"The Christmas Gathering"

Here it is: our first Christmas Christmas story--a Beagle Boys joint by Gorm Transgaard, and boy is it ever not his fault that his name always makes me think "gormless," but it absolutely does. Of course, if being without gorm means being kind of weak and dopey, you'd think it would that gorm would be a good thing, but my brain refuses to work that way. Well...so it goes.

I have to say, I think you should be careful about hyping up your plans to that degree. I'm not saying hyperbole is never called for, but when you're writing a pretty standard sort of story that, whatever its quality, will be swiftly forgotten...well, if it's genuinely one of the most ingenious things they've ever done, go for it, but if not, it might be better not to create unrealistic expectations. Well, we'll see.

Nope, still not a big fan of the "Beagles as massive international crime syndicate" thing. Yes I know it's almost universal, there's no point in my getting all het up, but I dunno; I guess I prefer a smaller, more intimate sort of criminal gang. But regardless of that, I do find the degree of build-up here excessive. I am NOT filled with suspense, Gorm! I'm just impatient for you to get on with it!

Hmm. What is this? This is not crime. This is not Beagley. What are we even doing here?

Welp, obviously Transgaard anticipated my objections, so we have this justification. Mind you, I don't find it to be a particularly good justification. What's this "we can't create suspicion" nonsense? If you create suspicion, well, that comes with the territory! You've gotta just deal with it! If you're scared of blood, don't become a doctor!

Also, "we all know how big our mother is?" If we're talking about the Ducktales Ma Beagle, then...not that big? Okay okay, maybe we're talking about her outsize personality. I'm just nitpicking here. Although really, the idea that she's mother to all of them? Well, again, this is Ducktales canon I suppose, but eh. A fan, again, I am not.

I mean, granted, it is kind of amusing to see them roughing up passers-by in Santa suits, and perhaps that's all the justification you need, but to me, a big problem with the story is that the Christmas stuff all seems forcible shoe-horned in, as opposed to being anything organic to the narrative.

And this police station stuff, it only takes up a single page, sure, but it is conspicuous in its total irrelevance to the story as a whole.

Transgaard seems somewhat hung up on justifying why any of this was necessary. I don't know if it's good to have such threadbare infrastructure for your story. If you'll recall, there's no evidence that they had to engage in legal activity to build their Paul Bunyan Machine (though granted, they were at one point planning to repurpose it for legal activity, so maybe all my objections here are meaningless, but I'm just going to carry on like they're perfectly valid. Okay.).

Anyway: this. I mean, it's okay, but describing this as some sort of amazing, unparalleled new idea seems doubtful. I mean, in a post-Paul-Bunyan-Machine, post-Giant-Robot-Robbers world, it seems like old hat. And though I hate to say it, there's no reason whatsoever that the robot has to be Santa-themed. That doesn't play into their plans at all. Really, the only thing in this story that--it could be argued--is irreducibly Christmas-based is the alleged Spirit of Giving that's going to cause people to donate money to them, and even that seems a bit shaky. I'm certainly not opposed to a giant Christmas-themed robot, but it needs more justification, I think.

But allow me to ask the age-old question: who would steal the candy from a laughing baby's mouth if he could take it from the money man? This is obviously only here because "taking candy from a baby" is a phrase. I'm not sure if that's the greatest way to run your story. Whatever. I realize I'm probably being excessively nitpicky in this entry.

Anyway, they're brought down by random chance because some security guards are playing Christmas music that interferes with the robot, but if that's the case, how is it that any ol' Duckburg radio station isn't enough to make it go haywire?

Also, "Jingle Bell Rock" is a pretty bad song, and even if you like it, you have to concede that it doesn't actually "rock" even a tiny bit. It's just a light jazz number.

I'm glad the out-of-town Beagles escaped. I like it when criminals get away with criminal behavior, on account of I'm Soft on Crime. I also do enjoy the robot being repurposed as a Christmas decoration.

However, in addition to my other problems, the main thing, probably, is that the story just seems centerless. This might be a thing with Beagle stories in general, but with no named characters to be antagonists and protagonists who don't have names or individual personalities (and who, due to the aforementioned lack of antagonists, have to end up defeating themselves), the whole thing just feels lopsided. I don't know. There are certain things about this that I don't hate, but I'd have to call it pretty forgettable overall.