Zenescope - Omnibusted #4: Sinbad
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
It plays out very similar to what I remember of watching Fantasia in my youth, with all of the iconic scenes getting a Grimm Fairy Tales treatment and placing Belinda in the title role.
The frame around it deals with a girl named Samantha Darrin (a nod to the classic TV show, Bewitched) and her pervy professor, Mr. Delroy. Before things can progress beyond obviously suggestive, Belinda comes in on the pretense of substituting for Sela, who would have been teaching the class after Delroy’s. Where Sela is when Belinda shows up to take her place is never explained despite said pretense being used many times in the future, but remember: Zenescope is pretty much flying by the seat of their magic carpet-patched pantaloons at this point in the series, so we have to abide by the “it’s a comic book” excuse for quite some time to come.
Doing basically the same thing as Sela would have done, but favoring a different outcome, Belinda has Samantha read her tale of woe.
Though it feels at times like a poor effort to make us feel sympathy for the devil, said tale in turn provides a bit of actual character development for Belinda, putting her at odds with an abusive mentor of her own and allowing the audience to do some speculation beyond the page for once upon a time. I can just picture Belinda getting this assignment from the evil Agency, recalling these early events of her life, and smiling evilly at the chance to get revenge-by-proxy.
Both Belinda’s fate at the end of the fable and the character of Samantha Darrin will play key roles in story arcs to come, so this is a must-read for anyone wanting to keep in the know about important GFT events.
This follows immediately from the events recounted in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A raiding party, led by a lecherous prince, is sent to retrieve a lamp from the Sorcerer’s chambers. This lamp just so happens to contain Belinda, whom the Sorcerer cursed with PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER (and an itty-bitty living space) in his dying breath. Because cursed object, famous last words, and Murphy’s Law, the prince’s ship is wrecked in a storm and the lamp finds its way to shore. There’s some debate among fans as to whether this is the same shipwreck we will see in The Little Mermaid and/or The Jungle Book in the future, but the focus of this short story is meant to be the lamp.
Long before he joined Sinbad’s crew, before he knew how to cook, before pots were anything more than headgear and a name, when he was still able to say more than “yes” or “no,” Pots was a curious young boy in Baghdad who discovered a lamp on a beach and brought it home for his father to spiff up and sell. But since they’re characters in a story, and not real people with sense, neither of them knows that you should never, ever, rub an oil lamp unless you are prepared and able to choose your words carefully. To be continued in Sinbad Volume 2: City Of the Dead.
In the Grimm Fairy Tales adaptation of this Brothers’ Grimm fable, Wilhelm (the cursed sailor who helped Sinbad defeat the fire wizard in Eyes of Fire) is defending his wife’s tomb from invading snakes and witnesses one snake using magic leaves to resurrect a snake that Wilhelm has…cut into three pieces. That’s right, magic leaves that can glue a dismembered snake back together and bring it back to life.
The actual City Of the Dead story arc doesn’t officially kick off for another issue. The seventh issue of 1001 Arabian Nights: Sinbad is instead a prequel to the Three Snake Leaves issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, showing how Wilhelm and Zahra fell in love and how Zahra died.
You’d think it was one of those love at first sight things, and it was. But it was also one of those “be careful what you wish for” things. Wilhelm falls in love with Zahra at first sight, but as he lacks the wealth and power to free her from their master, he visits a local witch with the ability to grant wishes. One guess who that is….
When Wilhelm wakes up the next morning, his master now works for him and Zahra is now as terrified of Wilhelm as she was of her former master, who has now fallen in love with her.
Stupidly, Wilhelm goes back to Belinda and wishes for Zahra to love him, not realizing that not only will their love cease to be true because magical brainwashing, but that their former master still has actual, true love for Zahra, and he goes to Belinda to get revenge on Wilhelm.
Of course, his revenge backfires (fire pun!), and the djinn/demon thing he uses against Wilhelm kills Zahra by accident.
This issue somewhat confirms that Belinda and the Witch Queen Alorana are not the same person. While the timeline supports that there might have been enough time between Three Snake Leaves and Eyes Of Fire for them to be the same person, Wilhelm does not react to Alorana as though he has seen her before. Perhaps he was too preoccupied fighting off Alorana’s general, or the writers simply hadn’t thought far enough ahead to include the “Oh! It’s you! Die, witch!” dynamic in that particular scene from Eyes Of Fire.
