GFT Retrospective #54: Grimm Fairy Tales #49

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

Untitled?

I've said many times in the past week or two that the issue up for review in today's Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective has no title (and I'll say it once more at the beginning of the review because repeating myself is one of my favorite things, especially if I can use Copy & Paste to make it easier...). Case in point, I can easily go to another post and copy the call to action that reminds you to please like and comment down below, subscribe to my blog, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, and Facebook for the latest news on more content like this:

GFT #49

This is Grimm Fairy Tales’ first untitled issue, partly because there is no accompanying fairy tale for it. It does begin with “Once upon a time,” as we have come to believe all fairy tales start, though in most cases, a simple “Once” is commencement enough.

This particular “Once upon a time” leads in to some exposition, most of which is slight elaboration on information given to us in Sela’s dream sequence issues. The most interesting bit of this world-building regards world-building in a literal sense: how fairies (like council member Nissa--the current Tinkerbell of the Grimm Universe), inter-realm portals (like the energy vortex behind Henry Allen’s basement wall, perhaps), and the five realms themselves were all formed from the same energy. It’s a nice, unifying principle that subtly sets up future events (chiefly the Unleashed crossover, which is several Volumes coming in the Retrospective). But it also falls into the same pattern of flawed logic as Wonderland getting stronger by assimilating and/or murdering people whose dream energy makes the realm exist to begin with. Apparently, fairies are the only Mystical creatures--the only creatures in any of the realms--who can open the portals between the four realms and the Nexus, and the Dark One (who wants more than anything to open the floodgates and invade the Nexus from all sides) is making it his personal mission to cause fairy genocide. See what I mean about these villainous plans not making any sense?

Well, just before we can start complaining about how the exposition is nonsense, Prince Erik shows up (you know, the puppetmaster nutcracker prince from that WTF Christmas special, whom Sela decided she wanted to make babies with after five seconds of uncharacteristic, swooning damseltry?) to come to the rescue by retconning the previous six pages of exposition with…more exposition, including a splash page of Bebop and Rocksteady guarding the One Basket of All Eggs. I joke, but seriously, there is a MacGuffin called the Casket of Provenance, comprised of plot convenience and every remaining ounce of portal energy left in the four realms, and it is being guarded by two people, one of whom is an anthropomorphic rhinoceros, so that’s how I came up with--and promptly ruined--that particular piece of low-hanging wit.

We also finally get an explanation for why Sela can so freely lend out her book--even to her enemies--or toss it aside in the midst of battle. It’s bound (book puns!) to her SOOULLLL! Also, her book has Provenance energy in it, which explains why she can send people into fairy tales and summon creatures and weapons from it, but not why the Dark One couldn’t just use Belinda for his invasion.

We learn that after inheriting the book from Allexa, Sela was put in stasis in a world between realms--perhaps the same world Samantha journeyed through in the last issue?--while it bonded with her. At one time, there were other Provenance relics, including a ring, a staff, and what might be Samantha’s wand--although only the handle is visible. Good, subtle knot-tying and cause for speculation, but also information that could be retconned or forgotten by anyone at any time as the story requires or the writing staff changes, so hold it in awe, but not for very long.

Next, we get introduced to the rest of the Council Of the Realms: Thane (the Cowardly Lion’s badass older brother), Blake the knight (one of the only sane Wonderland characters, who will feature prominently in a couple of cool miniseries and standalone issues in the distant future), and Hakan (a tribal native from Neverland).

Again overwhelmed by information, responsibility (as the deciding vote on whether or not to destroy the Casket like Blake suggested--by the way, I like that the guy from Wonderland is the only one talking sense in this issue), and being a female comic book character, Sela decides to engage in some plot-convenient procrastination that leads to more cheesy swooning and romantic time with Erik, more time-inconsistent detail-cramming and memory wipe nonsense, and Sela waking up with the sudden returned memory that she and Erik had a child (see Rumpelstiltskin for early hints at this), just in time to find that an unexpected enemy has emerged from the Council’s ranks to murder Bebop and Rocksteady and claim the Casket for the Dark Horde.

Awesome twist ending leading into the big milestone issue, but otherwise it’s another exposition dump, with emphasis on the dump.

To be continued next week, with a title. Stay Tuned for tomorrow's TBT 2023 on bad nautical movies, and on Friday, my bakery manager recommended that I watch Transformers: Rise Of the Beasts, so I wrote a Just the Ticket review of it.

Untitledmaster,

Out.