Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #1: Red Riding Hood and Cinderella
Hello, Ticketholders!
As previously related in Heroes Are Made and the "Grimm News" issues of Cover Charge, I began reading the Grimm Fairy Tales comics as research for a series of comic book characters I was designing in the Flash-based program, HeroMachine, and it quickly became an obsession. But at the time of my first reading, I went through it so quickly that many of the early issues seemed to amount to little more than filler episodes with unnamed characters, unresolved storylines, and, oh God, the typos! But now, the series has recently ended a 125-issue run and begun anew with a second volume (although the first “volume” has fifteen volumes of trade paperbacks, not including the special issues, spin-off series, and the last 25 issues of the first “volume,” subtitled “Arcane Acre,” have their own numbered set of trade volumes…so confusing), so I’m going back to the beginning to see if I can appreciate what I missed so many years ago.
We begin with Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 1, Trade Paperback Volume 1
This first opens on an unnamed college girl (whom I now presume is Britney Walters from several later miniseries) and her boyfriend named Chad, who wants to get in her pants (or something worse?). The girl refuses and storms off to her bedroom where she knocks over a box containing a red-bound book of fairy tales that she just happens to open to the story of Red Riding Hood, and the issue’s focus shifts into the tale itself.
Things progress more or less as you’d expect, with Red taking a basket to her grandmother’s, encountering the woodsman and the wolf along the way. The usual, wolf eats granny, woodsman kills wolf mechanic persists as well, but with a twist or two that amount to the old “(were)wolf in sheep’s clothing” moral, which is driven home by much bloodshed.
Back in the framing scenario, the girl wakes up, believing that she has fallen asleep while reading and had an extremely vivid dream. But her bed is littered with leaves from the forest and she has a scratch on her cheek from an exchange with the werewolf. More on the consequences of this when I get to the “Myths & Legends” arc farther down the line, but for now we move on to--.
In the frame scenario of this issue, we meet a sorority pledge--initially unnamed--who runs off after being driven to tears by a trio of sorority sisters and comes across a lecture by fairy tale expert Sela Mathers, who relates a bloody, revenge-driven version of Cinderella to the gathered crowd. Afterward, it is revealed that the girl’s name is Cindy. We also see that the fairy godmother in Cinderella bears a striking resemblance to Sela Mathers, who is also in possession of the red book seen in the last issue. What’s more, like the fairy godmother did in the story, Sela ends the issue by bargaining for Cindy’s soul while a--ha-ha--murder of crows watches from the trees.
I was originally going to post commentary on all six issues and the short story from TPB #1 in this one post, but to accommodate the tastes of Generation Now, I have decided to break up the volumes into multiple posts. Stay tuned for part two of Trade Paperback #1 next time.
As previously related in Heroes Are Made and the "Grimm News" issues of Cover Charge, I began reading the Grimm Fairy Tales comics as research for a series of comic book characters I was designing in the Flash-based program, HeroMachine, and it quickly became an obsession. But at the time of my first reading, I went through it so quickly that many of the early issues seemed to amount to little more than filler episodes with unnamed characters, unresolved storylines, and, oh God, the typos! But now, the series has recently ended a 125-issue run and begun anew with a second volume (although the first “volume” has fifteen volumes of trade paperbacks, not including the special issues, spin-off series, and the last 25 issues of the first “volume,” subtitled “Arcane Acre,” have their own numbered set of trade volumes…so confusing), so I’m going back to the beginning to see if I can appreciate what I missed so many years ago.We begin with Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 1, Trade Paperback Volume 1
GFT #1: Red Riding Hood
I really liked the look and feel of the early Grimm issues. They had the air of an old pulp-horror comic, complete with racy, sensationalist covers by the likes of Al Rio and Eric Basaldua, and delivered on the more horrific aspects of classic fairy tales. This first issue sets up the series formula very nicely, with some modern problem that ties into the fairy tale being featured in the issue.This first opens on an unnamed college girl (whom I now presume is Britney Walters from several later miniseries) and her boyfriend named Chad, who wants to get in her pants (or something worse?). The girl refuses and storms off to her bedroom where she knocks over a box containing a red-bound book of fairy tales that she just happens to open to the story of Red Riding Hood, and the issue’s focus shifts into the tale itself. Things progress more or less as you’d expect, with Red taking a basket to her grandmother’s, encountering the woodsman and the wolf along the way. The usual, wolf eats granny, woodsman kills wolf mechanic persists as well, but with a twist or two that amount to the old “(were)wolf in sheep’s clothing” moral, which is driven home by much bloodshed.
Back in the framing scenario, the girl wakes up, believing that she has fallen asleep while reading and had an extremely vivid dream. But her bed is littered with leaves from the forest and she has a scratch on her cheek from an exchange with the werewolf. More on the consequences of this when I get to the “Myths & Legends” arc farther down the line, but for now we move on to--.
GFT #2: Cinderella
In the frame scenario of this issue, we meet a sorority pledge--initially unnamed--who runs off after being driven to tears by a trio of sorority sisters and comes across a lecture by fairy tale expert Sela Mathers, who relates a bloody, revenge-driven version of Cinderella to the gathered crowd. Afterward, it is revealed that the girl’s name is Cindy. We also see that the fairy godmother in Cinderella bears a striking resemblance to Sela Mathers, who is also in possession of the red book seen in the last issue. What’s more, like the fairy godmother did in the story, Sela ends the issue by bargaining for Cindy’s soul while a--ha-ha--murder of crows watches from the trees.I was originally going to post commentary on all six issues and the short story from TPB #1 in this one post, but to accommodate the tastes of Generation Now, I have decided to break up the volumes into multiple posts. Stay tuned for part two of Trade Paperback #1 next time.
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