Review by Frank Plowright

It’s 1955 and Virginia is driving north from Arizona with her father. It’s Christmas, but they’re moving to stay with her Aunt. Along the way a tyre bursts, and while her father attaches the spare wheel Virginia has a strange encounter with a flying reindeer. Her father doesn’t believe her and Bobby Podesta gradually reveals there’s sorrow layered over the whole occasion. Aunt Francis is trying too hard to be cheerful, Virginia’s mother is missing, and there are references to her father once being a pilot, but no longer. Benny, the kid next door, is more naturally exuberant and befriends Virginia. Counterpointing the domesticity, Podesta also supplies interludes at a nearby airbase monitoring flights.

The air of sadness surrounding Virginia is well cultivated and sustained, as is the way Podesta gradually pulls her away from that by giving her purpose. Bobby’s enthusiasm proves infectious, and as Virginia gets to know the reindeer Podesta provides some joyous scenes of them flying around together. Otherwise the art is simple, figures over basic backgrounds with the colour adding depth, but because Podesta’s plot is so engaging that’s all that’s needed.

North for the Winter progresses efficiently, and there’s an awareness of how to produce a captivating Christmas story without over-sentimentalising. Other festive elements included are Bobby’s older sister Gloria working as an elf in the local department store’s toy section, the folk at the military base wanting to decorate a little and a wholesale updating of how Santa and his elves work. That may seem messing with tradition, but Podesta pulls it off and adults will admire how smartly elements of what’s going on fall into place alongside the explanations halfway through.

Podesta’s day job is animation, from which a strong sense of pacing transmits, and it’s not too great a stretch to imagine this on screen. There’s a cinematic sweep to events, a knowledge of how to build a plot to a crisis, and what becomes an original premise. The weakest element appears to be the threat, which at first only seems there because some threat is needed, but Podesta pulls that around as well, beefing up the danger.

Virginia having to take a literal leap of faith is a moment to concern adults given the example it sets, and Podesta resorts to flashback explanations a little too often, but North for the Winter is a glorious new addition to the slim canon of classic Christmas-themed graphic novels.