GFT Retrospective #17: Return to Wonderland
Welcome to the Mad Tea Party, Ticketholders!
As far back as Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #6, I had been making references to Zenescope eventually branching out of their fairy tale/nursery rhyme/fable niche that they established (with mixed, but mostly favorable results) in their main series, and spinning off into Wonderland. Since 2007, it has grown from a miniseries trilogy to four Annuals, ten character-focused Tales, seven additional miniseries, two additional One-Shots, a crossover with Grimm Fairy Tales, and a fifty-one issue ongoing series. From both a scholarly perspective (read: I had to do a ton of research and back-reading to even understand what was going on the first time around) and a fanboy perspective, reading it all was a fun process.
Mostly.
Get ready for a long post, full of spoilers and cynicism.
I tried to keep that in mind the first time I read this, but I didn’t enjoy it or understand it that much because I was reading it in installments over a long period of time. I came into it with no future knowledge, and I tried too hard to make sense of it. But reading it again, Return to Wonderland does make sense.
Kind of.
Not really.
It begins with Alice Liddle, grown up and escaped from Wonderland. She’s sitting in a bathtub and staring at a picture of herself as a little girl, posing with two adults who are presumably her grandparents. Though the Return storyline takes place in modern times, the people in the photograph are dressed in period clothing, indicating either that they are in costume, or that Alice has spent two hundred of our years in Wonderland, only having aged twenty years or so in that time.
As a result of either the time discrepancy, or the psychological impact of Wonderland itself, Alice attempts suicide.
After a few panels in an institution, she returns home and adopts a white therapy rabbit (which is drawn to look like the creepiest rabbit since Bunnicula--for those who don’t know, yes, there actually is a children’s book series out there about a vampire bunny, but that’s a whole other topic that I most likely will not discuss further here).
Her daughter Calie (anagrams!) is sexually active and into psychedelic drugs--that seem to give Calie prophetic dreams about Wonderland--her husband Lewis (as in Caroll, except his last name is Liddle, and Calie is actually short for Carol Ann, go figure) is fifty shades of cheating on her, and Calie’s brother Johnny is secretly a budding serial killer, so Alice spends most of her days in a catatonic state, nigh chemically dependent on the white rabbit’s company.
When Alice has a nervous breakdown upon the rabbit’s disappearance, Calie offers to find it for her, and ends up falling down an inexplicably deep (never mind that it’s there at all) hole beneath a bookcase in the basement that leads to Wonderland.
At the bottom, Calie goes through the iconic “eat me, drink me, grow me, shrink me” sequence before being flushed out onto a beach where she finds a seafood restaurant owned and run by the Carpenter, the Walrus, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum. Completely ignoring the photo on the wall of Carpenter and Walrus posing with a man who’s been strung up like a fish, she goes exploring and finds that Walrus and the brothers Tweedle have been murdered by the Carpenter, who seeks to add Calie to his body count (and his dinner--yes, the Carpenter is a cannibal…who speaks in rhyme…).
While we’re on the subject of really, really, really weird stuff, the white rabbit is a psychic zombie, and some of the trees are Sarlacc beasts in disguise. Yeah, Star Wars reference.
So, after miraculously escaping the cannibal-poet-Carpenter and defeating one of the Sarlacc trees with some leftover shrinking water, Calie encounters a mysterious, hooded blonde woman in a metal mask who tells her to run because “he” is coming.
“He” turns out to be the Caterpillar, who makes about as much sense as he did in the original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. After a bunch of psychedelic nonsense involving the Caterpillar and the mind-reading Forest of Signs (read them, they’re hilarious), Calie finds herself on the run from something huge and invisible with a lot of sharp teeth.
Ignoring the Forest’s warnings and her previous encounter with the Carpenter, she seeks refuge in the home of a man calling himself Hatter. Of course, Hatter drugs Calie and turns her into a naked sushi bar (because Zenescope) so he can kill her slowly or something. Being final girl in this particular "horror movie," however, Calie is able to shake off the drug’s effects and beat Hatter within a fractional inch of his life.
Though numerous covers of this series’ issues have already depicted her dressed in a racy, black version of Alice’s Disney outfit, it isn’t until after her encounter with Hatter in the third installment (fourth, counting issue #0) that we see her don it on the page. This is a marketing ploy that Zenescope (and comic book publishers at large) are notorious for. The most famous instance I can think of is when Marvel was doing the symbiote suit with Spider-Man. Long after he swore off the symbiote, Spidey would still be depicted on the cover wearing the Black Suit. And it wasn’t always consistent, either. It’s meant to build hype and expectations for plot elements of an issue or story arc, but more often than not the company fails to deliver on their promises because of a change in writing staff or because someone got smacked in the head with a walrus carcass while snorting shrinking water into their temporal lobe and eating magic mushrooms.
