GFT Retrospective #39: The Ugly Duckling! Part 2!
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
Fairy Tale Fan
Happy New Old Comic Book Day, Ticketholders!
Fairy Tale Fan
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| GFT #36, Cover A |
Valentine's Day may be behind us, but the Month Of Love is still in full swing (just not in the key party sense), which means it's time for more content themed around twisted love!
Specifically, today's foray into the GFT Retrospective tackles the evils, ills, and other consequences of basing romantic feelings on pure, physical attraction, presented in Zenescope's classically simple, yet raunchy and bloody fashion. Back in GFT Retrospective #32: The Ugly Duckling? and Zenescope - Omnibusted #8: Grimm Fairy Tales TPB Volume 5, I covered the first part of the Story Of Ted (all who enter here shall tremble in fear at the name of the mighty Ted, my second cousin's uncle's former roommate!). It was quite similar to a duck or swan, fittingly enough: Grace and beauty on the surface, but underneath, it was unfaithful mutton diarrhea struggling not to drown in its own existence. Again, weird metaphor, but in the age of getting Omnibusted, a little repetition for the sake of a complete story is forgiveable. So here again is The Ugly Duckling to serve as a refresher, contrast, and companion to the real focus of the post, The Ugly Duckling, Part 2, which will come in the second half.
At the “heart” of the issue is Robin, an awkward, plain-looking girl who resorts to magic (provided by Belinda) to make herself attractive and popular, only to become a superficially desired mean girl who spurns the one person who really cared for her and ends up paying for her gilded new life in blood (that person being Ted).
If you’ve been paying attention to the series so far and you’ve ever seen any episode of Supernatural where a crossroads demon figures in, you don’t really need to read this issue.
If it sounds like I’ve lost faith in the series, I haven’t really. I’ve continued to read long after The Ugly Duckling, and when I am eventually caught up with the current issues, I will continue to read long after that. But I had a feeling from page one that the folks at Zenescope might have lost faith in their own work.
The fairy tale is glossed over in a single panel, whereafter we meet Robin and learn what a selfish, superficial…person…she is. In flashback, we get to know and sympathize with who she was ten years ago (this is where the Supernatural reference comes in, but while she doesn’t get herself torn apart by hellhounds, there is still that “paying for her gilded new life in blood” thing in play) and see her first encounter with Belinda, who gives her not the purple fairy tale book to borrow, but just an ordinary, Little Golden Book-style copy of The Ugly Duckling, along with a magic formula that is apparently Red Bull (“It’s your wings!”).
Waking from a Red Bull hangover the next morning, Robin reenacts the scene from Spider-Man where Tobey Maguire wakes up after the spider bite, minus the humor and spider-powers (i.e. she’s toned up, her braces are gone, and she doesn’t need glasses anymore). But with great power comes a great amount of mean, slutty behavior, modernist commentary on sexuality-based bullying and teen suicide, and the aforementioned bloody ending of both Robin and the issue itself.
Without giving too much more away, Ted (the childhood friend she rejected after drinking Dr. Jekyll’s enchanted Red Bull) will return for a sequel issue a bit later.
I know that I criticize formulaic writing a lot, but why in the name of whatever higher power they believe in, would Zenescope approve an issue where Belinda is without her purple book the entire time? Being too formulaic can be a bad thing, but there are still certain things that simply shouldn’t be replaced with a pale facsimile, even if the new formula that comes with it is magic.
Original Ugly Duckling writer Mike Dolce returns to pen Part 2, wherein Ted, the homicidal fashion designer from Part 1, flashes back to his first encounter with Belinda (this time playing a college residential assistant in Ted’s dorm at fashion school).
Learning from his mistakes in Part One, Dolce has Belinda with her purple book once again (which now has the ability to change the title on its cover, partially confirming a theory I had when covering the Rapunzel issue, that the book can change its appearance under certain circumstances). Repeating his mistakes from Part One, Dolce completely skips over the fairy tale, even after introducing Belinda’s book as though this issue of Grimm Fairy Tales is going to adhere to formula. Perhaps this is a meta-cognitive approach to the “don’t judge a book by its cover” moral of similar tales, but it is received by this fan/critic as an unwelcome bait-and-switch tactic.
