Marvel Holiday Special 2007 #1
“Piece of Cake”
Writer: Andrew Farago & Shaenon K. Garrity
Penciler: Lou Kang; Inker: Craig Yeung

This is an amusing little Christmas story with a nice little surprise at the end. Very well done.

I just wish Marvel would clean up their continuity. This story takes place a more classic Marvel universe with Peter Parker still working at the Daily Bugle. But instead of clearly defined worlds where every story can take place within continuity, Marvel now features stories nearly every week that seem to occur in worlds of their own. As a result, we feel no connection to the story or to the characters. It’s like reading a series of one-shots or comics strips.

And personally I don’t think it needs to be this way.

One of the reasons I became enamored by the Marvel universe was explained by Roy Thomas in the back of the first issue of What If?, “…these stories are ones which actually do take place – not in our dimension or time continuum, but in worlds coexisting alongside ours, of which there are theoretically untold billions. They’re as real, in their own way, as any of the parallel-world stories which have appeared in Fantastic Four, Avengers, or anywhere else.”

Would it really be that hard to set up a handful of worlds for these non-canons stories to appear? We already have 616, Ultimate, Zombies, Marvel Adventures. Why not add a few more and satisfy the purists out there?