GFT Retrospective #46: Las Vegas Annual

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Chronologically Confused

I have nothing clever or personal to say at the moment because there's a lot to unpack with this special issue history-wise. So just please remember to like, comment, subscribe, help out my ad revenue, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news on my content. Let's start unpacking!

When I was first reading through these comics at a marathon pace, while also trying to be a completionist, I got to issue #43 of Grimm Fairy Tales (reviewed next week), and saw that it opened with some dialogue between Sela and Belinda where they are talking about how much "fun" Las Vegas was, with a little editor's note referencing the Grimm Fairy Tales 2009 Annual. So in my completionist frenzy, I went down an internet rabbit hole (appropriate, as there was a Wonderland Annual that year) in search of the GFT 2009 Annual, only to come up with...nothing but frustration. Not only was there not a 2009 Annual, there was no Annual between 2008 and 2011 with a numbered year designation. So what was supposed to be the 2009 Annual was actually the 2010 Annual (another early Zenescope typo?), and the 2010 Annual was instead listed as the Las Vegas Annual. So the true referenced issue from #43 was the Las Vegas Annual, which takes place before #16, and was compiled in GFT Different Seasons Volume One, before the 2007 and 2008 Annuals were compiled in Different Seasons Volume Two.

GFT Annual #3 (2010): Las Vegas

Like previous Annuals, this installment does a decent job of adapting nursery rhymes to fit the Grimm Fairy Tales formula, using different artists and art styles for each segment. Its events take place prior to the first Little Miss Muffet issue, which explains why Sela is once again partnered with her nemesis, Belinda. We learn that the Dark One’s assistant is named Fenton, and that he is as slimy and creepy as any driver you might meet while hitchhiking along a trucking road in the middle of the night. It makes me laugh and shake my head how menacing the artist makes the Dark One look here (not to mention how powerful, resourceful, and formidable a villain he has been built up to be in the series up to this point), considering what a joke he gets reduced to in the near and distant future. After sending a henchman to see someone named Steiner, Fenton--even his name is slimy--takes the girls to the Sapphire Garden, which could be the name of a senior living facility, but because it’s in Vegas, it’s a strip club, where the cartoonishly drawn "Little Bo Peep" takes place. The title character is a promising dancer named Heidi who gets sent to Hell as revenge for having her former boss (who is a demon) arrested on prostitution charges and taking her place as owner and manager of the Garden. Not much else to the story, if you could call it that.

"The Gingerbread Man" is heavily shaded and barely recognizable as anything, its art style only marginally better than that of a story from the 2011 Halloween Special (which I already reviewed, but I'm not going to link to that here because I'm trying to conform to the Omnibusted order, which is a mix of chronological, publication, and TPB order). After having sex with the wife of a bookmaker known as The Fat Man, football star Mercury Mason (who could have been the Grimm Universe’s take on the Flash, and who, like the Flash, does everything fast--wink, wink) is tasked with running, running, as fast as he can, through a desert--perhaps the same desert as in the aforementioned, unmentioned story--while being pursued by the Dark Shaman (a villain who won’t be positively identified until his own miniseries much later on) and his bloodthirsty pack of wild animals on his way back to The Fat Man’s house. Mercury survives his run back to the mobster’s house, only to nearly be killed by Belinda. But true to Belinda’s nature, she renegotiated their partnership on behalf of Sophie, the mobster’s wife, and uses Sela’s book to drop the Fat Man and his goons into the clutches of the Dark Shaman. But now, Sophie owes Belinda something. From the terrible art style to the similar setting, the spotlight on Belinda’s treacherous nature, badassery, and sympathy toward the focus couple, The Gingerbread Man is an obvious spiritual predecessor of the Halloween 2011 story. And where it counts, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just wonder about this story in light of recent issues. If the Dark Horde are supposed to be struggling with Sela for possession of her book, what was this unidentified Steiner person doing with it? How was Fenton’s dreadlocked henchman able to take it from him? Why not just give the book right to the Dark One and have done with it? And how is it that Belinda can suddenly use it now? I mean, I know that the Reaper said in the 2008 Annual that he could have just taken Sela’s book from her and given it to Belinda, and that in Rapunzel, someone who could have been Belinda was using Sela’s book, but this was the first time we’d ever actually seen Belinda use Sela’s book and known it was her. Maybe the colorist just ran out of purple that day, but I’d rather be confused, intrigued, and speculative than disappointed. 

"Jack Be Nimble," true to the Las Vegas spirit of the issue in a way none of the previous stories had been, follows prominent stage magician Jack “The Freak” Angel (because it was still too early in Zenescope’s existence to pay for the name or likeness of the real Criss Angel, “Mindfreak”), who begins the story by trapping fellow magician Dane Copper in a burning car so Belinda can capture his soul and Jack can still have the power to do real magic (because symbolically murdering David Copperfield and marking his brand of magic as an artifact of a bygone era was a…good…idea??). Two years later, Jack has discovered that he didn’t get his powers from his deal with Belinda, but was born with magic, and tries to back out of the Dark Horde, even challenging Belinda. Even though she literally has a book full of magical powers, creatures, and weapons, plus her own magic, beyond-human fighting abilities, and roughly seven hundred years of life experience to draw upon, Belinda ropes Sela into helping her negate his magic on the pretense that Jack is a super-powered serial murderer (which is technically true, since he’d been collecting souls for Belinda for at least six months). And so, during a levitation walk over “The Candlestick,” Jack’s magic fails him and he burns to death.

The next day, a child gives Sela an address and a dreamcatcher from Shang, and Sela tells Belinda that there’s somewhere else she needs to go before returning home. This ties into next week's issue up for review, and has some bearing on the Little Miss Muffet and Rip Van Winkle issues because dreams (though the logistics of the dreamcatcher not being noticed by Belinda or Morrigan, Sela carrying it on her, and other "we didn't think of that McGuffin until later" retconsistencies raise more questions than they answer because those questions didn't really need to be asked or answered to begin with).

The Annual as a whole feels like a derivative slog to get through. Sure, it is the first mention--in chronological publication order--of a character other than the series main cast being born with abilities, and there is that spiritual connection to the story from the 2011 Halloween Edition, but the rest of the Las Vegas Annual is just kind of there, not doing much of anything.

Unlike me, who is trying to get a new TV programmed, finish editing this post, promote it on social media, do homework for the first time in over a month, do yard work and laundry, keep my parrot happy (I swear he knows what I'm typing because he just screamed in the other room), and think about the next two meals I'm going to eat. Inconsequential to the majority of the world, I know; but my brain swirls with these things until I fly east, fly west, and get myself committed because you know the rest.

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What happens in Ticketmaster,

Stays Out.

Stop It!

Oh, My!

That's What He Said!

Pause!

Phrasing!

What happens in Vegas,

Stays in Vegas.

Ticketmaster,

Out!