Zenescope - Omnibusted #1: Grimm Fairy Tales TPB Volume 1

Article by Sean Wilkinson

Zenescope comics have been a great source of joy and misery for me over the years, especially the continuity of the Grimm Universe. And I miss reading them. I miss doing the Grimm Fairy Tales (GFT) Retrospective, too. So instead of succumbing to my usual annual feelings of, "I accomplished that! Now what do I do with myself for the rest of the year?" because I get overwhelmed by all the things I want to do and undersupplied with the energy and motivation required to do them, I'm going to do what I said at the beginning of the Retrospective that I would not do: put an entire Trade Paperback Volume's worth of analyses into one post, along with some text selections from other Zenescope-related posts, like Cover Charge #3: Grimm Fairy Tales, to create this new compilation-and-catch-up series, called Zenescope - Omnibusted. Much like my Ticketverse Trades posts (a series which I started as a way of collecting each Volume of reviews in a millennial-friendly, compact format) being based on the Trade Paperback concept, the Omnibusted series is inspired by the Omnibus concept. Think a Trade Paperback, but bigger, thicker, and with more content.

With that explanation and intro out of the way, here's a little history on why I even started reading Grimm Fairy Tales to begin with:

Prior to 2020, Adobe had this visual programming language called Flash, that was the basis for just about all browser games. Though it was extremely powerful, Flash had its animation and physics quirks, and (what led to its demise) its security and stability were laughable, leading to numerous hacks and game crashes.

But with my need for a creative outlet and my inconsistent drawing skills, one "game" in particular caught my attention: Heromachine. It was like one of those doll dress-up games that permeated Flash game sites (and now permeate the actual free-to-play corner of any given app store), but with the ability to size and rotate individual clothing, accessories, shapes, furniture, backgrounds, weapons, and body parts to create whatever your brain could conceive of, rather than just snapping pieces onto a static character frame. I created dozens of characters with the program, and at one point, I began tapping fairy tales for further character inspirations, which inevitably led me to Zenescope and Grimm Fairy Tales. It became an obsession for me to the point that, when I was doing the Retrospective, I dropped thousands of dollars on variant covers and collectors' boxes and spent entire days in Photoshop fixing errors in the digital editions to create "completionist" versions of each Trade, all the while working at Subway, trying to write two novels and this blog, watching anime and listening to audiobooks on the way to and from work for even more content, designing more Heromachine characters (also for content), hopping from gacha game to gacha game, playing Credit Balance Roulette to keep my many compulsions going, and trying not to claw myself to pieces under the self-imposed weight of it all.

Now, Flash is a thing of the past, I am at a new job that's closer to home, I am paying off my debts and learning how to best advertise my passions at WGU, and I plan to keep some sort of momentum in the 2022 endgame.

I was disappointed to learn that Jeff Hebert (the mind behind Heromachine) was unable to port his wonderful creation over to another language, but despite this setback, Heromachine still has a thriving creation community thanks to an available .swf debugger that lets you run Heromachine offline (with limited functionality).

At the time of my first reading, I went through Grimm Fairy Tales 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! There were missing and misspelled words everywhere, and some characters' names would change from issue to issue (sometimes in the same issue!). But despite my OCD in that regard, I really liked the look and feel of those early entries. They had the air of an old pulp-horror comic, complete with racy, sensationalist covers, and they delivered on the more horrific aspects of classic fairy tales. On top of that, there were hints at a larger, ongoing narrative.

Each seductive, pin-up-quality cover of Grimm Fairy Tales hides a portion of the story of Sela Mathers, a literature professor in possession of a mysterious book of fairy tales which she uses to try to help select people she comes across, in a moral-of-the-month kind of format.

We begin getting Omnibusted with Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 1, Trade Paperback Volume 1

GFT #1: Red Riding Hood

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.

It 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 house, and 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 (and Ticketmaster's Note: modern slang puts a whole new meaning on the scumbag boyfriend being named Chad), 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.

GFT #3: Hansel & Gretel

This issue is very on-the-nose with its character names and framing scenario. A brother and sister named Hank and Gina run away from home and “chance” upon a ride with Sela Mathers, who relates to them “some lame story about two stupid kids who run away from home.” The intro panels of the Hansel & Gretel story are almost identical to its frame, with the exception being a difference in time period (e.g.: dress, language, technology).

The story continues fairly true to the common knowledge version, with the twist being that the witch (or hag, depending on the regional telling) is named Sela. This seems to further confirm information from the two previous issues that Sela can send people into the fairy tales she tells (as the book did with “Britney?”), as well as enter the fairy tales herself and take a character’s form (as with the fairy godmother in Cinderella).
After the fairy tale, Sela invites the kids to crash at her place for the night, which they wisely decline. The last panel shows Sela looking…happy? Wait. Last issue, she was selling popularity for a girl’s soul and commanding crows to peck out people’s eyes. Now, the crows only eat breadcrumbs, and Sela’s smiling because she won’t get to eat two children? Is Sela good or evil? Find out next time. Maybe.