The other interesting thing here is that we don’t know what happened between The Lamp short story and Wilhelm’s flashback in issue #7. There’s a good chance Belinda has something to do with why Pots can only speak in binary responses, but the course of events that transpired after Pots rubbed her lamp and before she took over the magic shop in Baghdad is murky. At one point, Belinda says that “my magic is much greater than…his was,” and speaks of “celebrating [her] newfound independence,” hinting at Pots freeing her from the lamp, as well as a possible repeat of what became of her original master, the Sorcerer.
This also speaks to some character motivation hidden between the lines; Belinda has and pretty much always will serve her own interests, but she also has a soft spot for people who seek to overthrow their abusive masters. In short, she would have granted Wilhelm’s wish anyway, but she’s getting extra pleasure out of it because of the consequences for the one to whom he wishes harm.
With that expository entry complete, it’s time to not deliver on anything that was promised at the end of Eyes Of Fire. Important plot elements like the evacuation of Alorana’s island paradise, and cliffhangers like Alorana herself being held prisoner on Sinbad’s ship as an unwilling guide to all things MacGuffin-y and magical, have been dealt with off-page so that Sinbad can lead his crew on yet another scavenger hunt, meanwhile pondering his suggested place in someone else’s grand scheme. Distracting competently enough from this glaring absence of potentially great story prospects, we have the same action, character dynamics, and humor that made the first Sinbad arc so accessible.
A bar brawl leads to a petty revenge scheme by some locals. Sinbad tests two members of his crew with some seemingly pointless tasks. Osmium, a scorned ex-lover of Sinbad’s, offers to guide the crew to the titular City Of the Dead. And in expository flashbacks, the evil sorcerer king (because isn’t it always in this series?) of said city looks like Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat. After surviving an ambush by the barroom brawlers and their friends, Sinbad and most of his crew (except for Vu, a man who only speaks in some kind of African tribal dialect, Old Man, an old, blind man who has a magic/telepathic link to his pet falcon and knows a suspicious amount about the pieces of the Jericho Visor, and Ashcroft, a Caucasian ninja with a ring of some significance, who is at sea, delivering a letter for Sinbad) fall into a sinkhole when the ground gives out beneath them.
Things continue in the tenth issue of 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures Of Sinbad (now suddenly and simply re-titled Sinbad, presumably because Zenescope had plans of adapting other Arabian Nights tales into comic book form and scrapped them around this time, but also to prepare for a continuation series, also titled Sinbad, which was advertised but later canceled). The issue opens with a one-page flashback about Shon’du, the crew’s resident huge strongman type, who looks like the captain of the guard from the Aladdin movies.
The crew wake up from their fifty foot fall into shallow water without a scratch and follow the current to the underground City Of the Dead, where they attract the attention of not-Shao Kahn (whose real name is Terrae Motus, which is supposed to be some play on the Latin for “dead earth,” or something). By the way, if a guy named Dead Earth who has power over the dead and rules the City Of the Dead, and you’re not some moron in a horror movie, don’t go in there! Eat some tangerines instead; they’re far healthier for you.
Speaking of Aladdin, we suddenly get the beginnings of a side plot in Baghdad (which is drawn to look like Agrabah) centered on a man named General Tipu, who is greatly overstepping his bounds by having the equivalent of “college kegger while the parents are away” in the sultan’s throne room.
Meanwhie, Sinbad and crew battle giant scorpions, a callback to the 2003 Dreamworks film Sinbad: Legend Of the Seven Seas and classic films like Clash Of the Titans and The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad. No sooner do they recover from the battle than they are set upon by an army of animated skeletons.
Above ground, Vu and Old Man are on the run from the ghost of Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy reference!), and we are treated to another Shon’du flashback as discount Shao Kahn’s undead army closes in on the rest of Sinbad’s crew.
Finally, we get back to whatever Ashcroft has been doing for the past four issues, where we find out something bizarre and culturally impossible about him that involves his ring, General Tipu, and a red-headed woman who dresses in purple. I desperately wanted this to be Belinda, but she turned out to be Jocelyn, the woman Sinbad was in bed with when he was supposed to have been killing the sultan of Baghdad.
While Ashcroft is plotting to kill Sinbad, and Sinbad and his crew are gearing up to battle Terrae Motus, yet another subplot is set in motion as Alorana (now drawn as a blonde for some reason) and her mask-wearing general make plans to let Sinbad assemble the Jericho Visor (revealed to be some kind of elemental magic Infinity Gauntlet thing) so they can steal its power for themselves.
