GFT Retrospective #56: Swimsuit Edition 2010

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. the Swimsuit In My Dresser Edition.

Yeah, as someone with impulse control issues who may soon hurt himself trying to push forty (but has had the same pair of swimming trunks in his dresser drawer since he was running multiple miles and swimming hundreds of yards while staring down twenty), I am no longer in possession of a "swimsuit bod." I'm happy if I can sweat out five pounds while mowing the lawn.

But we're not supposed to "fat shame" or objectify the human body anymore (how do those two things coexist with any measure of sense, by the way? It's like that Tony Stark meme where he says "don't do anything I wouldn't do, and don't do anything I would do." Where's the middle? Where's the creme filling? Where's the beef? And why do I keep reminding myself of things I can't eat anymore?), so let's focus on numbers that we like to see go up. As in, please remember to like and comment down below, Become A Ticketholder if you aren't already, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter for the latest news on my content.

GFT Swimsuit Edition #1 (2010): Pool Party At the Rock Hard Hotel

The Swimsuit issue is a double-edged sword (a weapon with which many characters in the Grimm Fairy Tales series are familiar as of late). It is widely considered the best Sports Illustrated entry of the year, while often being rated as the worst source of content in any comic book series ever printed. 

Criticized as shallow, unnecessary, and existing for the sole purpose of providing fan service and eye candy for the young, dumb, and full of *ahem* crowd, the comic book Swimsuit issue is typically a feast for the eyes, but a low-calorie snack for the brain. That is also true in the case of the Grimm Fairy Tales 2010 Swimsuit Edition, appropriated into the Grimm Fairy Tales Volume 8 Trade Paperback as its short story.

But because this is to be expected from Zenescope, I’ll not be as harsh a critic from here on. The swimsuit art (cut from the paperback version to avoid redundancy and confusion with the trade’s cover gallery, and to make people spend more money on redundant story content by purchasing the Swimsuit Edition separately because avoiding redundancy while being redundant makes so much sense) is as tasteful as fairy tale comic book masturbation material can get, and in many cases can rightly be called art for its lighting, mood, and atmosphere. Some are just re-captioned art prints of previous Zenescope covers, chosen here because the characters in them are wearing swimsuits of various stages of completeness, but most are original pieces created especially for the Swimsuit Edition, and these latter are the best of the bunch.

The story itself, titled “Pool Party At the Rock Hard Hotel” because Zenescope’s fifth-year money still wasn’t good enough to afford licensing fees for the actual Hard Rock Hotel name (perhaps because they symbolically murdered Criss Angel and David Copperfield the last time they set a special issue in Las Vegas), is another Sela/Belinda outing, with Belinda yet again trying to convince Sela that humans are selfish and evil by nature, and so easily manipulated that they deserve everything that’s coming to them. That’s easy enough to prove in a city where porn, drugs, gambling, and getting married by a professional Donald Trump impersonator are the orders of the day. But look almost anywhere else in the country and you’ll find more than enough people willing to stand up for right (though since I originally wrote this review, "right" has become more of a fringe-subjective concept, and Belinda is looking more and more objectively right as the years go by, which is a sad, disturbing thought to have).

And just when Belinda is about to finish making her thin, obvious, Saturday morning cartoon villain argument, a crew of incompetent demolition workers (or were they only paid to look incompetent?) screw up an implosion, causing a building to topple over sideways, trapping many of the so-called selfish, self-destructive, future pawns of evil beneath the rubble. As in the aftermath of 9/11, survivors and distant observers come together to rescue the trapped and injured. One man lifts a sizable chunk of rubble by himself to free the woman beneath it, hinting that he might be a Falseblood--or simply an avid steroid user running on adrenaline. Whatever the case, Sela stays behind to help the relief effort, while Belinda claims to be bored of “the sheep” (a term now more commonly used by the aforementioned fringe right-fighter crowd) and walks off to whatever act of malice is next on her checklist.

This story builds upon the early Sela/Belinda dynamic, and shows off Zenescope’s inspirational side, but doesn’t really offer anything new or deep as far as lore goes.

An Omnibusted compilation of Volume 8 is forthcoming, but I decided not to wait to do the GFT/Sinbad Crossover trilogy, so that will be it's own Omnibusted review (freshly written!) before being folded into the Volume 8 post. Until then, Stay Tuned and remember to like and comment down below, Become A Ticketholder if you aren't already, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter for the latest news on my content.

Also, here's a joke for the road:

Which artists tell the worst jokes? 

The Dada Impressionists.

Retrospective,
Meta
Dad Bod,
Out.