Zenescope - Omnibusted #9: Salem's Daughter

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

My last two issues of Zenescope - Omnibusted hit amazing viewership numbers (thanks in no small part to the Zenescope subReddit), and it didn't hurt that I had been including reviews of titles that I previously wrote offline, but never released as part of the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective before my ambitions and vices got the worst of me.

To better plan out what I would include in each Omnibusted post, I began re-referring to the Grimm Fairy Tales Wikipedia page for publication dates, and I realized that there was a series (ultimately of minor consequence, but still part of the "Grimm Universe") that I had never read, nor written a review of. So I tracked down some digital copies of its two Trade Volumes, and got to reading: Salem's Daughter and Salem's Daughter: The Haunting.

Taking place in the old West, the Salem's Daughter comics focus on Anna Williams, the titular Massachusetts resident who has prophetic dreams and knowledge of various exorcism and elemental magics. So, yeah; she's a witch from that one city famous for not taking too kindly to witches (though Salem is far from unique in that regard).

Like other limited series of its kind and publisher, Salem's Daughter begins with a zero issue, which introduces Anna, her dream powers, and a grizzled gunfighter named Braden Cole who serves as her polar opposite and potential love interest. The issue also features David, an adulterous coward from Jamestown who murders his own wife and cheats on her with a succubus, who needed his..."blood turning" to give birth to an anti-Christ-ish Omen baby. And because he's also stupid, David ignores all empirical evidence and warnings to the contrary, and runs off with his "son."

Cut to the next issue sometime later, and a man named Darius has murdered Braden's wife, sending him on a path of revenge that will bring him to Salem itself, where Anna is being held for the murder of a local man named Jared Dunby (though a few pages later, it's suggested that his parents' last name is Allen because Zenescope are bad with names this early on, and there's a possible familial connection to Henry Allen of the Wonderland franchise).

Future knowledge, and a flashback that Anna's mother also had precognitive abilities, plus hair color, has me pondering if Anna Williams is an ancestor of Samantha Darren from The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Also, her interactions with her mother and Darius hint that he could be an agent of the Dark One, trying to sway Anna into joining him on the wrong path. And because time is also inconsistent in early Zenescope, and demonic babies grow up quick, it's possible that Darius is David's son from the opening issue.

This "Awakening" mini-arc ends with Braden and Mr. Williams saving Anna from being hanged by a mob who were riled up by Darius, and Braden blowing Darius' head off. But if Grimm Fairy Tales and Wonderland have taught us anything, it's that conventional weaponry has no effect on the supernatural, so Darius' soul possesses the Sherriff of Salem (even changing the man's face into his own).

Later that night, Anna has a dream of some missing children, setting up their off-page trip to New Jersey and the next mini-arc: "Legend Of the Jersey Devil."

It's more of the same, with Braden and Anna interviewing the family of one of the missing children, named Lucas, and then going into town for more info from the locals. As it turns out, another child went missing before, as did a woman named Myra Burrows. Myra's shriveled corpse is later discovered in her husband's upstairs bedroom, along with clothing that belongs to Lucas.

I'd also like to note here that Samuel, the missing boy's father, previously said the classic, "I hope you catch whoever did this and return our son," which is always spoken by the perpetrator in police procedurals, and that Samuel was the one who found his son's clothing in the suspect's house (meaning he could have planted it), but I'm writing this as I read, so we'll see.

Also, Michael Burrow (because the writers forgot to pluralize his name, but I'm imagining some sappy, fated meet-cute that stemmed from them having similar last names...and then I'm realizing that in the Old West, the population was small compared to modern statistics, meaning they are just as likely to be related as married, and inbreeding is gross) is hung without trial. Anna is knocked unconscious in her room at the inn, and wakes up in the Jersey Devil's cave, where she finds Lucas alive.

Meanwhile, Braden does some off-page snooping at the Burrow[s]' house, and guess what? Samuel (whose family is never given a last name, but considering the name of the town--Parkville--and some throwaway dialogue about him creating the town, it could be Park) kept his town safe and prosperous by organizing a cult that sacrifices children to the Leeds/Jersey Devil, and Michael Burrow[s] was a conscientious objector who got played as a scapegoat when Samuel planted Lucas' clothes in his house.

It didn't take one of Anna's orgasm-faced premonitions (of which she has three in a single issue) for me to figure out that "twist."

The arc ends with Braden winning a decently-paneled gunfight with Samuel's cultists, Samuel meeting a poetic and gut-wrenching demise at the hands of the Jersey Devil, and Anna using her magic to cremate the beast itself.

As formulaic and predictable as this first volume has been, I enjoyed the little blinks of chemistry between Anna and Braden, with her being the pragmatic, spiritual, but insecure one, and him being the stereotypical cowboy who drinks, wastes money, and boldly commits to his actions, whatever they may be.

I know the Salem's Daughter characters took part in an upcoming crossover, but Anna and Braden's story continues in Salem's Daughter Volume 2: The Haunting.

