Zenescope - Omnibusted #12: Grimm Fairy Tales TPB Volume 7

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

to Omni or Bust!

I want to get this done before midnight, so I have no clever segue into today's content. Except maybe something about my brain turning into a pumpkin and there being a Halloween/Christmas combo at the end of the recap.

Also, this post has nothing to do with dragons. Just thought I'd mention that....

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GFT #37: Little Miss Muffet Part 2

Like the original Little Miss Muffet issue, this one is another morality lesson head trip, wherein Offensive Asian Stereotype Man and Sela have yet another conversation about her powers and her purpose in the world (worlds?). It takes place prior to The Ugly Duckling Part 2, which ended with Sela’s first official return to action following her death and resurrection.
It opens with Sela in her Snow White coffin (which I just realized is made of the same freezing curse Samantha would have been trapped in had Sela not traded places with her at the end of Snow White & Rose Red), getting kissed awake by a man she refers to as Robert. But the art style here is so bright and simple in contrast with Timepiece that brand recognition fails once again, beyond the use of familiar names. This version of Robert is part of a dream, of course, but he’s dressed in a fairy tale period costume, which had me revisiting the Timepiece short story and thinking about a few things.
Sela and Robert’s first encounter might not have been their first, after all. When they hold hands over the timepiece, the artist makes it look as if the watch—along with Sela and Robert—is glowing. Robert then expresses a feeling of having met her before, which, in the context of him kissing Sela awake in this issue, makes Belinda’s scheme in Timepiece that much more evil.

Consider, as I have, that this portion of Sela’s dream was based, as dreams can be, on a repressed memory. Consider also, that Sela’s reference to her dream in the Rip Van Winkle issue isn’t just to recall the relevance of Asian Stereotype Man here, but to draw the completely plausible conclusion that Robert is (or rather, was) Rip Van Winkle. That would mean that part of that dream was also based on a repressed memory of Sela’s: that of the first time she fell in love with Robert “Rip” Van Winkle (who possessed a limited degree of immortality either by virtue of being born of another realm, or by his then-constant proximity to Sela) and had to put her personal life behind her to answer the call to duty. Enter the Timepiece short countless years later, when Belinda gives Robert the now seemingly enchanted timepiece, which activates when both he and Sela touch it, not only partially jump-starting his past memories of her, but transferring the bulk of his immortality to her already impressive accumulation of years so that she can watch the man she didn’t remember having loved before grow old and die.

Mind blown yet?
Good, because it’s origin story time!

Once upon a time (as these things tend to begin), long before Snow White fell in love with Vanilla Ice (his real name is Robert Van Winkle; look it up), five realms were created. Who did the creating is something that will get its own event series down the line, but for now, what matters is what the realms are and what they have to do with Sela’s powers. Myst, the realm of magic, is where Sela’s book originally came from. Neverland, the realm of wonder and imagination (confusing, considering that Wonderland is the realm of dreams, but that’s coming up next) is the “third realm” mentioned in the Pawns short story, and is associated with such familiar names as Captain Hook, Wendy, Mary, and Daniel Darling (the latter two of whom were the mother and son who stowed away on the Titanic in the 2008 Annual), and an image featuring the Jolly Roger, a crocodile, and a mermaid hint at a possible connection to The Little Mermaid. Wonderland, we have already seen in three different volumes, so the only image we get in this issue is of a generic jungle, hinting that it might be the setting of the Jungle Book trilogy that is to come. Oz is identified as the realm of virtue and hope, which makes sense, and is associated with characters we have seen, but have yet to be identified (the dark-armored knight first shown in Pawns, for one). Like Wonderland, Neverland and Jungle Book, Oz has its own series, which I will get to in time. At the center of everything (because that’s just how these origin myths go) is Earth, the Nexus realm. Typical elements of creation myths progress the story forward, such as divisions between humanity and the god-like, immortals struggling for power and control, and the inevitable degeneration of mortal society in the name of progress. We get properly introduced to The Dark One—the Grimm Universe’s Satan figure—for the first time (I've mentioned him before, but this is the first time we get an actual image of his full, non-human character design), and find out that he is responsible for driving Wonderland to madness, conquering Neverland by proxy, and keeping Myst in a constant state of war. At the time of this issue, Oz had not yet fallen, but we’ll get to the temporal inconsistencies of that when we get to them. Enter another brief commentary on how the conflicts in the other four realms are causing our world to suck more and more each day (take it as an allegory for the xenophobia-based human desire for warfare), and we get back to why Sela is Sela. Turns out she’s the only fully human guardian of the Nexus to have ever existed, and Belinda, though a similar kind of character for the evil side, is half human, half Mystic. A narrow panel depicting Orcus (the Orc King from The Gift short story) with a baby is unclear in its meaning. It could be a reference to the Grimm Fairy Tales Giant Size #1, or it could suggest that Orcus is secretly Belinda’s father. Whether one or both are true, it makes for some awesome potential.

