GFT Retrospective #45: Baba Yaga
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
Bearing Good News & Comic Reviews
Let's start off by sharing some good news with my Ticketholders out there!
Academia will be getting easier in several ways within the next two weeks.
First of all, I had my eye exam yesterday, and I'll be getting new glasses (fully covered by insurance! Yay!) in fourteen business days. I have been optically navigating the same pair of won't-stay-on-my-face, twice-stepped-on, chemically eroded, grease-splattered glasses for at least five years because I cared more about my vices than my vision, and my medical didn't cover them (my vices or my vision). So finally getting new glasses and feeling good about it...feels good. Lighter. Responsible. Accomplished. Actually mentally healthy. And honestly, weird. But weird in that good, disbelief kind of way.
And speaking of feeling lighter because of good news, I also found out yesterday that WGU's Marketing program got restructured, and I have three fewer classes to complete before I graduate, which means tuition will be majorly discounted in my final term. Just like my other good news, this gave me a weird sense of relief and disbelief. I know that this means I will have another expense to deal with when my loan repayments start (earlier than they would have before), but I've paid off college debt before, and I can do it again.
Next, some reminders: If you'd like to see my thoughts on The Chemical Brothers' Push the Button album, go read my NPO #23: Touch Of A Button post and help it get to twenty Facebook likes. Also, there's the usual call to action to like, comment, and subscribe to my blog, click some ads, and give some traffic to Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news on my content.
And finally, let's get to today's GFT Retrospective review.
GFT #42: Baba Yaga
The preview at the end of the last issue states: “The only thing standing between Sela and her destiny is the witch Baba Yaga. Find out how Sela was chosen to carry the fairy tale book in this sensational issue!” At first, this advertisement seems to be completely false, as we are introduced to a house with chicken legs (a detail borrowed from Baba Yaga’s traditional Slavic mythos), a white-haired woman with glowing red eyes and more unnecessary facial band-aids than your average turn of the millennium rapper (Baba Yaga herself, re-styled from hag into semi-attractive exhibitionist comic book villainess), a trio of color-coded evil knights (which have nothing to do with either the knights of the round table or the evil knight from Sela’s dream sequences, but are instead a way of incorporating the Slavic myth of Ivan and the three Baba Yaga sisters into the issue), and a woman dressed in Sela’s Snow White costume with reddish-brown hair and no glasses whom—it is easy to assume, based on the series’ inconsistent art styles—might be a young Sela or Belinda.
But were this true, it would have introduced any number of inconsistencies and questions, such as why Sela has the wrong color hair, and why this is supposed to be an origin story for Sela when she already has the book. Fortunately, this once upon a time has nothing to do with Sela.
At least, not yet.
We learn several pages in that the woman on the run from Baba Yaga and her knights is named Allexa (the guardian of the Nexus prior to Sela, not to be confused with one of the voices of the Amazon Echo), and that Asian Stereotype Man’s name is actually Shang (which doesn’t really help with the “Asian Stereotype” stigma).
Baba Yaga, having escaped imprisonment by Shang some undefined span of time ago, hits Allexa with an aging blast, which explains why she is old when Sela meets her in the Legacy short story moments later.
In the present day, Baba Yaga forms a partnership of revenge with Belinda, the implications of which I will touch on in Volume 8. Another awesome, unconventional issue from Zenescope. I just wish they had gone back and reread the Legacy short so they knew not to draw Sela as a grown woman with glasses yet.
Don't draw me with glasses yet, either, because I have a two-week wait ahead of me. For those two weeks, Stay Tuned for a pair of Zenescope - Omnibusted posts (Volume Seven and Inferno). Tomorrow, Michelle Williams plays Marylin Monroe in this week's TBT 2023 push, and Friday, it's the public domain slasher that none of you have been waiting for in Just the Ticket #124: Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey. Until then, please remember to like, comment, subscribe, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news and updates on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Not the Boogeyman,
Not the droopy-breasted witch you send to kill the Boogeyman,
Out.
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