With the help of Vu and Old Man’s falcon, Sinbad (electing once again to take on the evil elemental wizard all by himself) manages to get sub-McGuffin #2 into the hands of Shon’du, who uses it to kill the earth wizard and somehow heal himself of the scorpion sting that had been slowly poisoning him to death for three issues. The series ends on a note that hints at Osmium sticking around as den mother to Sinbad’s crew for future adventures, but these never come to pass.
City Of the Dead fails to capture the sinister art style presented in Eyes Of Fire, and falls quickly into retread territory, but the real letdown here is the potential this series had as a whole. Wilhelm gained the ability to breathe fire after defeating Kabrit Amud. Shon’du was healed of his wounds after using the Crown of Anubis to defeat Terrae Motus. Who else could have been affected by the wind and water elements in those untold adventures? What about Ashcroft’s plans for revenge? How would things have played out against Alorana? Would Sinbad be absolved of the crime he didn’t commit? Just like the number of licks that get one to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.
a.k.a. the Omnibuster
Get ready to set sail, Ticketholders! I, the Ticketmaster, Omnibuster, and all-around Grimm Fairy Tales enthusiast, have returned to bring you another edition of Zenescope - Omnibusted (now with bonus, never-before-released content)! This week's miniseries comes to you courtesy of a preview featured at the end of The Piper TPB. And like any good Zenescope series, this seems to feature Belinda. I think.
From page one, Sinbad is a series dripping with awesome. Of course, there are typos galore and so many incorrect verb tenses that you’d swear the lettering was translated from another language, but when you get past that, the writing itself is smart, witty, sexy, and badass. The action that goes with it is artfully presented in a dynamic series of epic panels that need no explanation beyond what they tell, and what they tell is…awesome.
The art style is deliberately sharp around the edges, giving the appropriate impression that even the heroes have an element of danger to their character.
Originally intended as a standalone concept, it is the tale of a sailor so legendary that women want him, boys want to be him, and men twice his size would rather jump overboard than fight him.
Wrongfully accused of murder and exiled from his home (Baghdad, Iraq), Sinbad appropriates a ship and crew to sail the Mediterranean in search of the Sunfury Amulet, an artifact that is only one part of a more powerful MacGuffin (the Jericho Visor) he believes can show the truth of his innocence--at least as far as the murder is concerned.
His search takes Sinbad and his crew to a pair of volcanic islands, where they encounter a sizable army of Assassin’s Creed-style ninjas and a woman calling herself the Witch Queen Alorana (who is not yet confirmed to be Belinda, but looks enough like her for it not to be a coincidence--see cover at left). After some exciting ninja fights, and intercourse of both varieties, Alorana lends her second-in-command to accompany Sinbad’s crew on their search for the amulet, which is on the other of the two islands, sealing away the spirit of an elemental fire wizard “Alorana” defeated somewhere around the dawn of time.
The voyage to the sister island was intended as a suicide mission orchestrated by Alorana herself. While Sinbad and crew battle a dragon and a bunch of fire demons, two of his spies on Alorana’s island run afoul of the Witch Queen and her army. The crew defeat the demons and retrieve the amulet, but in doing so they release the wizard. Sinbad engages him in combat but is forced to retreat.
We find out snippets of information about the murder Sinbad was accused of, but the sailor keeps tight-lipped about why he needed to acquire his current ship and crew in the first place.
Meanwhile, the two spies (Pots the cook and Samelia, a young witch Sinbad rescued at the beginning of the series) lock Alorana in a trunk and flee her guards, taking Alorana with them as leverage. Everyone reunites outside Alorana’s palace, but there’s no time to celebrate because the wizard is literally hot on their trail.
In the end, Sinbad defeats the wizard with the help of a mysteriously cursed crewmate named Wilhelm. Having taken Alorana as their prisoner, the crew sets sail in search of the rest of the Jericho Visor.
Sinbad Volume #1: The Eyes of Fire
The art style is deliberately sharp around the edges, giving the appropriate impression that even the heroes have an element of danger to their character.
Originally intended as a standalone concept, it is the tale of a sailor so legendary that women want him, boys want to be him, and men twice his size would rather jump overboard than fight him.
Wrongfully accused of murder and exiled from his home (Baghdad, Iraq), Sinbad appropriates a ship and crew to sail the Mediterranean in search of the Sunfury Amulet, an artifact that is only one part of a more powerful MacGuffin (the Jericho Visor) he believes can show the truth of his innocence--at least as far as the murder is concerned.