The next issue picks up with Calie having made her way out of the Forest of Signs and stumbling across a group of card soldiers who have murdered one of their own for planting white roses in the Queen’s maze and are using his blood to paint them red. Yeah, if you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re in a Zenescope comic, where the order of the day is sex, gore, and foul language.
In steps the Queen of Hearts--who, true to her source material, is obsessed with beheading people--and saves Calie from execution (until she changes her mind, at least).
Back in the sane world, Alice is still semi-catatonic and Lewis and Johnny have done everything short of reporting Calie missing. Of course, Lewis’s mistress (feel free to take that both ways) shows up at his front door and Johnny sees them, deciding later to break the woman’s neck (budding serial killer, remember?). Alice also overhears Lewis and the mistress having sex and gets her own vengeful ideas.
Meanwhile (or however time works), Calie has managed to piss off the Queen of Hearts during a game of flamingo croquet. But before she can be executed, the Cheshire Cat (huge, invisible thing with lots of sharp teeth from the Forest of Signs) jumps in and slaughters the remaining card soldiers before setting his sights on Calie. I’m sensing a pattern here....
In the fifth installment, we learn the truth behind Johnny’s homicidal tendencies, that the Queen of
Hearts has a conjoined sister who acts as her legs (except the Cheshire Cat has torn her/them in half by this time), and that the masked blonde is named Lacie.
Though it was not revealed previously, the blonde cuts her way out of Cheshire’s stomach, coming to Calie’s rescue while an Editor’s Note informs us that “the Cheshire Cat ate Lacie--REMEMBER?” No, I don’t remember! Zenescope didn’t reveal the character’s name until just now, and I had to go back two issues and play Where’s Waldo to find the Cheshire Cat’s eyes looming behind “Lacie” in the panel just before her mask vaguely falls to the ground and breaks, so I had no idea that “he” was actually the Cheshire Cat, not the Caterpillar, nor did it even register that he might have eaten her, so the Editor’s Note here would have been better worded as: “Deus ex machina--our readers are idiots!”
Also, anagrams again.
The writing gets even lazier here as Lacie is revealed to actually be Alice (although how she can exist in both Wonderland and the sane world at the same time is something that won’t be addressed for a long time to come), a bit of knowledge that we as readers have gone “duh” over while Calie can’t recognize her own mother staring her in the face. Nevertheless, it comes as a touching reunion between Calie and the version of her mother she never got to have up to that point, just before Lacie shoves her into a magic reflecting pool (mirrors again…) that takes her back to the sane world. It’s also a nice goodbye between the two because…well…remember the beginning of Return to Wonderland? Yeah, that happens again--sort of.
The final issue of Return to Wonderland is a prologue of sorts, starting with Alice’s funeral following her suicide by hanging. Calie and Johnny are being haunted by the White Rabbit, and Calie seeks advice and comfort from a man she calls Pappy (a man we last saw in a photograph at the beginning of issue #0, posing with Alice, and is accompanied by a black cat whose fur is too close to a dark shade of purple…).
He tells her that he can see the rabbit, too, and that there is a cult devoted to sacrificing young children to Wonderland in an effort to keep its evil from seeping into the sane world (except that kind of doesn’t make sense because, according to “Pappy,” this Wonderland cult gave rise to such mass murderers as Jack the Ripper--whose silhouette looks too much like the Mad Hatter--Adolf Hitler, and Countess Blood, as well as supposedly being responsible for Black Tuesday and both World Wars). Maybe instead of getting sucked into a psychedelic morality lesson, Sela should have been sent to Wonderland with a bunch of magical nuclear weapons, hmm?
Pappy reveals that the Liddle family is descended from that cult and asks Calie to go back to Wonderland. When she gets home, she finds that Johnny has killed their father, Lewis, and Pappy’s words ring in her head. Frightened that the worst has come to pass, she finds Pappy’s looking glass in the basement, pushes Johnny through to Wonderland, and smashes it behind him.
Backed by Pappy’s considerable resources, Calie goes on the run, taking her boyfriend, Brandon with her.
She’s pregnant.
That ends Return to Wonderland.
Some parting tidbits, though. Cheshire (in sane world cat form) calls Pappy “Charles,” which, if you are up on your Alice In Wonderland history, is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the real name behind the Lewis Carroll pseudonym. When Calie wakes up in the sane world (in a classroom of all places), a chalkboard behind her has the name Mr. Dodgson written on it, along with some incorrect math that makes sense, and the taunting message, “twinkle, twinkle, Liddle bat.” Also, as Calie is leaving her home for the final time (for now…), she passes by a street sign bearing the name Croatoan Drive. Look up the lost Virginia colony if you don’t get the reference.
