GFT Retrospective #77: Grimm Fairy Tales #59

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Natural Ticketmaster

Welcome to October, Ticketholders!

I already talked about the various uses of "Natural" and the prevalence of the Mother Nature figure in pagan, Wiccan, and polytheistic mythologies when I reviewed the previous issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, and the concept of "human nature" was the subject of The Scorpion and the Frog, so check out those posts to get your brain caught up.

I've also been getting requests on my socials for a link to all of my Retrospective and Omnibusted reviews from people who want to get into Zenescope's Grimm Universe without the financial investment. So here's my Zenescope tag. You can also get a pretty affordable ComiXology subscription that lets you check out full trades and individual issues of nearly the entire Zenescope library. I don't know if it syncs with Amazon Prime, but it's worthwhile if you just want to read every comic book ever made....

And as always, please do the natural thing and remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment any other uses of natural you can think of at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can continue to afford clothes, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my organically sourced content.

GFT #59

The Mother Nature arc continues by continuing the flashback to when Delphina and Druanna first met in the flesh (the latter, quite literally). The art detail in these first two pages adds a degree of hyper-realistic ugliness to the pair as they agree to go about their business as if they weren't an oracle and a titan (yes, Druanna is later revealed to be either Gaia Herself or an avatar body for Gaia's power), as the latter senses something evil in the bushes nearby that isn't yet revealed.

Instead, the flashback cuts to the current King of Tallus, then Prince William of Tallus, who is shown - depending on your overall viewpoint on the harem concept - to be a very lucky man...and unfit for the throne, according to his father.

In the present, William and Druanna (aided by one of the refugees our heroine's party saved at the beginning of the last issue) stop the citizens of Tallus from sacrificing Sela's group to Orcus...for now.

While Druanna retreats to her garden (because every "I am the goddess of nature; behold my power and authority!" display drains her magic these days, forcing her to reclaim it from nature itself, which is an ever-diminishing, finite resource), King William has our heroes imprisoned as a political maneuver while he seeks guidance from a big, gold statue of his father because medieval royals always and totally had their priorities straight.

Because he is a weak man, despite figuring out that Gruel shapeshifted into a mouse and hid behind the statue to give him false advice (which I swear is from a fairy tale, but I couldn't find which one), William folds to Orcus' demands and agrees to surrender Sela to him, but the deadline has passed, so Orcus begins his attack anyway, unleashing an army of orcs, goblins, trolls, and other mid-level fantasy RPG mobs that looks vaguely like the creators of Doom should respond to it with an army of lawyers (the comparison becomes even more blatant in the future titles where the Horde gets a technology upgrade).

Also, while our heroes are imprisoned (Blake and Bolder discuss Druanna's true identity while chained up, shirtless), we discover that the creative team may have a specific combination of fetishes that they're working through.

In addition to the aforementioned male bondage, there's also Sela's dream sequence where she's pregnant and the Dark One has her forcibly stripped naked by a gang's worth of goblin hands so he can steal her baby, and Druanna's final Gaia reveal where she saves everyone with magic tentacles while wearing nothing but vines and a "bra" made of groping tree branches. Yeah, this issue is HOR-NEE!

But remember what I said about magic and finite natural resources? Druanna's garden is as near-death as the Sacred Child after that big rescue. So, with their most powerful ally near death and Sela unsure if she can blast her way through the Legend Of Zelda Doom mod without collateral damage (also, Sela still hasn't come to grips with the existence of Greek deities after being the Guardian of the Nexus for two centuries, coming back from the dead, and being in Myst for a month), how will Blake and Bolder get through another issue? Is this issue just gender-neutral, softcore bondage porn with a subtle environmental message? Is King William being put over to have a satisfying redemption arc, or will he degenerate into yet another disposable pawn of evil to save his own ass?

We'll all have to wait until next week to find out, because the answers are: I don't remember how, but I know they will; definitely; and I don't remember, but probably the latter. So until then, please do the natural thing and remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment any other uses of natural you can think of at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can continue to afford clothes, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my organically sourced content.

Ticketmaster,

Out Of the Garden.