That said, I like Ted as a villain more than Timmy, Jacob, Claire, or any of Belinda’s other…charges? Targets? Puppets? I don’t know what to call them, exactly. But I like his motivations and characterization better. Timmy and Jacob were just creepy kid stereotypes that I’ve seen in dozens of horror movies before. Claire’s motivation was simple greed. Ted, on the other hand, had a history of being shunned by women who went from being social outcasts to attractive and popular (like Robin in Part One, and Rita, his potential love interest in Part Two—fun note if you want to ignore the "Zenescope re-uses names" criticism: Rita was the name of the focal character in Rapunzel, and Robin, with a slightly different spelling, will be the name of one of Zenescope's best written characters later on in their publication history).
GFT #28: The Ugly Duckling
Here’s a "great" idea: get someone who’s never written for Grimm Fairy Tales before to write an issue! New (and as of this date, only three-time) Zenescope writer Mike Dolce presents a take on The Ugly Duckling that acknowledges few and incorporates none of Grimm Fairy Tales’ established mechanics while recycling plots that have been used at least three times before (Cinderella, Beauty & the Beast, The Little Mermaid).At the “heart” of the issue is Robin, an awkward, plain-looking girl who resorts to magic (provided by Belinda) to make herself attractive and popular, only to become a superficially desired mean girl who spurns the one person who really cared for her and ends up paying for her gilded new life in blood (that person being Ted).
If you’ve been paying attention to the series so far and you’ve ever seen any episode of Supernatural where a crossroads demon figures in, you don’t really need to read this issue.
If it sounds like I’ve lost faith in the series, I haven’t really. I’ve continued to read long after The Ugly Duckling, and when I am eventually caught up with the current issues, I will continue to read long after that. But I had a feeling from page one that the folks at Zenescope might have lost faith in their own work.
The fairy tale is glossed over in a single panel, whereafter we meet Robin and learn what a selfish, superficial…person…she is. In flashback, we get to know and sympathize with who she was ten years ago (this is where the Supernatural reference comes in, but while she doesn’t get herself torn apart by hellhounds, there is still that “paying for her gilded new life in blood” thing in play) and see her first encounter with Belinda, who gives her not the purple fairy tale book to borrow, but just an ordinary, Little Golden Book-style copy of The Ugly Duckling, along with a magic formula that is apparently Red Bull (“It’s your wings!”).
Waking from a Red Bull hangover the next morning, Robin reenacts the scene from Spider-Man where Tobey Maguire wakes up after the spider bite, minus the humor and spider-powers (i.e. she’s toned up, her braces are gone, and she doesn’t need glasses anymore). But with great power comes a great amount of mean, slutty behavior, modernist commentary on sexuality-based bullying and teen suicide, and the aforementioned bloody ending of both Robin and the issue itself.
Without giving too much more away, Ted (the childhood friend she rejected after drinking Dr. Jekyll’s enchanted Red Bull) will return for a sequel issue a bit later.
I know that I criticize formulaic writing a lot, but why in the name of whatever higher power they believe in, would Zenescope approve an issue where Belinda is without her purple book the entire time? Being too formulaic can be a bad thing, but there are still certain things that simply shouldn’t be replaced with a pale facsimile, even if the new formula that comes with it is magic.
But just like the King Midas issue that followed The Ugly Duckling in publication order, the long delayed sequel I am about to cover showed that the original Ugly Duckling issue was an anomaly, and provides the Story Of Ted with major signs of redemption.
GFT #36: The Ugly Duckling Part 2
Speaking of sequels, as I did last time, here’s one nobody asked for because the first part was one of the worst Grimm Fairy Tales issues ever written. Original Ugly Duckling writer Mike Dolce returns to pen Part 2, wherein Ted, the homicidal fashion designer from Part 1, flashes back to his first encounter with Belinda (this time playing a college residential assistant in Ted’s dorm at fashion school).
Learning from his mistakes in Part One, Dolce has Belinda with her purple book once again (which now has the ability to change the title on its cover, partially confirming a theory I had when covering the Rapunzel issue, that the book can change its appearance under certain circumstances). Repeating his mistakes from Part One, Dolce completely skips over the fairy tale, even after introducing Belinda’s book as though this issue of Grimm Fairy Tales is going to adhere to formula. Perhaps this is a meta-cognitive approach to the “don’t judge a book by its cover” moral of similar tales, but it is received by this fan/critic as an unwelcome bait-and-switch tactic.
