GFT Retrospective #78: Grimm Fairy Tales #60

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Natural Ticketmaster

The second week of R.L. Stine October continues, Ticketholders! It's almost 8pm Tuesday night as I'm writing this, because I spent almost all of my free time over the last two days, including the day of publication (today/yesterday/Tuesday, depending on your temporal frame of reference) after I published it, finishing my review of the 1995 Goosebumps TV series. So give that a look when you're done here...please?

As for today's (Wednesday/New Comic Book Day) content, 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 Grimm Fairy Tales #58, the concept of "human nature" was the subject of The Scorpion and the Frog, and it was revealed in the previous issue that the Greek Titans exist (or existed) in the Grimm Universe, 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 #60

As with previous issues in the Mother Nature arc, this one begins with the flashback as its opening segment. In the absence of Delphina's O face, the hyper-detailed, sketchy-lined art style trades comedy for relative ugliness as the red-eyed figure in the bushes is revealed to be a werewolf, and he is joined by the Dark One and Belinda (pre-Titanic, presumably, since she doesn't have her book here). Gaia (as she was known at the time) tries to defend herself, but Belinda holds up a fairy's severed head, with the Dark One saying he found a way to sever "the link" before ordering the lycan to attack her.

But because villains in fiction need to stupidly make things personal and/or convoluted so the heroes have time to escape, the Dark One decides to drown her (which would normally be like trying to kill Godzilla with nuclear weapons), leading to Gaia being rescued by a crocodile (a normal-sized one, not a Croc) and...a swarm of cockatoos‽ So in case you were wondering if there was a dumber "characters can't do anything because of animal swarms" moment than the Dark One turning the tables with insects, this may be it. I mean, getting attacked and bitten by that many birds of that size would hurt, if not kill, a normal human, but this is the Grimm Universe Devil we're talking about here. And granted, Lucifer, Satan, and the Dark One are revealed to be different characters down the line, and he's already been shown to be kind of a chump, but at this point, he is the devil as far as we know, which makes him getting subdued by a swarm of cockatoos feel like a meme.

So after the horse-sized chicken gets his ass kicked by a hundred chicken-sized horses, focus shifts to the present amidst the first wave of Orcus' invasion, where Druanna sends Blake and Bolder to aid the forces of Tallus (despite recent personal history with its king and citizens) in the fight and block the entrance. Huh. A monster invasion of a key fortress in an alternate world where someone has to put aside their trust issues and block the castle entrance with a Bolder.... *Checks timing* Yep; this part of the story could be referencing a major early point in the Attack On Titan manga. And with Druanna in the picture, this is literally an attack on a titan we're dealing with here.

Anyway, with that happening (amidst the duo's charming bromantic oneupsmanship banter, of course), Druanna asks Sela to super-charge her powers with her own magic, unleashing a weather phenomenon that washes out the first wave of the invasion...prior to which, she has time to tell Sela her entire origin story, leading to a flashback.

Apparently, this Gaia was just an ordinary girl in Myst who had a family and was beloved by nature, so much so that one day, a fairy bestowed upon her a deeper link to the nature in Myst (where all flora and fauna are sentient beings with souls, apparently) and the Nexus. If you hadn't guessed yet, and you're not reading the comic, this is the same fairy whom Belinda decapitated in the opening flashback, implying that she was kind of Gaia's Supreme Kai figure (yes, you get an Attack On Titan reference and a Dragon Ball Super reference in one post; lucky you!).

We also learn that after she was rescued by cockatoos, Gaia/Druanna was brought to everyone's sarcastic-fantastic "favorite" "mentor," Shang, who created her staff as a temporary link, though not as powerful as the fairy's magic was.

It's funny that, when the army is getting flooded out, one of the troll soldiers comments that the rain and wind aren't natural. Yes, buddy (and I mean that in the same way as when a bitter old man calls a younger man "buddy," which is to say it's code for "asshole"); it is natural. By the absolute most literal definition possible. I mean, this guy clearly hasn't tried to invade Florida or Louisiana in early fall, or he wouldn't know how stupid he sounds.

So, the archers didn't work, the foot soldiers are idiots who don't know how nature works, the giant troll didn't work, and now, we finally get to see the fruits of Gruel's revenge. That shadow dragon fang he's been Gollum-ing over for the past double-handful of issues since Morgarzera's death? The one that not even the master himself would have used because it trades humanity for unfathomable power? It's time to use it, and the issue closes with Gruel transforming into a dragon!

He isn't going to succeed because plot, but this kind of undercuts the satisfaction of Gruel's revenge by throwing away everything Morgarzera did for him (halting his curses and teaching him magic) and stripping away his remaining humanity so that, even if he could kill Sela, he wouldn't be conscious enough to enjoy it. But still; a dragon! Dragons will always be cool!

Unlike villainy. Villains in fiction can look cool and sound cool and do villainous things in cool ways, but they are villains for a narrative reason. They fail for a narrative reason. And that reason is to show the audience that even a sympathetic or suave villain operates by unjustifiable means, and that despite the possible nobility of the ends or personal motivations, the means should not be rewarded. And often times, real-world villains are just petty, uninteresting, self-important fools who can't accept what's real.

Feel for the narrative if you must, but don't try villainy at home.

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.

Ticketmaster,

Out.