This Volume is vastly superior in many ways. The character models are a bit cartoonish-looking at times, with Jay Leno-meets-Bruce Campbell chins on some of the male characters, but the art is a lot sharper and more vivid than in the first Volume. And with the entirety of The Haunting being devoted to one story, where Salem's Daughter had to cram in three, there's room for more character moments, more characters, more detail, better pacing, and more flexibility when it comes to formula.

Now, The Haunting still follows the pattern of Anna enlisting Braden to travel with her to a town plagued by supernatural evil so they can solve a mystery and kill whatever is behind it. 

The town this time is Doylestown, Pennsylvania (roughly ten miles from Zenescope's headquarters in Horsham, PA, and sixteen miles from the series' later setting of Arcane Acre in Bryn Athyn, PA), where some kind of possession phenomenon is turning people into horn-covered Freddy Krueger monstrosities and sending them against their own families.

After assisting with the exorcism of a boy named Luke (because evil entities in fiction can't decide if they prefer blasphemous irony or ironic blasphemy) and the subsequent possession of the exorcist (because ditto), Braden and Anna start digging into the history of the town with the aid of a voodoo priestess-in-training named Letitia, who has some kind of spiritual connection with Anna.

At first, when the possessed Luke began vomiting locusts, I expected this to be less about a haunting--it still kind of isn't technically a haunting, but I'll get to what it really is in a bit--than about some kind of Biblical plague demon (locusts, boils, fire and brimstone, frogs, darkness, death of the firstborn child, etc.), which would have been a cool way to turn the Salem's Daughter comics into an ongoing, "hunt down the ten plagues of Egypt" series. I'm a bit disappointed that these two Volumes and a one-shot crossover appearance were all we got, what with Braden and Anna's relationship still developing, Darius still out there, and many, many supernatural creatures, entities, and urban legends that could have been adapted into cases for Anna, Letitia, and Braden to tackle. But I'm otherwise satisfied with what we did get.

As it turns out, a man named William Ray Jones (because people with three names are always to be trusted) was a practitioner of black magic, and convinced his Louisianna-born servants to teach him voodoo so that he could combine the two disciplines and command the souls of the dead. We even find out later that he used Letitia (who is the grown daughter of Jones' servants) as a guinea pig for his black voodoo rituals.

Also, one of Jones' sons, named Mark, is still alive, and plans to use Anna, Luke, and Letitia as vessels to resurrect his family (which only serves to give Jones and his wife access to witchcraft powers, and give the reader a fleeting moment of "did they really think they had to go there?" lesbian fanservice because Zenescope) as he holds Braden at bay with a town full of Krueger-esque voodoo zombies.

While in a coma from Mark Jones' voodoo doll, Anna is tempted by a psychic visitation from Darius, and for the first time since a single panel back in Salem's Daughter, Anna is depicted wearing the lingerie costume featured in most of the issues' cover art, and has a glowing sunburst around her right eye. This seems like a nod to Wonderland (specifically, Calie getting her Black Berserker outfit in the Escape series), considering she is dreaming, as well as lore that will come up in a later Grimm Fairy Tales Volume about the "Realms of Power." But the landscape of her coma dream is too sane-looking to be Wonderland itself.

When Anna and Letitia are trapped in limbo after the Jonses take over their bodies, they are approached by a mysterious (but clearly having ulterior motives) feminine-looking entity who offers to help them get their bodies back in exchange for sharing a body with Anna and making both women forget about the deal. Anna agrees off-page, the entity sends the Joneses to the Inferno (the word rendered in bold because subliminal advertising and Mercy Dante is awesome), Braden is saved from being torn apart by the undead, and Anna, as per formula, immolates the villain.

The concepts of voodoo, zombies, and limbo would come up in a later event series, called Unleashed, to which this series might very well be connected, but maybe I'm making Mandela assumptions?

Whatever the case, Salem's Daughter: The Haunting stops there, with a teaser of "The End...For Now."

The same issues that plagued other short-lived Zenescope franchises, like Sinbad, also made their appearance in Salem's Daughter, such as placing more importance on formula than lore or character, not finishing an established story (because being too formulaic probably led to its cancellation), and having a bunch of name inconsistencies, continuity errors, and typos (which are early Zenescope problems in general). But I enjoyed Anna, Letitia, and Braden as individual characters, and in their interactions with one another and the world around them. When not being forced by the plot to go places and solve mysteries, the three leads played off each other pretty well, with witty banter and hints that things could have developed into something more if the series had continued. When not rushed, the pacing was addictively perfect. The action was very clearly depicted and competently paneled, too. It's just a shame that we didn't get much more of it.

Remember to like, share, comment, subscribe, follow, click on some ads, and all that other good stuff, everywhere you can, and Stay Tuned for another part to "What If GOKU Was NEVER BORN?" (provided you can get this week's part to one hundred views and five likes) in the newly retitled Dragon Blog Super, and the return of the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective, where I'll review Zenescope's take on a property that was made into three movies last year. You know the one!

Omnibuster,

Stringless, and

Out!