That said, I like Ted as a villain more than Timmy, Jacob, Claire, or any of Belinda’s other…charges? Targets? Puppets? I don’t know what to call them, exactly. But I like his motivations and characterization better. Timmy and Jacob were just creepy kid stereotypes that I’ve seen in dozens of horror movies before. Claire’s motivation was simple greed. Ted, on the other hand, had a history of being shunned by women who went from being social outcasts to attractive and popular (like Robin in Part One, and Rita, his potential love interest in Part Two—fun note if you want to ignore the "Zenescope re-uses names" criticism: Rita was the name of the focal character in Rapunzel, and Robin, with a slightly different spelling, will be the name of one of Zenescope's best written characters later on in their publication history).
With Belinda’s guidance, Ted comes to see this transformation—which he calls “the Swan” (not to be confused with the short-lived reality series of the same name)—as a spiritual pandemic that he has to personally eradicate by killing these “Swan”-infected women.
Of course, anyone with an ounce of sane grey matter between their ears would immediately tell Belinda to shove her broomstick-mobile where the sun don’t shine, but Ted’s Trench Coat-Mafia-crazy and this is a comic book where kindergarten-level psychology has the power to sway people one way or the other in a few pages or panels, so of course, he decides the next day to suddenly try his hand at being the kind of person that Dexter would regularly pump full of animal tranquilizer, Saran wrap to a table, dismember, and throw into the ocean. I mean, Ted’s whole “kill beautiful women to exorcise an infectious bird demon” thing isn’t so far off from “kill four people to recreate the death of my family and the loss of my innocence” (the Trinity Killer) or “kill random people and stage their bodies like passages from the book of Revelation because the world feels like it might be ending and the ghost of the teacher from Stand and Deliver told me to do it” (the Doomsday Killer).
I’m poking fun here. Of course, I’m poking fun; these serial killer motivations are ridiculous! But regardless of the batshit-crazy motives and modus operandi of these fictional murderers, it doesn’t change the fact that they make for great storytelling.
Another great piece of storytelling in this issue is Sela’s official return to the series, in what I can only describe as a badass pair of pages. Like in the Three Little Pigs, we see Sela’s ability to imprison people in her book. What ultimately becomes of Ted is uncertain. But if the punishment for rape and armed robbery is getting turned into a pig, eaten by a werewolf, and sent to Hell, I don’t think I want to know what happened to Ted inside that book.
Of course, anyone with an ounce of sane grey matter between their ears would immediately tell Belinda to shove her broomstick-mobile where the sun don’t shine, but Ted’s Trench Coat-Mafia-crazy and this is a comic book where kindergarten-level psychology has the power to sway people one way or the other in a few pages or panels, so of course, he decides the next day to suddenly try his hand at being the kind of person that Dexter would regularly pump full of animal tranquilizer, Saran wrap to a table, dismember, and throw into the ocean. I mean, Ted’s whole “kill beautiful women to exorcise an infectious bird demon” thing isn’t so far off from “kill four people to recreate the death of my family and the loss of my innocence” (the Trinity Killer) or “kill random people and stage their bodies like passages from the book of Revelation because the world feels like it might be ending and the ghost of the teacher from Stand and Deliver told me to do it” (the Doomsday Killer).
I’m poking fun here. Of course, I’m poking fun; these serial killer motivations are ridiculous! But regardless of the batshit-crazy motives and modus operandi of these fictional murderers, it doesn’t change the fact that they make for great storytelling.
Another great piece of storytelling in this issue is Sela’s official return to the series, in what I can only describe as a badass pair of pages. Like in the Three Little Pigs, we see Sela’s ability to imprison people in her book. What ultimately becomes of Ted is uncertain. But if the punishment for rape and armed robbery is getting turned into a pig, eaten by a werewolf, and sent to Hell, I don’t think I want to know what happened to Ted inside that book.
If you want to know what happens inside my next post, remember to like, comment, and subscribe everywhere you can—which is a joke because I'll make content no matter what, but it's also very much appreciated—and Stay Tuned for next week, when I release the Volume Six Omnibusted post, complete with my reviews of that Volume's Short Story, as well as the 2009 Halloween Special!
Tomorrow, I'll be dropping a new Ticket Stubs on a film starring another holdover from my Countdown to TixMas: Jim Carrey! Also be on the lookout for my TBT 2023 links for City Island on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook.
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