carved corridors.
The wooden floor beneath his sliding feet is covered in intricate tessellating parquet patterns of flying reindeer, falling snowflakes, and swaying evergreen trees. Flaming bronze sconces cast flickering light on elaborate murals of polar bears, snow foxes, and muskoxen across the vast tundra; caribou, narwhals, and ermines within the dense forests; harp seals, humpback whales, orcas swimming under the frozen sea; and puffins fluttering above the glaciated landscape.
Above Elf’s pointy head the ceiling artificially glows from phosphorescent paint depicting a scintillating starlit night sky, with a glowing full Moon that casts long shadows in wide swinging arcs he eclipses while scurrying past rooms on either side. Their doors are adorned with green-bowed pine cone and holly wreaths, the sounds of giddy elven laughter, festive holiday music, and humming machinery inside. Delectable and earthy smells of baking gingerbread, roasting chestnuts, and smoldering tobacco pipes waft into Elf’s wrinkly nose.
The familiar sensations and experiences remind him of his true home, soothe his cranky soul, trigger a sharp sneeze, and give him renewed assurance that tonight will be fine, after all.
“Ah-choo!”
“Merry Christmas!” booms Santa’s hearty and oft-mimicked voice like a beacon down the warm, flickering corridors, as if broadcasting an echoing gesundheit.
Saint Nicholas’ classic holiday cheer and rallying cry sounds as if delivered from a creepy, out-of-touch grandpa, certainly apropos. His tone is soothing and annoying, wise and foolish, authoritative and naive, rational and conspiratorial, banal and incendiary, kind of like the cognitive dissonance created by the inexplicable popularity of Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room on CNN.
Elf rolls his eyes, carries on, and sure enough finds the Big Guy still in his divorcee bedroom, busy scrutinizing himself in a large vanity mirror, ill prepared for his busiest night of the year. Despite tonight’s packed schedule, Kris Kringle is instead trying on an assortment of identical, extra large-sized bright red wool coats with white fur trim and shiny brass buttons.
“Elf!” shouts Santa, seeing the reflection of his faithful assistant.
“We’re late,” says Elf.
“What do you think?” asks Santa, ignoring him.
“Great,” says Elf, sensing what’s coming.
Ever since Ms. Claus dumped Santa and left the North Pole Workshop for good a few years ago, Saint Nicholas has struggled with the basics, not that he had his act totally together before then, either. Elf feels like he’s had to pick up the extra slack, which has been considerable since Santa hasn’t gotten any younger, and Elf hasn’t gotten any more patient, his baseline for conciliatory and helpful concierge service at zero, and steadily plummeting.
Oblivious, Santa poses to the left, to the right, inhales, exhales. He nods with approval, shakes his head with disapproval, shrugs and sighs. Decisiveness was never a top product feature for Saint Nicholas, either, his doting spouse handling all domestic matters, and the well-oiled machinery of the Workshop under Elf’s direction taking care of business, wife and company partner doing most of the real work for him.
Santa removes the coat, tosses it onto his bed. He sighs, scratches his big, bulbous nose, rubs a baseball catcher’s mitt-sized hand through his thick, snow white head of hair, and grabs another outfit, indistinguishable from the first.
“What do you think of this one?”
“Same as that one.”
“You think?”
“You look terrific,” fake-grins Elf.
“Are you telling me what I want to hear?”
“Never.”
“Are you giving me fat shame?”
“You look fine, Boss, OK?”
Santa removes this second coat only to grab a third, identical one, and try that on.
“And this one?”
Santa squints into the mirror and pirouettes like a Disney hippopotamus wearing a tutu.
“Just pick one already,” insists Elf, “for chrissakes.”
Santa looks back and forth between the various identical extra large-sized bright red wool coats with white fur trim and shiny brass buttons. While still wearing the third one he’s tried on, he examines a fourth, then a fifth, dismissively tossing them back onto his lonely divorcee bed.
“Hmmm…” says Santa Claus, rubbing his jutting double-chin.
Elf is bored and anxious watching Santa dart through these pointless motions, and tries to speed things up by visualizing time moving forward at a quicker pace. Within Elf’s mind’s eye, Santa poses in one outfit then another, faster and faster, until he’s a whirl of sound and motion. Entire seasons are compressed into rapid timelapse clips, each year accelerating into the future by a logarithmic factor of ten. Elf’s vivid imagination and unrepentant pessimism run wild as the world over-populates, the environment is ruined, and a series of natural disasters strike.
