GFT Retrospective #58: The White Knight
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
Writer Troy Brownfield, along with the art team of Tommy Patterson, Jeff Balke, Alex Owens, and Jason Embury (with lettering by Crank!) reimagine this follow-up to the classic tale of a boy who would be king and the Jesus/Julius Caesar trope (powerful leader with twelve close followers who is betrayed by his best friend) that would be his downfall. Guinevere has a child by Lancelot, whom Merlin raises to be the titular character. Leon du Lac, the future White Knight, is left to fend for himself one day when Merlin goes to meet a lady-in-waiting. He ends up fleeing through a looking glass in Merlin’s cave that takes him to Wonderland.
Now, some might say here that Zenescope is once again throwing continuity out the window (as the myths surrounding King Arthur predate Henry Allen’s experiments by half a millennium or so). However, we also know from the Snow Queen, Frog King, and Snow White issues of Grimm Fairy Tales that it’s possible for multiple looking glasses with Dream Provenance energy to exist at multiple times. Henry Allen’s mirror was the first confirmed case of this that we saw, but that doesn’t mean it was the first ever in the Grimm Universe’s history. Perhaps Merlin, too, discovered a pocket of Dream Provenance energy and learned that he could use it to turn a mirror of his own into a Wonderland portal?
But again, speculation and knowledge fall to the madness of Wonderland and Zenescope’s love/hate relationship with time and space. Leon staves off madness long enough to find a set of white armor that Merlin enchanted against the effects of Wonderland, and sets out to slay the beasts of the realm, starting with…the Queen of Hearts? I guess this supports the “time is weird” mechanic established in the Tale of Alice and Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, but it’s also just confusing nonsense.
Speaking of confusing nonsense, the White Knight is supposed to be both slaying creatures in Wonderland (which is impossible without the Ebony Blade) and returning to the Nexus to slay Wonderland beings that crossed over into his world. But neither landscape, style of dress, character behavior, nor establishing text like “Meanwhile” or “Elsewhere” indicate where anything is happening at any given time. Whatever the case, a new Queen character is introduced in this issue (the Queen of Spades), who looks like a cross between a burlesque dancer, a cigarette girl from a casino in the fifties, and a vampire.
After sending Leon on his “cleanse the realms of the impossible” mission, she conjures up a stone statue of Merlin, hinting that she was the wizard’s lady in waiting, and that things didn’t end well for him.
The one time the issue indicates which realm we’re supposed to be in, the White Knight chases a black lion through a looking glass that takes him from Wonderland back to the Nexus. We learn from this that his armor was crafted to resist the effects of Wonderland specifically, as engaging the lion in the Nexus begins to tarnish it. Having slain the lion (and slaughtered many of the survivors of its wrath after they turned on him), the now Grey Knight returns to Wonderland, a victim—so the Queen of Spades says when she welcomes him into her service—of the same fate as Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
Grey and Rusty.
That's a reference to the character being focused on in today's GFT Retrospective, as well as his RWBY re-imagining in the recent Volume Nine of that series.
Please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my content.
Tales From Wonderland Volume 3 was the last Trade Paperback that I started writing reviews for when the financial and temporal pressures of my gambling addiction, comic book collecting obsession, and "any way you can" digital trade editing and compilation project most heavily began to weigh upon my soul back in 2018.
Today's issue up for review is the last completed critical piece I had written from that five-year-old backlog of content.Please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my content.
As I have mentioned in the recent past, I have since taken steps to remedy my financial self-destruction, and I now have a subscription to ComiXology Unlimited for my current reading and reviewing needs. As of earlier this year, the ComiXology app has been discontinued and its functionality integrated with the Kindle app.
TFW #8: The White Knight
Now, some might say here that Zenescope is once again throwing continuity out the window (as the myths surrounding King Arthur predate Henry Allen’s experiments by half a millennium or so). However, we also know from the Snow Queen, Frog King, and Snow White issues of Grimm Fairy Tales that it’s possible for multiple looking glasses with Dream Provenance energy to exist at multiple times. Henry Allen’s mirror was the first confirmed case of this that we saw, but that doesn’t mean it was the first ever in the Grimm Universe’s history. Perhaps Merlin, too, discovered a pocket of Dream Provenance energy and learned that he could use it to turn a mirror of his own into a Wonderland portal?
But again, speculation and knowledge fall to the madness of Wonderland and Zenescope’s love/hate relationship with time and space. Leon staves off madness long enough to find a set of white armor that Merlin enchanted against the effects of Wonderland, and sets out to slay the beasts of the realm, starting with…the Queen of Hearts? I guess this supports the “time is weird” mechanic established in the Tale of Alice and Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, but it’s also just confusing nonsense.
Speaking of confusing nonsense, the White Knight is supposed to be both slaying creatures in Wonderland (which is impossible without the Ebony Blade) and returning to the Nexus to slay Wonderland beings that crossed over into his world. But neither landscape, style of dress, character behavior, nor establishing text like “Meanwhile” or “Elsewhere” indicate where anything is happening at any given time. Whatever the case, a new Queen character is introduced in this issue (the Queen of Spades), who looks like a cross between a burlesque dancer, a cigarette girl from a casino in the fifties, and a vampire.
The one time the issue indicates which realm we’re supposed to be in, the White Knight chases a black lion through a looking glass that takes him from Wonderland back to the Nexus. We learn from this that his armor was crafted to resist the effects of Wonderland specifically, as engaging the lion in the Nexus begins to tarnish it. Having slain the lion (and slaughtered many of the survivors of its wrath after they turned on him), the now Grey Knight returns to Wonderland, a victim—so the Queen of Spades says when she welcomes him into her service—of the same fate as Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere.
This was a cool enough story, but like the Red Knight before him, nothing ever comes of Leon the Grey beyond what we see here.
I've made significant progress in one of my classes at WGU, and I intend to devote the next several weeks to getting my coursework out of the way so that I can go all-in on content creation during the months that deserve it (like February, March, and April). The Just the Ticket List Lookback on Pulp Fiction is still a forthcoming release for this Friday, so look forward to that (Lookback, look forward, lol...), Stay Tuned, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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