His search takes Sinbad and his crew to a pair of volcanic islands, where they encounter a sizable army of Assassin’s Creed-style ninjas and a woman calling herself the Witch Queen Alorana (who is not yet confirmed to be Belinda, but looks enough like her for it not to be a coincidence--see cover at left). After some exciting ninja fights, and intercourse of both varieties, Alorana lends her second-in-command to accompany Sinbad’s crew on their search for the amulet, which is on the other of the two islands, sealing away the spirit of an elemental fire wizard “Alorana” defeated somewhere around the dawn of time.
The voyage to the sister island was intended as a suicide mission orchestrated by Alorana herself. While Sinbad and crew battle a dragon and a bunch of fire demons, two of his spies on Alorana’s island run afoul of the Witch Queen and her army. The crew defeat the demons and retrieve the amulet, but in doing so they release the wizard. Sinbad engages him in combat but is forced to retreat.
We find out snippets of information about the murder Sinbad was accused of, but the sailor keeps tight-lipped about why he needed to acquire his current ship and crew in the first place.
Meanwhile, the two spies (Pots the cook and Samelia, a young witch Sinbad rescued at the beginning of the series) lock Alorana in a trunk and flee her guards, taking Alorana with them as leverage. Everyone reunites outside Alorana’s palace, but there’s no time to celebrate because the wizard is literally hot on their trail.
In the end, Sinbad defeats the wizard with the help of a mysteriously cursed crewmate named Wilhelm. Having taken Alorana as their prisoner, the crew sets sail in search of the rest of the Jericho Visor.
This is the end of the Eyes of Fire arc, but it is not the end for Sinbad.
His story will resume after a few supplemental materials from later on in Grimm Fairy Tales' publication history (his story...history...slow clap...), which give a little bit of background--I almost said "history" again--on Belinda, starting with the following issue of the main Grimm Fairy Tales series, the review for which I have re-worded here to avoid spoilers in the Omnibusted version.
GFT #21: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
If you were expecting Mickey Mouse, you will either be happy or disappointed to find the iconic Disney mascot missing from this adaptation of the Goethe poem that became a cartoon short that became part of a full length animated movie and then a gimmick to be exploited by Disney and Nicolas Cage.
The frame around it deals with a girl named Samantha Darrin (a nod to the classic TV show, Bewitched) and her pervy professor, Mr. Delroy. Before things can progress beyond obviously suggestive, Belinda comes in on the pretense of substituting for Sela, who would have been teaching the class after Delroy’s. Where Sela is when Belinda shows up to take her place is never explained despite said pretense being used many times in the future, but remember: Zenescope is pretty much flying by the seat of their magic carpet-patched pantaloons at this point in the series, so we have to abide by the “it’s a comic book” excuse for quite some time to come.
Doing basically the same thing as Sela would have done, but favoring a different outcome, Belinda has Samantha read her tale of woe.
Though it feels at times like a poor effort to make us feel sympathy for the devil, said tale in turn provides a bit of actual character development for Belinda, putting her at odds with an abusive mentor of her own and allowing the audience to do some speculation beyond the page for once upon a time. I can just picture Belinda getting this assignment from the evil Agency, recalling these early events of her life, and smiling evilly at the chance to get revenge-by-proxy.
Both Belinda’s fate at the end of the fable and the character of Samantha Darrin will play key roles in story arcs to come, so this is a must-read for anyone wanting to keep in the know about important GFT events.
The next Sinbad supplement comes as the short story from the end of the Grimm Fairy Tales Volume #4 Trade Paperback (of which the above issue was a part), and shows--as will other Zenescope publications--that things are connected.
GFT Short Story #4: The Lamp
Long before he joined Sinbad’s crew, before he knew how to cook, before pots were anything more than headgear and a name, when he was still able to say more than “yes” or “no,” Pots was a curious young boy in Baghdad who discovered a lamp on a beach and brought it home for his father to spiff up and sell. But since they’re characters in a story, and not real people with sense, neither of them knows that you should never, ever, rub an oil lamp unless you are prepared and able to choose your words carefully. To be continued in Sinbad Volume 2: City Of the Dead.
But first, here's another issue of Grimm Fairy Tales that ties into the origins of one of Sinbad's crew:
GFT #33: Three Snake Leaves
A science professor, whom the kids simply call “Professor Ben,” is playing mad scientist with snakes to cure his wife of cancer. While waiting for the pet store to open, he runs into Belinda, who reads to him the story of the Three Snake Leaves. I briefly speculated that Belinda murdered everyone in the pet shop and put up a Closed sign so that she could lay in waiting for Ben, but that turned out not to be the case.