This issue would have been more awesome—or awesome, period, to be honest—if Asian Stereotype Man hadn’t just basically told Sela that “you got your powers because the old guardian of the Nexus was about to die, and I’m exposition-dumping on you now because you almost died and the world is going to end in, like, five, four, three, two,…. And BT-Dubs, no pressure. Now go get ‘em!” These kinds of issues have never been my favorites in the series, but this one was slightly more necessary, I guess.

GFT #38: The Lion And the Mouse

This issue tells the story of Michael Lyons, a wannabe street thug who is taken in by fight promoter Dan Roden (yeah, Zenescope is still doing their on-the-nose naming convention thing) and grows into a promising mixed martial arts fighter. On the biggest night of his career, Lyons is still recovering from a shoulder injury and is about to abandon his mentor to the mercy—or lack thereof—of a group of mobsters to whom Roden owes money.

Enter Sela, posing as the new ring card girl, who does her “oops! I dropped my book, now I’m Batman” act, with the book magically opening to (or manifesting as) The Lion And the Mouse.

The original was one of Aesop’s fables, not one of the Grimm Brothers’ animal tales, and told of a mouse whose life was spared by a lion, and later returned the favor by freeing the lion from a hunter’s net. Other versions have the mouse removing a thorn from the lion’s paw (adapted here as Michael Lyons’ shoulder injury), which is in turn taken from the Greek classical tale of Androcles. The version in Sela’s book is very similar to Aesop’s, but for some reason is more contemporary than other Grimm Fairy Tales tellings.

The hunter in this version intends to sell the lion, named Uche, to the San Diego Zoo when the mouse comes along and frees him from an animal cage. Later, Uche (who is now drawn to look like Scar for some reason) gets the opportunity to rescue the mouse from three other lions. The outcome is unclear, but the message is not.

A short and brutal fight between Lyons and his opponent ends on a happy note for once, but it also ends with a pun about Lyons sacrificing his *pride* for friendship, so I call it a wash. Predictable GFT fare with average art and well-depicted action, plus it’s good to see Sela back, even if only for a brief time.

GFT #39: The Scorpion And the Frog

You probably know this one. The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across a pond or stream and, despite being wary of the scorpion’s nature, the frog believes its promise to not sting it, lest they both drown, and gives the scorpion a ride. Of course, the scorpion stings the frog, and as they both drown, the frog asks why, with the scorpion replying, “it’s my nature.”

Another animal tale like The Lion and the Mouse, this one is more recent (1954) and, though it shares common themes with far older tales from a variety of regions and cultures, its true origin is hard to pin down. Thus, it is yet another entry in the series that does not originate from the Grimm Brothers’ collection. The framing device centers on Diana and Janine, two women who were once friends until Janine broke Diana’s trust one time too many. Janine attempts to reconnect with her ex-BFF one day, having dumped her junkie boyfriend, Eric (the name of at least two other boyfriends of dubious character in previous issues. Unoriginal naming again, or could all of these Erics actually be the same person? Dark Horde conspiracy, anyone?) and started up a sitting business—both the baby- and house- varieties. An extra level is added to the narrative this time as Sela, fresh off her magical journey through This Is Your Life! in issue 37, is pondering her own frog/scorpion relationship with Belinda. We’ve seen Sela mourn her charges after the fact many times already, but thanks to Belinda mind-wiping her, she always comes into the next issue fresh-minded and usually unbiased—besides what basic morality dictates, that is. This is the first time we’ve seen Sela answer her calling with baggage, and it makes the usual GFT by-the-numbers plotting that follows much more interesting. I enjoyed the simple presentation of the tale, which allowed more pagetime for Sela’s character development in flashback (one which features an enchanted Death’s head Timepiece that Belinda supposedly used to erase Sela’s memories several times). I don’t think the tale itself holds up in today’s ever-changing world, what with the nurture-void moral that animal nature rules and ruins all. Then again, we did have a knee-jerk-prone…jerk of a man in the White House a few years back, so who am I to say that this scorpion/frog business is a load of crap? Whatever your opinion may be on the matter, this is one of the best constructed GFT issues in recent memory.

