GFT Retrospective #47: The Last Unicorn

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
The Last Blogger?

I wrote the introduction to this review (and the review itself) several years ago, when Donald Trump was in his early presidency, and I was still commuting to work at Subway, maxing out and shuffling my credit cards to fill my soul with nothingness, bootlegging digital paperbacks together in PhotoShop, and writing reviews of their content as I went along. I have since given up on the compilation effort for various reasons, but at the time, I was feeling maddened because I had just finished that whole process on three Wonderland TPBs in a row. You can find them all in a past issue of Zenescope - Omnibusted.

Before we get into what I followed that up with, please remember to like and comment down below, subscribe to my blog, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news on my content.

Trade Volume #1.8

It feels good to finally be done with Wonderland for the time being. Although the franchise has had some cool moments so far, there’s something about compiling, editing, reading, and writing about three Wonderland Volumes (House Of Liddle, Tales Volume 2, and Escape) back-to-back-to-back that makes me feel as if I have been drug through the realm of madness and dreams myself, stripped of all sanity, and spat out as some manic, figurative language-spewing caricature of who I was before.
But now, with the surviving Wonderland entities clawing, waving, and grinning at me from beyond my rearview looking glass, I endeavor to put one ending behind me and begin the countdown to another new beginning: the fiftieth issue milestone of Grimm Fairy Tales. Of course, it’s only fitting that some loose ends come to their rightful resolutions along the way, starting with the following issue….

GFT #43: The Last Unicorn

Two things you’ll notice right away: based solely on the title, we know that this ties in to both The Gift short story and the Nutcracker Christmas Special (which happen before and after this issue, respectively), and based on the first page, this explains where Sela and Belinda ended up after Sela got Shang’s dreamcatcher at the end of the Vegas Annual. That’s right: New York City again! And it’s still because comic books! What becomes of Sela and Belinda immediately following this resolute flashback is not yet known (except that Shang’s dreamcatcher probably had something to do with Sela’s dream sequences in the Little Miss Muffet issues, and probably Rip Van Winkle and the Nutcracker, too, like maybe it gave her the ability to become an active participant in her dreams), as it serves as a lead-in to why Sela is once again drawn to New York in the present day.

As it turns out, a local drunk has called the police to report a unicorn loose in Central Park. When Sela gets there, Shang is waiting for her, with his usual “you’re the hero but I can’t explain anything to you so just do as I say because the world might end right…about…now” dialogue. Why Sela keeps referring to him as her mentor in later issues makes my brain shit itself. I mean, Shang mentored Sela for about as long as my college game programming professor spent teaching us how to program games. Spoilers for a fifteen-year-old grudge: she taught her classes offscreen, and if it happened offscreen, it didn't happen at all.

And just to drive home the point, no sooner does Shang open his Fu Manchu-covered mouth than Belinda and Baba Yaga show up to kill the unicorn. By the way, it’s the only living unicorn, it’s about to celebrate its hundredth birthday, and unicorn horns are magic, so if they kill it, they get teleported to the bottom of the Pit stage to fight Reptile or something. But seriously, evil magic people plus dead unicorn equals bad stuff happening. So because the plot demands it, Belinda runs off to chase Sela and the unicorn, leaving Shang to fight Baba Yaga. Of course, Shang has a score to settle after the events of GFT #42, and Sela and Belinda hate each other, so you can probably guess what that means for the rainbow-farting fifth wheel in all of this. While our distracted heroes are fighting out their vindictive feelings, Fenton and a small army of goblins kill the unicorn, unleashing a big, shiny energy trope into the sky because that’s what all the movie villains were doing at the time. Also, Belinda is actually over two thousand years old; just an interesting factoid I thought I’d throw in there because it makes the continuity of her character easier to understand. I wonder again what the real significance of the book is anymore. It’s supposed to be the most important thing the villains are after so they can invade Earth, and yet Sela throws it aside after summoning her sword to fight Belinda. I guess this could be an intentional illustration of how all-consuming revenge can be, since the issue boils down to one of those “we may have lost, but you spared your greatest enemy and learned you’re not evil, so you actually won” morals. I like how the structure of The Last Unicorn places Sela in the pupil role after several issues of developing her vengeful side, but the cheese factor of the moral itself is too juvenile for the series’ intended audience. 

I forgot to look this up or mention it when I originally wrote this review, but this issue was based on The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which was adapted into a 1982 animated musical film featuring the voices of the late Christopher Lee (a legendary villain actor, including Hammer-era Dracula, Saruman, and Count Dooku among his roles), Jeff Bridges, and Mia Farrow as the titular unicorn. The comic is obviously more condensed and action-focused than either the novel or its feature-length film adaptation, stripping away the personality of the unicorn (or perhaps putting a bit of it into Sela's character?) and reducing it to a mere MacGuffin animal. Fenton and the Dark One fill the King Haggard role (voiced by Lee in the film), and Shang is appropriately assigned the "bumbling wizard" role held by Schmendrick (Bridges) in the source material. I don't know if it was intentional, but I love the dig at Shang either way. Zenescope will try to make him cool again further down the line, but in general, he sucks as a "mentor" and a "guardian."

Next time, Fenton gets a backstory. Yay.

Ticketmaster,

Yay!