Zenescope - Omnibusted #23: The Library
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
I'll probably get to an actual new comic book at some point before I die, but today is something special. And I mean that in the way proprietary fast food sauces, markdowns on expired casseroles and oddly-sized clothing, and certain physical or educational needs are special. Reading this week's series was painful, Ticketholders. And I don't mean it hurt (which it did, very much, the first time), I mean it was paneful, like the digestion research window on a donkey's ass. Yeah; that's something scientists do. They surgically install a viewing window in the side of a farm animal so they can monitor and study the digestive systems of cows, horses, goats, donkeys..., pick a farm animal with four legs that can cause notable damage to the average automobile by itself, and there's probably a video on YouTube of this literal shit happening.
The first (and most glaring) way that this five-issue miniseries hurts to read is if it's your first time reading it this far into the Grimm Universe, with its established lore and stakes and a months-old cliffhanger rattling around in your head after Volume Nine, and you try to rationalize The Library into the Grimm Fairy Tales canon...only to find out it's "a fun, Elseworlds kind of story" years later.
But for all of the "this isn't canon, so why am I reading it?" complaining I've done and the fact that, for two issues, they've repeated the "I had a nightmare and now it's real" and "my mother's dead and now I hate my family" narration, I forgot how much of a mythology nerd's wet dream the second issue is. There isn't a whole lot of depth here in terms of story, but where else are you going to see Hercules punch bandits and a minotaur while Pecos Bill wrangles a T-Rex with a snake whip?
The third issue begins with the book being locked again so a game of keepaway can ensue between the Wicked Witch and Sela, Thomas, Pecos Bill, Hercules, and now Robin Hood (but not Robyn Hood), because the lineup isn't cool enough just yet. When the book and key fall through separate portals, Sela, Robin, and Bill follow the book into a Gothic horror novel and fight zombies, Thomas and Herc retrieve the key from a hive of giant bees and are picked up by the Nautilus, and the adults think that a library full of escaped fiction that includes a flame-throwing witch can be solved by getting to a phone and waiting calmly for the police while they are barbecued alive.
Issue #4 opens with immediate proof that no, the police are not equipped to handle magic or dinosaurs. And Sela's father is named Drake (a nice nod to his name being Drago in the main continuity, but also a reminder that the second-ish Mad Hatter was Johnny and Calie Liddle's killer pedophile uncle, Drake, in the Wonderland series trilogy). Cut to the world Sela's nightmare is made of (with the zombies and vampires and Frankenstein's wretch clawing at the mansion doors), where Sela and her two heroic escorts waste time with non-canon character development to give Sela future closure with her father instead of grabbing the book and rushing to the nearest portal before Baba Yaga can show up to get in their way. Which she does, so the bad guys win for now.
The finale begins with a common sight for Zenescope readers: Sela despairing with a dead man in her lap while the world ends around her. Thankfully, she listens to Pecos Bill's last words about the lives of the many mattering more than his death, and she has Hercules carry her through the mob of monsters like a football to try getting the book away from the Wicked Witch, who is suddenly and predictably betrayed by Baba Yaga, leaving us to learn the answer of how Hercules would stack up against a Lovecraftian elder god while the two witchy women battle each other for control.
What is important to cover is the ad for a then-upcoming Kickstarter for a Grimm Fairy Tales Animated Series that appears halfway through the final issue. A comic book of the pilot episode was produced and distributed (pretty much just Hansel & Gretel: HD Remix), but it's no longer possible to track down a Blu-ray of the finished pilot without a deep dive, and the Kickstarter didn't do well enough to warrant a full series. From what I've seen online, the animation has kind of a Metalocalypse vibe to it, and Sela would have been voiced by Lena Heady (Game Of Thrones and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), which is awesome.
So Non-Canon, It Hurts.
Happy New Comic Book Day, Ticketholders!
And because shit happens, 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.
Grimm Fairy Tales Presents: The Library
How do you know it’s a pain in your brain's ass-bridge? Because according to GFT lore, Sela Mathers and her brother, Thomas, were ordinary, period-era Lowborn children up to the point when Sela stumbled across the home of a magically aged-up Allexa following the events of Baba Yaga. Upon entering, Sela's glasses (that are sometimes spectacles because she constantly gets her mind wiped and she woke up from a sleeping curse half-naked on the Titanic and just took a pair that perfectly match her vision prescription) disappear, and Allexa passes the Legacy of the red book to her. Except it turns out their father was Highborn, meaning Sela wasn't that special of a Nexus guardian after all, and neither was her book or her doomed romance with Vanilla Ice because her real true love was a toy-puppeteering, axe-weilding Brawny mascot Nutcracker prince (who's, like, the fifth Eric/Erik in the series) and the power of the Realms was inside her all along.
And then this shows up in the rotation and completely fucks with your nerd sensibilities. Is it a franchise reset? Yet another origin story retcon? Something of a questionably fun nature that can fit into the existing Sela narrative with time travel? Nope! To quote three separate YouTubers, it's so non-canon it hurts, and I'm not the Nostalgia Critic, but I'm going to read it...again!...so you don't have to.
