Changing depictions of Santa Claus in science fiction magazines and superhero comic book covers

Abstract

Science fiction was born in the pulps, an ingenious medium credited to Frank Munsey that utilized the then-new high-speed printing presses to print on cheap, untrimmed, pulp paper, resulting in low-priced magazines. It was by way of these cheap pulps that sf began to emerge as a self-conscious genre, despite the repeatedly recycled clichéd stories. Superhero comics evolved alongside the sf pulps. They depict latter-day surrogate gods and goddesses, whether human, alien, or mutant. As a seasonal treat, I would like to survey the changing depictions of Santa Claus on these covers.