Wilhelm then takes the leaves from the two snakes and uses them on his wife, bringing her back from the dead as well.
Belinda loans Ben her book so he can finish reading (because people who don’t finish reading always have bad stuff happen to them, and Belinda’s being helpful for once?), and Ben gets his new snake from the pet shop.
Having created a new serum but not tested it yet, Ben is forced to inject his wife on her deathbed, after which he continues reading.
Zahra, Wilhelm’s wife, begins to exhibit more of a primal nature as time goes on, and betrays him for a wealthier man, killing Wilhelm and leaving him to the mercy of the sea.
But Wilhelm still has the Three Snake Leaves on him, which revive from the brink of death as a green-skinned snake-man to take his revenge on Zahra.
Meanwhile, Ben’s wife, Annette, improves drastically from the coral snake red king snake serum, but becomes more snake-like herself in the bargain, attacking the neighbor’s cat and somehow swallowing a ten-year-old boy whole.
Ridiculous premise, and Ben’s surprise face makes him look like Hank from King Of the Hill, but the fairy tale stays faithful to both the original version and the history of Grimm Fairy Tales, so I like it. Further backstory on Wilhelm is coming up in the City Of the Dead volume of Sinbad, which is finally up next!
Sinbad Volume #2: City Of the Dead
You’d think it was one of those love at first sight things, and it was. But it was also one of those “be careful what you wish for” things. Wilhelm falls in love with Zahra at first sight, but as he lacks the wealth and power to free her from their master, he visits a local witch with the ability to grant wishes. One guess who that is….
When Wilhelm wakes up the next morning, his master now works for him and Zahra is now as terrified of Wilhelm as she was of her former master, who has now fallen in love with her.
Stupidly, Wilhelm goes back to Belinda and wishes for Zahra to love him, not realizing that not only will their love cease to be true because magical brainwashing, but that their former master still has actual, true love for Zahra, and he goes to Belinda to get revenge on Wilhelm.
Of course, his revenge backfires (fire pun!), and the djinn/demon thing he uses against Wilhelm kills Zahra by accident.
This issue somewhat confirms that Belinda and the Witch Queen Alorana are not the same person. While the timeline supports that there might have been enough time between Three Snake Leaves and Eyes Of Fire for them to be the same person, Wilhelm does not react to Alorana as though he has seen her before. Perhaps he was too preoccupied fighting off Alorana’s general, or the writers simply hadn’t thought far enough ahead to include the “Oh! It’s you! Die, witch!” dynamic in that particular scene from Eyes Of Fire.
The other interesting thing here is that we don’t know what happened between The Lamp short story and Wilhelm’s flashback in issue #7. There’s a good chance Belinda has something to do with why Pots can only speak in binary responses, but the course of events that transpired after Pots rubbed her lamp and before she took over the magic shop in Baghdad is murky. At one point, Belinda says that “my magic is much greater than…his was,” and speaks of “celebrating [her] newfound independence,” hinting at Pots freeing her from the lamp, as well as a possible repeat of what became of her original master, the Sorcerer.
This also speaks to some character motivation hidden between the lines; Belinda has and pretty much always will serve her own interests, but she also has a soft spot for people who seek to overthrow their abusive masters. In short, she would have granted Wilhelm’s wish anyway, but she’s getting extra pleasure out of it because of the consequences for the one to whom he wishes harm.
With that expository entry complete, it’s time to not deliver on anything that was promised at the end of Eyes Of Fire. Important plot elements like the evacuation of Alorana’s island paradise, and cliffhangers like Alorana herself being held prisoner on Sinbad’s ship as an unwilling guide to all things MacGuffin-y and magical, have been dealt with off-page so that Sinbad can lead his crew on yet another scavenger hunt, meanwhile pondering his suggested place in someone else’s grand scheme. Distracting competently enough from this glaring absence of potentially great story prospects, we have the same action, character dynamics, and humor that made the first Sinbad arc so accessible.
A bar brawl leads to a petty revenge scheme by some locals. Sinbad tests two members of his crew with some seemingly pointless tasks. Osmium, a scorned ex-lover of Sinbad’s, offers to guide the crew to the titular City Of the Dead. And in expository flashbacks, the evil sorcerer king (because isn’t it always in this series?) of said city looks like Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat. After surviving an ambush by the barroom brawlers and their friends, Sinbad and most of his crew (except for Vu, a man who only speaks in some kind of African tribal dialect, Old Man, an old, blind man who has a magic/telepathic link to his pet falcon and knows a suspicious amount about the pieces of the Jericho Visor, and Ashcroft, a Caucasian ninja with a ring of some significance, who is at sea, delivering a letter for Sinbad) fall into a sinkhole when the ground gives out beneath them.