In this story, Sela and Thomas are the modern-day (for the 2010s, I guess) Nexus-born children of your typical, money-hungry, too-busy-to-be-a-good-father businessman archetype. Sela is having a recurring nightmare that's a crossover of the Romero Dead movies, the Universal Monsters, the Wizard Of Oz (because we have to set up that we're going to tease your dumb asses with Oz for thirty-five more Volumes, which, if you're going by individual release order, is how much content Zenescope pumped out between late 2011 and mid-2013, and our last reference to Oz was in Cinderella Revisited, which came out in early 2010), and Baba Yaga (no, not that one).
Mr. Mathers (no, not that one) has bought The Library, and takes Sela and Thomas with him to close the deal with its proprietor, Ms. Sullivan (no, not that one). While the adults bicker over conflicting timetables (and the reader suspends disbelief that a multi-billionaire in a Universe where fairy tales are real doesn't know the value of a first-edition book), Sela and Thomas play tag amongst the stacks (in multiple pages that are well-drawn and well-paneled for something as mundane as children playing tag in a library), accompanied by Sela's narration about how her mother's death affected her relationship with her father and brother (that is so non-canon it hurts...again!).
And because Sela maybe watched Fantasia once and never saw Evil Dead, when they find a familiar (to the audience, because...again!, this story isn't canon) red book that is locked, she unlocks it and reads it, turning all of the books into portals and sucking Thomas into the Minoan Labyrinth and herself into prehistoric times because we're ripping off Jumanji and The Pagemaster now and that's how the Book Of Provenance works. Sarcasm!
All we get for story, though, is Thomas meeting Hercules, the kids reuniting with their father and Ms. Sullivan in The Library, Herc and Pecos Bill having a macho-off, and everyone running to the book and finding out that the Wicked Witch Of the West has it now.
Stakes! Mmm...steaks....
Mmm...barbecued dumbass....
Oh, yeah; Baba Yaga is here, too. It isn't clear whether she's from a book portal or she exists in this continuity as a real person, but like the Wicked Witch, she has her sights set on the red book.
Cut back to Thomas and Hercules, and the arrival of the Nautilus and Captain Nemo (who looks like he belongs on Sinbad's crew), and we get another "Zenescope smashing their action figures together" moment with Hercules fighting a kraken on the deck of the Nautilus as Nemo tries to help them get to the portal. Back in The Library, the question of Baba Yaga's fictionality is answered when she explains the true nature of the book and the spell to use it without opening it. Apparently, it gives the wielder power over "the creatures from the portals." So, just monsters and animals? Or can she control the heroes, too? The wording seems vaguely specific, and the heroes seem conveniently unaffected, so maybe they have minds of their own or it's morally dependent because Sela opened the book first. But why speculate when the continuity doesn't matter?
Speaking of continuity that doesn't matter, Sela, Thomas, and their hero companions return to The Library, where she and her father quickly hug things out, he gets an opportunity to be a badass, and Pecos Bill finally gets called by name four issues into a five-issue, non-canon series before being stabbed to death by Baba Yaga.
But because the story is predictable (your basic, "obsessed parent learns the value of family and finds the kids a new mommy because weird shit happened" plot from every 80s and 90s kids' movie ever made) and it needs to end soon, Sela figures out everything that I pointlessly speculated about last issue and stalls long enough so Robin Hood can get the killshot on Baba Yaga. Sela uses the book to summon an army of knights, angels, and heroes to wipe out the monster army, becomes a hero, sends everyone back to their books of origin, and her dad agrees to help Ms. Sullivan restore The Library so they can hide the book, new parking lot be damned. Also, death doesn't matter if you're not real, so Pecos' ghost gets returned to the American folk tale book he came from.
The End.
Aside from the one, frequent critique I have about The Library not mattering, and the done-to-death plot, it feels like a cross between a focus survey (hey, fans! Do you want us to adapt American folk tales, horror movies, Jules Verne, Lovecraft, Greek mythology - which we're going to do anyway - Robin Hood, or the Wizard Of Oz - which we're going to do anyway?) and an excuse for Zenescope to smash their metaphorical action figures together. I don't have that first-timer hate to fall back on for this second read-through, and for what it is (maybe even without that qualifier), The Library looks great and flows even better. You can tell who's who and what is going on at every step. Even the construction of the Trade Paperback has a sense of congruity and effort to it.
There's a preview of a Zenescope limited comic series called Jurassic Strike Force 5 about a group of badass, anthropomorphic dinosaurs (one may even dare call them Extreme Dinosaurs) at the end, but as it isn't a Grimm Universe title, I didn't read it and won't be talking about it here.
From "shit happens" to "awesome," next week, I'll be starting Volume Ten, so 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.
Omnibuster,
Out of The Library.
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