I think all of these little background messages are the writers’ way of making us pay attention and laugh through our chills, but the fact that the characters themselves seem utterly ignorant of the dangerous nature of their surroundings is nonetheless infuriating, like watching two people go off on their own to have sex in a slasher movie.
On its second reading, RTW is a decent beginning to the Wonderland franchise, but in places it makes as much (or as Liddle) sense as the realm of madness itself.
Leave your words of reflection in the comments, remember to like, share, subscribe, and click me up some Pappy-level ad revenue between posts. I will return later this week with a double-dose of New Piece Offerings, and next week, we get back to Grimm Fairy Tales with a continuation of the Wicked Ways short story.
As far back as Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #6, I had been making references to Zenescope eventually branching out of their fairy tale/nursery rhyme/fable niche that they established (with mixed, but mostly favorable results) in their main series, and spinning off into Wonderland. Since 2007, it has grown from a miniseries trilogy to four Annuals, ten character-focused Tales, seven additional miniseries, two additional One-Shots, a crossover with Grimm Fairy Tales, and a fifty-one issue ongoing series. From both a scholarly perspective (read: I had to do a ton of research and back-reading to even understand what was going on the first time around) and a fanboy perspective, reading it all was a fun process.
Mostly.
Get ready for a long post, full of spoilers and cynicism.
Wonderland Volume #1: Return to Wonderland
You’re probably thinking that the first volume in a trilogy shouldn’t be called Return to Wonderland, but in Wonderland, the only thing that makes sense is that nothing makes sense.I tried to keep that in mind the first time I read this, but I didn’t enjoy it or understand it that much because I was reading it in installments over a long period of time. I came into it with no future knowledge, and I tried too hard to make sense of it. But reading it again, Return to Wonderland does make sense.
Kind of.
Not really.
As a result of either the time discrepancy, or the psychological impact of Wonderland itself, Alice attempts suicide.
After a few panels in an institution, she returns home and adopts a white therapy rabbit (which is drawn to look like the creepiest rabbit since Bunnicula--for those who don’t know, yes, there actually is a children’s book series out there about a vampire bunny, but that’s a whole other topic that I most likely will not discuss further here).
Her daughter Calie (anagrams!) is sexually active and into psychedelic drugs--that seem to give Calie prophetic dreams about Wonderland--her husband Lewis (as in Caroll, except his last name is Liddle, and Calie is actually short for Carol Ann, go figure) is fifty shades of cheating on her, and Calie’s brother Johnny is secretly a budding serial killer, so Alice spends most of her days in a catatonic state, nigh chemically dependent on the white rabbit’s company.
When Alice has a nervous breakdown upon the rabbit’s disappearance, Calie offers to find it for her, and ends up falling down an inexplicably deep (never mind that it’s there at all) hole beneath a bookcase in the basement that leads to Wonderland.
At the bottom, Calie goes through the iconic “eat me, drink me, grow me, shrink me” sequence before being flushed out onto a beach where she finds a seafood restaurant owned and run by the Carpenter, the Walrus, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum. Completely ignoring the photo on the wall of Carpenter and Walrus posing with a man who’s been strung up like a fish, she goes exploring and finds that Walrus and the brothers Tweedle have been murdered by the Carpenter, who seeks to add Calie to his body count (and his dinner--yes, the Carpenter is a cannibal…who speaks in rhyme…).
While we’re on the subject of really, really, really weird stuff, the white rabbit is a psychic zombie, and some of the trees are Sarlacc beasts in disguise. Yeah, Star Wars reference.
So, after miraculously escaping the cannibal-poet-Carpenter and defeating one of the Sarlacc trees with some leftover shrinking water, Calie encounters a mysterious, hooded blonde woman in a metal mask who tells her to run because “he” is coming.
“He” turns out to be the Caterpillar, who makes about as much sense as he did in the original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. After a bunch of psychedelic nonsense involving the Caterpillar and the mind-reading Forest of Signs (read them, they’re hilarious), Calie finds herself on the run from something huge and invisible with a lot of sharp teeth.
Ignoring the Forest’s warnings and her previous encounter with the Carpenter, she seeks refuge in the home of a man calling himself Hatter. Of course, Hatter drugs Calie and turns her into a naked sushi bar (because Zenescope) so he can kill her slowly or something. Being final girl in this particular "horror movie," however, Calie is able to shake off the drug’s effects and beat Hatter within a fractional inch of his life.Though numerous covers of this series’ issues have already depicted her dressed in a racy, black version of Alice’s Disney outfit, it isn’t until after her encounter with Hatter in the third installment (fourth, counting issue #0) that we see her don it on the page. This is a marketing ploy that Zenescope (and comic book publishers at large) are notorious for. The most famous instance I can think of is when Marvel was doing the symbiote suit with Spider-Man. Long after he swore off the symbiote, Spidey would still be depicted on the cover wearing the Black Suit. And it wasn’t always consistent, either. It’s meant to build hype and expectations for plot elements of an issue or story arc, but more often than not the company fails to deliver on their promises because of a change in writing staff or because someone got smacked in the head with a walrus carcass while snorting shrinking water into their temporal lobe and eating magic mushrooms.