Things continue in the tenth issue of 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures Of Sinbad (now suddenly and simply re-titled Sinbad, presumably because Zenescope had plans of adapting other Arabian Nights tales into comic book form and scrapped them around this time, but also to prepare for a continuation series, also titled Sinbad, which was advertised but later canceled). The issue opens with a one-page flashback about Shon’du, the crew’s resident huge strongman type, who looks like the captain of the guard from the Aladdin movies.
The crew wake up from their fifty foot fall into shallow water without a scratch and follow the current to the underground City Of the Dead, where they attract the attention of not-Shao Kahn (whose real name is Terrae Motus, which is supposed to be some play on the Latin for “dead earth,” or something). By the way, if a guy named Dead Earth who has power over the dead and rules the City Of the Dead, and you’re not some moron in a horror movie, don’t go in there! Eat some tangerines instead; they’re far healthier for you.
Speaking of Aladdin, we suddenly get the beginnings of a side plot in Baghdad (which is drawn to look like Agrabah) centered on a man named General Tipu, who is greatly overstepping his bounds by having the equivalent of “college kegger while the parents are away” in the sultan’s throne room.
Meanwhie, Sinbad and crew battle giant scorpions, a callback to the 2003 Dreamworks film Sinbad: Legend Of the Seven Seas and classic films like Clash Of the Titans and The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad. No sooner do they recover from the battle than they are set upon by an army of animated skeletons.
Above ground, Vu and Old Man are on the run from the ghost of Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy reference!), and we are treated to another Shon’du flashback as discount Shao Kahn’s undead army closes in on the rest of Sinbad’s crew.
Finally, we get back to whatever Ashcroft has been doing for the past four issues, where we find out something bizarre and culturally impossible about him that involves his ring, General Tipu, and a red-headed woman who dresses in purple. I desperately wanted this to be Belinda, but she turned out to be Jocelyn, the woman Sinbad was in bed with when he was supposed to have been killing the sultan of Baghdad.
While Ashcroft is plotting to kill Sinbad, and Sinbad and his crew are gearing up to battle Terrae Motus, yet another subplot is set in motion as Alorana (now drawn as a blonde for some reason) and her mask-wearing general make plans to let Sinbad assemble the Jericho Visor (revealed to be some kind of elemental magic Infinity Gauntlet thing) so they can steal its power for themselves.
With the help of Vu and Old Man’s falcon, Sinbad (electing once again to take on the evil elemental wizard all by himself) manages to get sub-McGuffin #2 into the hands of Shon’du, who uses it to kill the earth wizard and somehow heal himself of the scorpion sting that had been slowly poisoning him to death for three issues. The series ends on a note that hints at Osmium sticking around as den mother to Sinbad’s crew for future adventures, but these never come to pass.
City Of the Dead fails to capture the sinister art style presented in Eyes Of Fire, and falls quickly into retread territory, but the real letdown here is the potential this series had as a whole. Wilhelm gained the ability to breathe fire after defeating Kabrit Amud. Shon’du was healed of his wounds after using the Crown of Anubis to defeat Terrae Motus. Who else could have been affected by the wind and water elements in those untold adventures? What about Ashcroft’s plans for revenge? How would things have played out against Alorana? Would Sinbad be absolved of the crime he didn’t commit? Just like the number of licks that get one to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.
The world may also never know what The Algorithm is looking for, because I put off my "What If GOKU Was NEVER BORN?" fan re-write for a week to do a franchise review of My Hero Academia (the show, and all three movies) because MHA's Deku and Black Clover's Asta had a Death Battle episode last week, and I wanted to capitalize on it. But that review only got eight pageviews despite me following the advice of my Digital Marketing text (putting keywords in alt text and links, using keywords early but not often in the main text, having the title of the anime in the title of the post, etc.).
What the world can be sure of is that I will release the beginning of the Buu Saga for "What If GOKU Was NEVER BORN?" next Monday. And I'll drop the Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 3 issue of Omnibusted that Wednesday so I can include some "Holiday" Omnibusted content for the weeks that will comprise the Countdown to TixMas.
Omnibuster,
Animeister,
Ticketmaster,
Suddenly realized he was doing an acrostic out of a breakfast grain....
Out.
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