That last bit isn't me being a prick, although I was feeling a little salty after the confusing way the first three issues handled Sela's morality. I truly had no idea what kind of character Sela was supposed to be the first time I read this series, and while three issues in is too early in its run for GFT to have any kind of focus, and the writers should be due some critical leeway for not knowing what direction their story is supposed to be taking, some criticism should also be required from the point of view of someone who is re-reading the series (read: Me) for its continuing lack of focus, ever-shifting crew of artists, and "hey, this would be a cool story to write all of a sudden" approach to what should by all rights be a sprawling yet focused narrative that keeps itself in mind, rather than obeying random whims and fluctuating financials.
That doesn't mean the individual issues are all unworthy of reading, however. The next issue is a prime example of a worthy read:

Ticketmaster's Note: Up to this point in the Retrospective, I had been keeping the titles of my posts the same as the Grimm Fairy Tales issues. I tried being clever and informative here by titling this review FROM August 12, 2017 (Wow, that's a long time ago!) Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #3: The Little Rattle Post Man.

For those of you wondering about the unusual nature of that title, it is a reference to the translation of the name Rumpelstiltskin, which itself is translated from "Rumpelstilzchen," referring to a goblin of German lore that rattles or raps on gate posts and wooden planks as a means of inducing fright or annoyance. The origin of the name has less to do with the fairy tale it inspired than with a similarly behaving spirit that is more commonly known today by the name "poltergeist," a ghost that clatters and moves household objects. Fun, obscure facts, I've got them. On to the issue at hand.

GFT #4: Rumpelstiltskin

Knowing what I know now, this issue blew me away on so many levels.
So, it starts with a girl named Milly (because the miller’s daughter, get it?) who is pregnant, and her selfish jock boyfriend Eric, who wants her to get an abortion or sell her baby to his friend Jimmy, who “knows this agency” (as of this second reading, I could practically hear the capital-A, and I got chills from it).
Enter Sela Mathers again (whom I forgot to mention also has the ability to read minds or souls or something, and instantly knows everything about the person she’s about to talk to) with a fairy tale about a girl who agrees to give up her baby to the titular imp. Through a signature GFT twist, the maiden Miller’s son becomes the new Rumpelstiltskin.
The framing scenario this issue ends on a single page with one bubble of dialogue (seen on the left), but the imagery and the--revealed much later--backstory speak volumes. Skip the next paragraph if you'd like to read those volumes yourself.

SPOILER ALERT: It turns out, in the course of events in the Grimm Universe, that there is an Agency. And it’s evil. It takes kids from their parents and turns those kids into monsters.

I guess this technically counts as a SPOILER, too. But it's sort of worth spoiling at the expense of appreciating the final page of Rumpelstiltskin that much more. It will be revealed (again, now that you've committed to reading this sentence) later that Sela had a child taken from her earlier in her life, and that the ominous-capital-Agency, is responsible.
But, WAIT! Sela’s good now? Confusion! Guess I’ll have to sleep on it for a hundred years or so. Or, at least until someone wakes me up.

If you didn't catch the plug there, next issue will be devoted to Sleeping Beauty. Before I go, however, I feel I must leave you with the following words of Rumpelstiltskin-relevant wisdom:
People make mistakes. And, as parents are people, parents logically make mistakes, too. One mistake a parent should never make, however, is to tell their child that he or she was one of those mistakes. It doesn't matter if you say it directly or say something that someone with a grasp of English and logic structures can parse that meaning from.
Never. Tell. Your. Child. That.
Children may be unexpected, difficult, annoying, messy, loud, spoiled, and inappropriate, but they are not mistakes, failures, idiots, sources of weakness, curses, nor in any way unwanted. They are fresh, innocent, brilliant avatars of the future, and if the future is a mistake, then we are all doomed.

This next review is titled Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #4: Cramming In Some Beauty Sleep, FROM August 14, 2017 (yes, I was doing Retrospective content every other day back then), and at the time of writing, I had been up until three a.m. the previous night, obsessively organizing something that meant nothing by the time I gave up on it (probably images for one of those "completionist editions" I mentioned way back up top). And unfortunately, no one kissed me to wake me up in the morning.

I felt like I had stayed awake for a hundred straight years and spent all night getting drunk (the first of which is physically impossible without dying, and the second of which was false at the time, though I had long ago revoked my total sobriety card on a bottomless pitcher of light beer and was yet to contribute to the ruination of my finances, familial relationships, and my pancreas with much harder substances), but my only motivation for shaking a leg and getting out of bed was someone, well, shaking my leg. I ended up compensating for my caffeine-fueled late night by cramming in some afternoon beauty sleep, hence the title. Speaking of beauty sleep, here we go....