In steps the Queen of Hearts--who, true to her source material, is obsessed with beheading people--and saves Calie from execution (until she changes her mind, at least).
Back in the sane world, Alice is still semi-catatonic and Lewis and Johnny have done everything short of reporting Calie missing. Of course, Lewis’s mistress (feel free to take that both ways) shows up at his front door and Johnny sees them, deciding later to break the woman’s neck (budding serial killer, remember?). Alice also overhears Lewis and the mistress having sex and gets her own vengeful ideas.
Meanwhile (or however time works), Calie has managed to piss off the Queen of Hearts during a game of flamingo croquet. But before she can be executed, the Cheshire Cat (huge, invisible thing with lots of sharp teeth from the Forest of Signs) jumps in and slaughters the remaining card soldiers before setting his sights on Calie. I’m sensing a pattern here....
In the fifth installment, we learn the truth behind Johnny’s homicidal tendencies, that the Queen of
Though it was not revealed previously, the blonde cuts her way out of Cheshire’s stomach, coming to Calie’s rescue while an Editor’s Note informs us that “the Cheshire Cat ate Lacie--REMEMBER?” No, I don’t remember! Zenescope didn’t reveal the character’s name until just now, and I had to go back two issues and play Where’s Waldo to find the Cheshire Cat’s eyes looming behind “Lacie” in the panel just before her mask vaguely falls to the ground and breaks, so I had no idea that “he” was actually the Cheshire Cat, not the Caterpillar, nor did it even register that he might have eaten her, so the Editor’s Note here would have been better worded as: “Deus ex machina--our readers are idiots!”
Also, anagrams again.
The writing gets even lazier here as Lacie is revealed to actually be Alice (although how she can exist in both Wonderland and the sane world at the same time is something that won’t be addressed for a long time to come), a bit of knowledge that we as readers have gone “duh” over while Calie can’t recognize her own mother staring her in the face. Nevertheless, it comes as a touching reunion between Calie and the version of her mother she never got to have up to that point, just before Lacie shoves her into a magic reflecting pool (mirrors again…) that takes her back to the sane world. It’s also a nice goodbye between the two because…well…remember the beginning of Return to Wonderland? Yeah, that happens again--sort of.
He tells her that he can see the rabbit, too, and that there is a cult devoted to sacrificing young children to Wonderland in an effort to keep its evil from seeping into the sane world (except that kind of doesn’t make sense because, according to “Pappy,” this Wonderland cult gave rise to such mass murderers as Jack the Ripper--whose silhouette looks too much like the Mad Hatter--Adolf Hitler, and Countess Blood, as well as supposedly being responsible for Black Tuesday and both World Wars). Maybe instead of getting sucked into a psychedelic morality lesson, Sela should have been sent to Wonderland with a bunch of magical nuclear weapons, hmm?
Pappy reveals that the Liddle family is descended from that cult and asks Calie to go back to Wonderland. When she gets home, she finds that Johnny has killed their father, Lewis, and Pappy’s words ring in her head. Frightened that the worst has come to pass, she finds Pappy’s looking glass in the basement, pushes Johnny through to Wonderland, and smashes it behind him.
Backed by Pappy’s considerable resources, Calie goes on the run, taking her boyfriend, Brandon with her.
She’s pregnant.
That ends Return to Wonderland.
Some parting tidbits, though. Cheshire (in sane world cat form) calls Pappy “Charles,” which, if you are up on your Alice In Wonderland history, is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the real name behind the Lewis Carroll pseudonym. When Calie wakes up in the sane world (in a classroom of all places), a chalkboard behind her has the name Mr. Dodgson written on it, along with some incorrect math that makes sense, and the taunting message, “twinkle, twinkle, Liddle bat.” Also, as Calie is leaving her home for the final time (for now…), she passes by a street sign bearing the name Croatoan Drive. Look up the lost Virginia colony if you don’t get the reference.
I think all of these little background messages are the writers’ way of making us pay attention and laugh through our chills, but the fact that the characters themselves seem utterly ignorant of the dangerous nature of their surroundings is nonetheless infuriating, like watching two people go off on their own to have sex in a slasher movie.
On its second reading, RTW is a decent beginning to the Wonderland franchise, but in places it makes as much (or as Liddle) sense as the realm of madness itself.
Leave your words of reflection in the comments, remember to like, share, subscribe, and click me up some Pappy-level ad revenue between posts. I will return later this week with a double-dose of New Piece Offerings, and next week, we get back to Grimm Fairy Tales with a continuation of the Wicked Ways short story.
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