GFT Retrospective #21: Christmas 2011
Merry Prelated Christmas, Ticketholders!
I currently have nothing clever to gift you with, so I'll let the Ghost of Ticketmaster Past and the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective speak for me. I originally wrote this post offline in June, so here are some words of wisdom from the Ghost myself:
After introducing a culturally insensitive stereotype in an issue so bad you’d expect Michael Bay to have a production credit on it (don’t get me started on the nuclear explosion, the lack of plot, or Sela’s slutty Miss Muffet costume), Zenescope decides to be politically correct by releasing a “Holiday” edition each year. Just nutcracker up and call it Christmas, hmm-kay? It’s like having Christmas in June (which it is right now--June, not Christmas). It’s like Dan Whitney becoming Larry the Cable Guy, it don’t make sense. Lord, I apologize. Some crap about pygmies in New Guinea or whatever, Amen. Anyway, calling it a Holiday Edition is probably the worst thing about theHoliday Christmas Edition in any year. They’re predictable, but refreshingly so.
With the exception of the first Christmas edition (which I will get to much later), each following year is set around Sela doing her best to pull one over on Krampus (a turd-colored, horned thing with a bunch of mouths all over his body--creepy--who is like an evil Santa Claus in the Grimm Universe) and keep him from killing people. This year (six years before this actual year, and three years after the single issue continuity, but I’ve spent enough time criticizing the scattershot publication of the Paperbacks, so on with it), it’s a take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with a jaded, not-at-all-real actress named Elizabeth Sellers in the Ebeneezer Scrooge role (oh…same initials). There are a couple of product placement Easter eggs here: a nightclub called the Zen Lounge, and the license plate number on her limo is 23N35C0P3. Otherwise, it’s the GFT formula in full force, modernizing and sensationalizing classic tales.
Elizabeth gets haunted by Marla’s ghost (heh), who announces the impending arrival of three beings, the first being the Sela of Christmas Past. Christmas Present makes reference to having once been blinded by love and needing to atone for her sins, but I don’t readily recognize her as anyone important from past issues. The art style in her segment doesn’t provide much in the way of details. It’s somewhere between the styles of "Dead Luck Desert" and "The Rule Of Three." I’ll keep a lookout for a woman with brown hair who killed her son and daughter, but beyond that I don’t have anything else to go on.
Christmas Future is Krampus himself in a Death robe. I never liked the message behind Christmas Future. I get that it’s supposed to be metaphorical and relate to how, if you have friends and loved ones and a good life, you live on in people’s memories, but the presentation of the message always felt like a load of crap when taken literally. Christmas Future always shows Scrooge (or Scrooge McDuck, or Jim Carrey, or whoever else I can’t remember) that a life of meanness and selfishness leads to the grave. So that means that if you’re nice to everyone and charitable and happy all the time, you’ll be immortal, right? Sorry to break it to you, folks, but it doesn’t matter if you’re Barack Obama or Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler or Mahatma Gandhi, Larry the Cable Guy or Dan Whitney. Whether you love left Twix or right Twix, you’re going in the ground with everyone else. That’s reality, that’s humanity, that’s mortality, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that. What you believe happens beyond the grave and what you do on the way to it is completely up to you.
Bah Humbug and Merry Christmas, everyone!
Remember to gift me with comments, likes, shares, blog subscriptions, and ad revenue, and I'll continue to reciprocate with my own, inimitable brand of cynical joy. The New Piece Offering and Ticketverse Throwback of the week are surprises to me at this point as well, but stay tuned to see what I have for you to unwrap.
Ghost of Ticketmaster,
Past, out.
I currently have nothing clever to gift you with, so I'll let the Ghost of Ticketmaster Past and the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective speak for me. I originally wrote this post offline in June, so here are some words of wisdom from the Ghost myself:
After introducing a culturally insensitive stereotype in an issue so bad you’d expect Michael Bay to have a production credit on it (don’t get me started on the nuclear explosion, the lack of plot, or Sela’s slutty Miss Muffet costume), Zenescope decides to be politically correct by releasing a “Holiday” edition each year. Just nutcracker up and call it Christmas, hmm-kay? It’s like having Christmas in June (which it is right now--June, not Christmas). It’s like Dan Whitney becoming Larry the Cable Guy, it don’t make sense. Lord, I apologize. Some crap about pygmies in New Guinea or whatever, Amen. Anyway, calling it a Holiday Edition is probably the worst thing about the
GFT Holiday #3 (2011)
Elizabeth gets haunted by Marla’s ghost (heh), who announces the impending arrival of three beings, the first being the Sela of Christmas Past. Christmas Present makes reference to having once been blinded by love and needing to atone for her sins, but I don’t readily recognize her as anyone important from past issues. The art style in her segment doesn’t provide much in the way of details. It’s somewhere between the styles of "Dead Luck Desert" and "The Rule Of Three." I’ll keep a lookout for a woman with brown hair who killed her son and daughter, but beyond that I don’t have anything else to go on.
Christmas Future is Krampus himself in a Death robe. I never liked the message behind Christmas Future. I get that it’s supposed to be metaphorical and relate to how, if you have friends and loved ones and a good life, you live on in people’s memories, but the presentation of the message always felt like a load of crap when taken literally. Christmas Future always shows Scrooge (or Scrooge McDuck, or Jim Carrey, or whoever else I can’t remember) that a life of meanness and selfishness leads to the grave. So that means that if you’re nice to everyone and charitable and happy all the time, you’ll be immortal, right? Sorry to break it to you, folks, but it doesn’t matter if you’re Barack Obama or Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler or Mahatma Gandhi, Larry the Cable Guy or Dan Whitney. Whether you love left Twix or right Twix, you’re going in the ground with everyone else. That’s reality, that’s humanity, that’s mortality, and that’s all I’ve got to say about that. What you believe happens beyond the grave and what you do on the way to it is completely up to you.
Bah Humbug and Merry Christmas, everyone!
Remember to gift me with comments, likes, shares, blog subscriptions, and ad revenue, and I'll continue to reciprocate with my own, inimitable brand of cynical joy. The New Piece Offering and Ticketverse Throwback of the week are surprises to me at this point as well, but stay tuned to see what I have for you to unwrap.
Ghost of Ticketmaster,
Past, out.
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