Indulging his waking dream, Elf witnesses our species brought to the brink of extinction by climate change, supervolcanoes, asteroid and comet impacts, runaway genetic engineering, AI-sparked armageddon, alien invasion, a nearby supernova, black hole flyby, and most horrific of all, the growing popularity of Coldplay cover bands. None of these apocalyptic events matter, though, because the Sun burns through the periodic table, expands into a red giant, boils away the Earth’s oceans, and vaporizes the entire planet, the rest of the Universe soldiering on unaffected and indifferent. Entropy wins the final battle, the last vestiges of humanity forming a gaseous accretion disc around our dying star, any sign we ever existed vanishing forever into the dark energy abyss.
Meanwhile, Santa still hasn’t decided which coat to wear. Elf accelerates time even faster hoping his Boss makes a decision, any decision as the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide, and the Universe ages to more than a googol years old. At this point space and time cease to have meaning, clocks are impossible, and the next Big Bang is triggered. The vast, Brahma-like cycle from creation to destruction to recreation recurs an untold number of times until another Universe identical to our own eventually comes into existence. The only difference between that expanse in the far, far future and our own here today is that Santa finally chooses his favorite extra large-sized bright red wool coat with white fur trim and shiny brass buttons, and is ready on time for his Christmas Eve deliveries.
“Finally,” sighs Elf from that nearly identical Universe, eons away.
“Don’t rush me,” quips Santa Claus, adjusting his coat and hat. “I need to concentrate.”
“Let’s rock ‘n roll, Pops,” cheers Elf. “America’s spoiled brats are waiting.”
“Don’t insult the children,” says Santa. “The Nice ones deserve to be rewarded.”
“And the Naughty ones?”
“Remember the Spirit of Christmas!”
“Which is…?”
“‘A remembrance of sacrifice, and a celebration of joy.’”
“Then why would anyone care which coat you wear,” insists Elf, “especially when they all look the same?”
“They’re not the same, and people do care,” says Santa, grasping yet another identical coat off his bed to Elf’s utter dismay.
“Really?”
“I care,” continues Santa, posing again. “It’s not the coat, it’s how the coat makes me feel. I need one that captures the magic! One that builds anticipation… Like… This one!”
“Same as the other one.”
“Are you being Naughty?”
“What difference does it make?” shrugs Elf. “Elves never get presents.”
“Maybe this year will be different?” suggests Saint Nick. “Maybe you’ll meet the love of your life?”
“Ya think?” frowns Elf. “Maybe Blitzen will fly out of my ass, too?”
“You never know until you know,” philosophizes Santa Claus.
Elf pantomimes a hand-in-mouth gag, having long ago said goodbye to romance before it ever had a chance to twinkle his never-pedicured toes. Besides, he’s been way too busy for this emo nonsense. Unlike, say, the Easter Bunny, whose main gig is somehow laying then hiding a bunch of colorful, patterned eggs, Elf has a serious, far more complex job to do.
Imagine orchestrating the manufacturing, wrapping, and packing of millions of gifts, then ensuring that each one is individually inventoried and supply chained for Christmas each season, and gets delivered by Santa to the right kid in the right location. That’s his career. That’s the job he’s been assigned to do, born to do. That’s who he is. That’s all he cares about.
And he’s damn good at it, too.
“Hurry up, Kris!” he shouts, furrowing his brow and running through his checklist.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” snaps Santa.
“We only have one hundred and twenty-five million households in the US to visit this evening,”
“I really like this one,” says Santa, still oblivious, smiling into the mirror as he poses again. Left, right, right, left…
“Please?” pleads Elf.
More posing.
“Pretty please?”
Right, left, left, right…
“Sugar on top?”
Santa clears his throat.
“I’ve decided.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Ah,” beams Elf. “Thank God.”
“I’m ready,” declares Santa Claus.
Too good to be true, thinks Elf.
“Load the sleigh!” shouts Saint Nick, decked out with millions of places to go. “Hitch the reindeer! Clear the runway! Pack some snacks!”
“In that order?”
“Merry Christmas!”
Elf applauds.
Santa bows, even though he hasn’t done anything yet except annoy his second in command.
“What could possibly go wrong?” says Elf, shaking his wrinkled, pointy little head…
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Thank You from the Authors
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