GFT #40: The Goose And the Golden Egg

Meet Jillian “Jillybeans” Howard and her father, Manus “Daddy” Howard. He’s rich beyond human understanding, and she’s…blonde of hair and mind, stereotypically objectifiable-looking, and spoiled beyond human tolerance. These past couple of issues, I have grown to miss the name-punnery that Zenescope has been known to get up to on a frequent basis. I don’t immediately see any name derivations that tie to the fairy tale, other than a possible reference to Howard the Duck or the fighting game character Geese Howard, but that might be a stretch, so let’s get back to how unlikable Jillian is. She’s so unlikable that the story opens with her potentially being abandoned at sea by an as-yet-unidentified woman (Belinda, most likely, although with the way Jillian treats her, I wouldn’t put it past Sela, either), Open Water-style. She spends her time—and money from her father’s “Mariken XPriss” card (because Zenescope couldn’t afford credit card royalties this early on)—buying expensive cars and alcohol so she can use the latter to crash the former through a school bus and land herself and her best friend in the hospital. Which means it’s time once again for Sela “Seely” “Selba” Mathers—what’s with all the characters’ nicknames?—retaining her vindictive, disappointed tone from last issue, to present us with a tale about an old couple who come into possession of the titular goose and eventually get so greedy for its titular eggs that they disembowel the goose in search of gold and ruin their lives forever. I guess it’s somewhere between “money is the root of all evil” and “money doesn’t buy happiness” where morals are concerned, but I was more interested in the apparent connection to Jack And the Beanstalk. Among the giant’s possessions are a singing harp and a goose that lays golden eggs. Perhaps (because animals are smarter than us) after being stolen from the giant by Jack, the goose fled before the giant’s fall and survived to later encounter the elderly couple in this tale. And of course, there is the shared moral warning against greed and instant gratification. But as Goose is one of Aesop’s fables and Beanstalk is a 1700’s English fairy tale (and neither one a true Grimm Fairy Tale), it’s more likely that the author of Jack And the Beanstalk included the allusion to the Goose fable based on their shared message than with any kind of Extended Fairy Tale Literary Universe plan in mind. By the way, if you’re reading this in an era where time travel and human immortality have been made possible, don’t give Kevin Feige access to a time machine. Anyway, Jillian is unfathomably unlikable and so stupidly stupid that the exponent on her stupidity should be a variable approaching infinity. For those among you that don’t understand math, that means she’s Donald Trump with boobs. 

*Pictures Donald Trump with boobs, getting himself drunk and groping himself, and throws up*

then *realizes he could have just written that as “Pictures Donald Trump and throws up” and had it sounding far less weird*

So basically, Jillian “Donald Trump With Boobs” Howard learns nothing, forcing Sela to go directly to the goose, Manus Howard himself. With her supply of credit card-shaped golden eggs cut off, Jillian ends up “stealing away” to Australia (spoilers! And puns!), where she indeed meets an Open Water ending. The twist regarding who the focus character really was felt refreshing, and Belinda’s parting line of “you’re mine now” hinted at something that could have been potentially awesome, with Jillian (hateworthy though she was) serving as one of the Dark One’s financial consultants in Hell, or something. But all it ever amounts to in the series at large is a cool ending line for Belinda. Traditional Grimm Fairy Tales stuff for the most part. But Zenescope really killed that golden goose of a line, and Jillian as a character drug the issue, kicking and screaming, into the bloody depths of suck.

GFT #41: Dante’s Inferno (Prelude)

Now, we get back to something awesome. Not in terms of subject matter—I can’t think of any sane person who would describe child murder and suicide as “awesome”—but in terms of character development and structural originality in a Grimm Fairy Tales issue. Plus, just look at that cover art!

Back in Grimm Fairy Tales #29: King Midas, we learned that Belinda not only bestowed King Midas with the golden curse that ultimately killed him and his daughter, but that she was responsible for turning David Franks into the hitman who killed Mercy Dante’s parents. As a result, Mercy would grow up to be an assassin herself, bent on revenge against David Franks and aided, in part and unbeknownst to her, by Belinda. Mercy’s revenge came at the end of the issue when she kidnapped and then murdered David’s daughter, Trisha, in front of him. The Dante’s Inferno (Prelude) issue picks up seven months later, with Mercy still a hit for hire, haunted by the ghost of Trisha Franks and flirting with her suicidal tendencies in between indulging in more homicidal activities. But before she has a chance to self-destruct, Mercy is forced to fend off a series of attempts on her life, orchestrated by her contractor on behalf of…can you guess? That’s right, it’s her again! And guess who’s there to use her words to magically fix life? That’s right, it’s Sela again! I know I said something earlier about the issue being original, and this predictable turn of events doesn’t really illustrate that very well. But it is otherwise among the Zenescope team’s best work, with clearly defined action, a solid art style, witty writing, good pacing, and in the absence of a fairy tale reading (that’s the structural originality I was talking about), there is plenty of page time to make this an issue about character development and relationships. All that notwithstanding, Sela sending Mercy back in time and convincing her to commit suicide is not only completely out of character, it’s wrong on multiple levels as a concept. I get that Sela came back to life with a new perspective on the world and her powers (which might explain why none of her charges has deja vu or has felt like they’ve been sucked into the book for some time now), and a more aggressive, active approach to her calling, and that because of all this, she’s been written into some kind of personal feud with Death. But still, why would the hero of any story convince anyone to commit suicide? For the answer to that, you’ll have to wait for the next Zenescope - Omnibusted.