GFT #5: Sleeping Beauty

Though it is no longer than any previous issue, this feels longer because so much is packed into each page. A college student named Brett has a crush on a girl named Haley, who uses him to cheat in class and tries to get him to buy her drugs for a party she’s holding that night.
On the way to the dealer’s house, he spots Sela Mathers, who “accidentally” drops the book of fairy tales before driving off. Brett parks at a gas station and begins reading from the book.
This was quite the involved buildup at almost six pages in length, but Sleeping Beauty is no pushover, either. It stays mostly true to the common telling, but packed into the next fourteen and a half pages are a flashback story-within-a-story, a budding romance, an affair, and no less than three grisly deaths.
Tristain, the servant who kisses and wakes Sleeping Beauty, is actually Brett. No “more proof is revealed” crap here. The lettering comes out and says it; Brett got sucked into the fairy tale he was reading and became Tristain. Except in Sleeping Beauty, Tristain catches the princess’s curse and dies at the end, and Brett is shown to be alive afterward, saying it “felt a little too real.” So maybe it’s like dreams, where you automatically wake up before you die? Whatever the case, it’s revealed that Haley has a boyfriend (whose picture is in the encyclopedia directly under “stupid-looking man-gorilla”), and Brett leaves her, having decided not to buy the drugs after all.
Before getting in his car, Brett is approached by Sela, who has come to collect her book. But is it really her book? We’ve seen before that Sela doesn’t have to be present for the book to work (Red Riding Hood), and it’s subtly hinted here that maybe the book has a mind of its own, like it wanted to fall out of her hands because it sensed Brett or something. Aside from further insight into the mechanics of the book and more evidence that Sela is a mischievous force, if not an outright agent of good, this issue is basically a filler episode. That being said, it is one of the better uses of page time and one of the best written issues thus far.

ON August 16, 2017, I reviewed the final issue of the first Grimm Fairy Tales Volume One trade paperback (abbreviated in the comic book culture as TPB) in a post titled, Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective #5: Blood, Marriage, And the First Legacy.

GFT #6: The Robber Bridegroom

I was not familiar with this particular fairy tale either time I read the issue, so I couldn't speak to how true the comics stayed to their source material in this case.

After some research, however, I can say definitively that there is little connection or faithfulness to either the Brothers' Grimm or the Joseph Jacobs (titled Mr. Fox) version.

The comic book adaptation is another on-the-nose issue for Zenescope, with two sisters named Michelle and Tara fighting over a young man named John. Sela intervenes in the sisterly squabble with a “helpful” story about two sisters named Misha and Tendra who end up fighting over a “prince” named Ivan (because Ivan is a variation of John, get it?) and lose their lives because of it.

Though the plots and characters differ greatly between the originals and Zenescope's adaptation, the adaptation provides a backstory of sorts for the young woman who is murdered in the Brothers' Grimm version (the one common plot element carried over to the comic book), which is a little Easter egg I enjoyed discovering.

Of course, things in the fairy tale play out to their bloody GFT twist resolution. After reading Sela's book, the dazed sisters wonder where she “Batman-ed” off to before deciding to choose their sisterhood over John. Again, the framing characters look identical to their fairy tale counterparts, with the exception of period dress.
I wondered in this instance if John got sucked into the story as well, even though he was not the focus character, or if Ivan was just part of the fairy tale world. I also wonder, based on what at this point is “future knowledge,” if all of the trial archetype characters (Chad from Red Riding Hood, Eric and Jimmy from Rumpelstiltskin, Haley and the drug dealer from Sleeping Beauty, and even Sela herself from Cinderella and Hansel & Gretel) work for the Evil Agency (discussed in an above SPOILER) in some capacity.
A highly derivative filler issue, but given my lack of knowledge of the Robber Bridegroom fable, I nevertheless found the writing fresh. And given some research, I was able to appreciate the creative direction of the writing even more.

At the end of the first several Grimm Fairy Tales paperbacks, Zenescope included special short stories that serve to expand the "Grimm Universe" in some way, either by hinting at future events or providing additional insight into past events or character development. The short stories from the first six trade volumes were collected in the Grimm Fairy Tales Short Story Collection, beginning with the following story, Legacy. The "Volume 2" relaunch of Grimm Fairy Tales also begins with an issue called Legacy, but that’s something for another day. For now, check this out.

GFT Short Story #1: Legacy

In this first short story, Sela has just finished a lecture on morality and fairy tales, and strikes up a conversation with a student named Megan. Megan notices Sela’s book and asks where it came from, prompting Sela into a flashback.
It is revealed that when she was young (an indeterminate length of time ago), Sela had a brother named Thomas. The two come upon a house in the woods and Sela enters, encountering an old woman who gives her the book, saying that she is also passing on a legacy, a calling, to guide certain people away from “dire consequences.”
Sela later wakes up to find that the world has changed drastically and that Thomas is an old man, though Sela has not aged at all.
Back in the present, Sela tells Megan that she will share her story when Megan is ready, and that one of her other students is sick and in need of a reality check. I cannot immediately recall if Thomas or Megan are ever mentioned again, nor who the sick student might be, but whatever the consequence, this story was another nice easter egg to read and ponder.

That's it for Volume One of Volume One, folks! Stay tuned (and wait smart--a little additional tag that I used back then, in reference to my One A Day event series and the diet supplement, One-A-Day Weight-Smart--that takes me back!) as I offer some more Dragon Ball-related content in response to a "What If?" video by my favorite fan-fiction and Dragon Ball YouTuber (and the voice of Goku and Gohan in Dragon Ball Z: Abridged), MasakoX.

Omnibuster,

Out.