GFT Retrospective #29: The Experiment
The Experiment was originally a three-part story, dished out in installments at the end of each of the first three Tales From Wonderland, perhaps as a way of keeping readers from being selective and getting them to spend more money on comic books.
Whatever Zenescope’s motives, I enjoyed this fractured story far more than the materials it was meant to accompany.
The Experiment follows Henry Allen, the scientist from The Queen Of Hearts, as he recounts his time as an employee of Charles Dodgson (who is apparently over two hundred years old by Alice’s time, as Henry Allen’s journal is dated 1864).
When an accidental explosion uncovers a portal to Wonderland (because of course there was a magic portal behind his basement wall the entire time), Henry begins sending animal test subjects through and recording his findings for Dodgson. If you hadn’t guessed, the animals were a white rabbit and a black cat whose fur is subtly inked in a dark shade of purple. Also, Wonderland seems able to infuse ordinary objects with its energy from beyond the portal, as the looking glass (shown herein to be property of Henry Allen) itself became a portal simply by being placed over it for extended periods of time.
After the future White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat fail to return from Wonderland, Henry begins receiving threats from Dodgson, and we catch up to the events of The Queen Of Hearts, prompting Henry to enter the looking glass when he realizes that his son, William, has gone in after Julia and Bethany, who have already become the Queen because time in Wonderland.
Also because time in Wonderland, and because father-abandonment issues hurt, William has become the King Of Hearts, a.k.a. The Suicide King, and is made to kill himself over and over again like some kind of Grecian hell punishment. When Henry tries to free William from Wonderland, the Chinese dragon thing quite literally tears through the fourth wall to stop him.
Henry wakes in his lab with the knowledge that the dragon creature wants to escape from Wonderland and feed on the sane world’s…sanity. He attempts to use dynamite to destroy the mirror and block off the portal in his basement (because of course low-tech explosives and corporeal laws of thermodynamics stand a chance against magical energies, right?), but no sooner does he realize it isn’t going to work than in barges a search party-slash-mob who promptly beat him to death.
Some time after Henry’s death, Charles Dodgson arrives to investigate the Allen house, looking exactly as he did in Return to Wonderland a hundred and fifty years later.
If you recall my coverage of the Snow White issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, I alluded to Wonderland’s looking glass being indestructible, or at least capable of magical regeneration. We know from the end of Return to Wonderland that it can be broken, and we know from The Experiment that it is resistant to more powerful means of destruction. It is perfectly possible that the Snow Queen’s mirror, the Evil Queen’s mirror, the Frog Princess’s mirror, and the energy that transformed the Wonderland looking glass share some kind of origin, if not that some of these looking glasses/mirrors are in fact the same item.
In another few bits of supplemental material, we get reprinted snippets from young Alice’s diary, as well as a journal entry that Calie wrote to her unborn child. The former says that Charles Dodgson did not acquire the looking glass directly from the Allen house, but instead somehow arranged to have it arrive at an American antique shop over the intervening century and a half.
Alice also says in her diary that she was ten when the events of her Tale took place, and that she has no memory of what happened to her down the rabbit hole. I don’t know about you, but if I crawled down a hole and created a temporal paradox like the one that I am still trying to puzzle out after reading the Tale of Alice, I would want to have amnesia, too.
Calie’s entry is just a two-page Cliff’s Notes version of what happened in Return to Wonderland. Calie referring to Johnny as “your uncle” was a nice little mind-bender to think about however, especially if you’ve read the Tale Of the Mad Hatter. Must not give away spoiler!
Tune in tomorrow for another New Piece Offering.
Ticketmaster,
out.
Whatever Zenescope’s motives, I enjoyed this fractured story far more than the materials it was meant to accompany.
TFW Bonus Story #1: The Experiment
The Experiment follows Henry Allen, the scientist from The Queen Of Hearts, as he recounts his time as an employee of Charles Dodgson (who is apparently over two hundred years old by Alice’s time, as Henry Allen’s journal is dated 1864).
When an accidental explosion uncovers a portal to Wonderland (because of course there was a magic portal behind his basement wall the entire time), Henry begins sending animal test subjects through and recording his findings for Dodgson. If you hadn’t guessed, the animals were a white rabbit and a black cat whose fur is subtly inked in a dark shade of purple. Also, Wonderland seems able to infuse ordinary objects with its energy from beyond the portal, as the looking glass (shown herein to be property of Henry Allen) itself became a portal simply by being placed over it for extended periods of time.
After the future White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat fail to return from Wonderland, Henry begins receiving threats from Dodgson, and we catch up to the events of The Queen Of Hearts, prompting Henry to enter the looking glass when he realizes that his son, William, has gone in after Julia and Bethany, who have already become the Queen because time in Wonderland.
Also because time in Wonderland, and because father-abandonment issues hurt, William has become the King Of Hearts, a.k.a. The Suicide King, and is made to kill himself over and over again like some kind of Grecian hell punishment. When Henry tries to free William from Wonderland, the Chinese dragon thing quite literally tears through the fourth wall to stop him.
Henry wakes in his lab with the knowledge that the dragon creature wants to escape from Wonderland and feed on the sane world’s…sanity. He attempts to use dynamite to destroy the mirror and block off the portal in his basement (because of course low-tech explosives and corporeal laws of thermodynamics stand a chance against magical energies, right?), but no sooner does he realize it isn’t going to work than in barges a search party-slash-mob who promptly beat him to death.
Some time after Henry’s death, Charles Dodgson arrives to investigate the Allen house, looking exactly as he did in Return to Wonderland a hundred and fifty years later.
If you recall my coverage of the Snow White issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, I alluded to Wonderland’s looking glass being indestructible, or at least capable of magical regeneration. We know from the end of Return to Wonderland that it can be broken, and we know from The Experiment that it is resistant to more powerful means of destruction. It is perfectly possible that the Snow Queen’s mirror, the Evil Queen’s mirror, the Frog Princess’s mirror, and the energy that transformed the Wonderland looking glass share some kind of origin, if not that some of these looking glasses/mirrors are in fact the same item.
In another few bits of supplemental material, we get reprinted snippets from young Alice’s diary, as well as a journal entry that Calie wrote to her unborn child. The former says that Charles Dodgson did not acquire the looking glass directly from the Allen house, but instead somehow arranged to have it arrive at an American antique shop over the intervening century and a half.
Alice also says in her diary that she was ten when the events of her Tale took place, and that she has no memory of what happened to her down the rabbit hole. I don’t know about you, but if I crawled down a hole and created a temporal paradox like the one that I am still trying to puzzle out after reading the Tale of Alice, I would want to have amnesia, too.
Calie’s entry is just a two-page Cliff’s Notes version of what happened in Return to Wonderland. Calie referring to Johnny as “your uncle” was a nice little mind-bender to think about however, especially if you’ve read the Tale Of the Mad Hatter. Must not give away spoiler!
Tune in tomorrow for another New Piece Offering.
Ticketmaster,
out.
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