GFT #42: Baba Yaga

I'm sorry, but one more interruption to get some memes out of the way:

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.

Omnibuster's Update: Speaking of glasses, I got my new pair this week, and here's how I look:

Also, this Volume has a Short Story at the end, like they all do, but one of the characters in it is a spoiler, and it references events that won't happen until Volume 8, so I'm holding off posting that review for later. Instead, because we know who Baba Yaga is now, here are the Halloween and Christmas Specials (a "two-parter") from 2009:

GFT Halloween #1 (2009): The Monkey’s Paw

Taking place some time after the Baba Yaga issue, this first Halloween special opens on three trick-or-treaters (Sammy the ghost, Foster the purple cow, and an unnamed girl dressed as a princess) who stop at Belinda’s house--who is dressed like a slutty witch because Zenescope and obviously--so Foster can return Belinda’s book, presumably after having read Baba Yaga in that issue. While Belinda reads the kids a scary story from said book, Baba Yaga is lurking elsewhere in the house, magicking up a way to trick the trio into becoming her treats.

The story-within-a-story this time follows the path of destruction of The Monkey’s Paw, a cursed artifact (from India, according to the original short story by W.W. Jacobs) that grants three twisted wishes to anyone foolish enough to say “I wish” while holding the literally damned thing. The first use of the paw follows fairly closely to the original story, with Zenescope’s much darker outcome being the death of a family of three. Posing as the patriarch’s niece, Belinda passes the paw onto Sal, a morgue attendant with a crush on co-worker Cindy Monroe (which is also the name of the girl in the Cinderella issue, although they are clearly not the same person). Sal uses the paw to facilitate his relationship with Cindy, resulting in the deaths of Cindy’s boyfriend, parents (this death is also adapted from the Jacobs story), and Sal himself, with Cindy taking possession of the paw at the end.

Choosing to spread fear and chaos instead of eating the kids, Baba Yaga creates a monkey’s paw of her own and slips it to Foster as the children run off, psychologically scarred for life. If you remember the 2007 Annual, Belinda has that effect on young children (when they’re not already budding sociopaths, that is).

Days later, Zenescope shoehorns in an advertisement for their new Wonderland board game while Foster and his parents are Christmas shopping, and he quite possibly wishes them dead, accompanied by the most festive-looking THE END? I have ever seen. The Monkey’s Paw uses its extra pages to perfectly blend horror, humor, drama, and general character with the usual Grimm Fairy Tales pacing in a way that continues the overall narrative of the series in some ways while potentially serving as a launch point for new readers. The art style, while not great with regards to brand recognition here and there, fits well with the tone of the stories being told. My only real gripe is with the bluntness of the product placement, but it isn’t such a detriment to the issue that I’d spend any more time criticizing it than what little I already have.

GFT Holiday Edition #1 (2009): The Nutcracker

First criticism of this issue (not counting the glaring political correctness of Zenescope refusing to chestnut up and call it the Christmas Edition) is that it doesn’t follow directly from the 2009 Halloween Edition as advertised. Granted, the series is still finding its legs and trying to build to its first big something-or-other, and even well-established brands like Marvel tend to drop potentially interesting storylines more often than a grease monkey with a handful of Butterfingers, but it makes no sense to spend an entire page on product placement and then advertise something--in this case, the intention of continuing a plot thread--on the next that isn’t delivered on. Not to mix metaphors here, but that’s Mighty No.9-ing the golden goose, people. To be fair, said advertisement ended with a question mark. But that’s so much of a cop-out that it empties an entire police station. Okay, enough with the obscure figurative language. On to the plot of the 2009 Christmas Edition. Sela is feeling the emotional fallout of events we have yet to cover in Retrospective continuity thus far, and seeks escapism among the muggles at a college faculty party on the most commercial and escapist night of the year. That’s right, Christmas. Not Holiday--although it is technically a holy day--literal Mary-fucking Christmas. Celebrate the fact that it’s a Christian holiday. Even if you don’t believe or agree with any varying percentage of what any number of translations of the Bible say about Jesus, be glad he’s a prominent symbol of western religion. If some god from another religion did the immaculate conception with Mary, Jesus could have been a minotaur or a drunken goat-man or a suicide bomber instead of a cute baby-turned-carpenter-turned-magic hippie with terrible taste in friends-turned-possible zombie. I’m getting off track and definitely being sacreligious here, but I don’t care because I’m trying to make a point, and that point is to not be ashamed or feel societal pressure to act ashamed of saying “Merry Christmas!” if it’s in your heart to let those two uplifting words out of your mouth. It isn’t about forcing religion onto other people, it’s about having the pride and joy and comfort to spread the spirit of the season. Speaking of which, don’t get me started on “Season’s Greetings!” It not only devalues the spirit of Christmas, it devalues the inherent seasonality of Spring, Summer, and Fall, and that’s all I’m going to say on the subject. And speaking of the subject and greetings, Sela is greeted by Emma, a woman she has apparently known for years (but only appears in this one issue) and who has hosted the faculty Christmas party for just as long (but this is the first Christmas issue, so Emma’s just some inconsequential rando concocted as a one-off demonstration of how easily Sela makes friends, even though Sela seemingly has no time for anything but reading her book to people, even when she’s teaching History or English or Biology or kindergarten or…). Enter David Rader, the creepy but charming new Anthropology professor, and it’s “Robert who?” for Sela almost immediately. Of course, this wouldn’t be a Grimm Fairy Tales issue if someone wasn’t plotting some kind of world-shaping evil scheme against Sela, so nine pages, a few too many cups of drugged punch, a gift of mysterious origin, and a partridge in a pear tree later, Sela wakes up (or something) in the woods somewhere, dressed in her Snow White costume, and on the run from an army of giant, demon rats. The mysteriously gifted nutcracker falls out of the purse Sela is still carrying out of plot convenience, and grows into Prince Erik, who saves her life. And suddenly, it’s also “David who?” To combat the rat army, Prince Erik leads Sela to a Christmas tree that is inexplicably standing unharmed despite being out in the open in front of his castle, and magically animates the nutcracker ornaments on the tree to fight for them. Again, I question the quality of heroism in such an act. Who would give life to something that previously had none, simply so that it could die fighting a war that it had no will with which to understand? Oh, right. Comic book characters. So, while the toy soldiers die around them, Sela and Erik do battle with the two-headed rat king, ultimately defeating him and reverting his army into normal rats. At one point, Sela blasts the rat king with magic energy to save Erik, claiming afterward that she had never done anything like that before. But we know that’s crap (and if Zenescope would read their own material some time, they’d know it was crap, too, because Sela did it back in Snow White and Rose Red, when she was blasting apart Belinda’s ice palace). Apparently, over the centuries of Sela’s life, the book had been passing its energy into her, and plot convenience has made it a thing that suddenly happened now. Speaking of incongruities and things that suddenly happen, Erik tells Sela he has something beautiful to show her, and the next panel shows a bunch of dwarves, centaurs, and other mythical creatures standing around a huge bonfire…that is lit on top of a ring of naked women. Thankfully, that was just a consequence of the art style. What we’re really looking at here is a ring of scantily clad women dressed--barely--as fairies, dancing in celebration of what remains of a dying race. When the “moment” is over, Sela wakes up for real, providing satirical commentary on the surreal stupidity of GFT dream sequence issues, and finds out something that I will not spoil for you, other than to say that David “They Should Have Just Called Me Indiana Jones” Rader was hired by the dean of Sela’s university, and was also the guy who kept bringing her the cursed punch all night. Draw your own conclusions. Believe it or not, this ludicrous fruitcake cluster of an issue is actually canon, and has actual bearing on future events in the series, one of which is pretty damned awesome as Grimm Fairy Tales events go. The next hinted-at event has something to do with a blonde who is either the original Cindy Monroe or Samantha Darren, and won’t take place until GFT #45. The art style of this issue is something that looks like it was outlined during an epileptic seizure, but colored by someone who knew what the hell they were doing, and it more than adequately captures the emotions and facial expressions of all assembled, even when the “story” devolves into a Broadway production of Tchaikovsky’s Evil Dead 3: Army Of Darkness.

I wrote these reviews several years ago, so it's a total cosmic (or quantum, or psychic, or computer simulation, or whatever theory you believe in; I'm not going to judge...here) coincidence that I ended with an Evil Dead reference and there's a new Evil Dead movie out right now. I'm tired, and this is my Boomstick

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