Zenescope - Omnibusted #27: Myths & Legends Volume 1 (Red Riding Hood)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Omnibuster

I was all set to start re-reading The Dream Eater Saga for this week's review, but when I looked at Volume One's table of contents (the Saga is split into two Volumes), I saw that one of the issues was a Myths & Legends issue as well, so I pivoted hard into that series (itself spanning five Volumes of varying lengths) instead.

Myths & Legends is, at first, a "where are they now?"/soft reboot/retcon of several popular early Zenescope issues and characters, kind of like what was done with Cinderella Revisited before it.

It also serves as kind of an apology series for the premature cancelation of Grimm Tales (the announced Samantha Darren-focused series that would have spun out of The Good Witch if not for her clumsy handling as Sela's replacement amidst the original leading lady's equally clumsily handled resurrection). I had some...conflicted feelings about Myths & Legends on first read, which I will talk about in the review itself a bit later.

For now, all I will say is that this first Volume of Myths & Legends is a multi-part continuation of the very first issue of Grimm Fairy Tales ever, so please Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a legendary comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't get slaughtered by a werewolf in the middle of the woods, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and so you don't myth the latest Grimm news on my content.

And for those who have been putting requests on my socials for a link to all of my Retrospective and Omnibusted reviews as a gateway to Zenescope's Grimm Universe without the financial investment, here's my Zenescope tag. For a minor financial investment, you can 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....

The first issue of Grimm Fairy Tales (Red Riding Hood) was included as the supplemental story at the end of this first Volume of Myths & Legends, and I've done a Retrospective review of it, as well as including it in my first Zenescope - Omnibusted collection. But seeing as it's literally where it all began, let's remind ourselves of where it all began before we see how it all begins.

GFT #1: Red Riding Hood

This first issue sets up the series formula very nicely, with some modern problem that ties into the fairy tale being featured in the issue.

It opens on an unnamed high school girl (whom I now presume is Britney Walters from several later miniseries) and her boyfriend named Chad, who wants to get in her pants (or something worse?). The girl refuses and storms off to her bedroom where she knocks over a box containing a red-bound book of fairy tales that she just happens to open to the story of Red Riding Hood, and the issue’s focus shifts into the tale itself.
Things progress more or less as you’d expect, with Red taking a basket to her grandmother’s house, and encountering the woodsman and the wolf along the way. The usual, wolf eats granny, woodsman kills wolf mechanic persists as well, but with a twist or two that amount to the old “(were)wolf in sheep’s clothing” moral, which is driven home by much bloodshed.
Back in the framing scenario, the girl wakes up, believing that she has fallen asleep while reading and had an extremely vivid dream. But her bed is littered with leaves from the forest and she has a scratch on her cheek from an exchange with the werewolf.

Ticketmaster's Note: modern slang puts a whole new meaning on the scumbag boyfriend being named Chad.

Now, let's move on to Myths & Legends for more on the consequences of this werewolf encounter.

Following an opening scene where two hick hunter stereotypes find a disemboweled bear carcass in the middle of the woods in a South Dakota game preserve, we're introduced for the first time to Dr. Britney Walters (she went unnamed in her first appearance above), a therapist at the Seidwell Rehabilitation Institute, where her narration tells us there are thirty-nine potential murder victims (minus Britney and the killer, plus the two redneck hunters in the woods nearby, so maybe still thirty-nine?). But I'm getting ahead of myself; there are characters to introduce!

Aside from Britney, there's Lydia (the "partially naked from the hips up but wearing her body weight in boots and buckles" goth girl with a pain-killer addiction, probably because her feet look and feel like they were made in China when she takes her boots off), DUI duo Brian and Lewis (who talk about wanting to "nibble" Britney and "eat that @#$% up all night long" - note that this string of symbols is used to censor both "shit" and "fuck" throughout the issue, so context is important - which makes them either the killers with obvious foreshadowing, red herrings, or the douchebags you want to see get murdered first), Tanya (the objectifiable sex addict with 69 in her case file number), David (who developed a "binge disorder" - why they didn't put "eating" in the middle or abbreviate it as B.E.D. is beyond me - after his parents died in a plane crash and willed him millions of dollars), Annie (whom I cannot make a joke about because child abuse, torture, sexual assault, and self-mutilation are serious topics and her foster parents got what they deserved), Eric (a catatonic schizophrenic with the last name of Galapagos, who is wearing a green tracksuit, so I can make a turtle joke, a vegetable joke, and a "why does a catatonic need a tracksuit?" joke while also mentioning that his case number starts with EG0), Doctor Patrick (which is his last name, so never trust someone with two first names, and never trust a Patrick, unless they are a Stewart, a Swayze, or a starfish), Doctor Wilson (the old, greedy boss stereotype), the "large black orderly" stereotype whom the DUI bros call "Chewbacca," Philip (the handsome orderly who sneaks contraband into the Institute in exchange for...favors), and two security guards who get to say a typo before they die horribly off-page.

Case notes on the six patients and a hiring interview Q&A for Britney

Aside from all the character introductions, we learn that the Institute goes into lockdown at night, Philip dies horribly to a "he's right behind me, isn't he?" attack by a werewolf (heavily suggested to be Doctor Patrick, though everyone besides our favorite tracksuit-wearing turtle-veggie, Eric, is a suspect at this point), Eric gets the catatonia scared out of him as the issue ends, and somewhere in there, Samantha Darren comes to the Nexus in pursuit of an unknown "it" from Myst.

I remember popping off at the sight of her returning to the franchise after such a relatively long absence, but also being disappointed and frustrated that instead of the Grimm Tales I was promised, I was getting Hoodwinked, Too: The Final Chapter, featuring Samantha Darren.

I will die on the hill that Samantha is a great character managed poorly, but I will also do my best going forward to treat this story as what it is: the beginning of Britney Walters being one of the best heroines in Zenescope's lineup.

Okay, so now that the victims of the L Thief are dead (the guards called Britney "Miss Waters" before she left for the night, and Philip only spells his name with one L), this just becomes Jaws with a werewolf. Logic dictates that with a "wild animal" on the loose, they round up the patients and move them somewhere safer until the danger is dealt with. But Doctor Wilson refuses to close the beaches because of tourism!

Uh, I mean he won't transfer the patients because of the press and per capita funding.

So instead, it's lockdown time! Much safer to keep a bunch of suicide risks and otherwise psychologically unstable youths in an oppressive, confined space in the middle of a slasher movie than to be smart and get the @#$% out of town, right‽

We also have slasher movie staples like characters pretending that they don't understand the warning signs because the harbinger trope (Eric the veggie-turtle, who spoke for the first time ever to warn people about the monster) is crazy, a prankster and his victim getting killed while doing menial tasks alone in a dark room (complete with a cliché "this isn't funny, man!" and a character name reference to Peter And the Wolf), and communications being knocked out by an overnight storm so no one can go for help. But thankfully, Britney has returned to be the calming voice of reason in a small part of the world gone mad. Also, we learn that "Chewbacca"'s name is Kasey. He'd been called by name in the first issue, but the paneling didn't make it clear because so far, this series loves to direct speech bubbles out of frame so you don't know who's talking or who they're talking to until later.

And speaking of not knowing who's who, this issue ends with the creature knocking out the lights and the savage, gory reveal that it isn't merely a werewolf, but some combination of a werewolf, skinwalker, wendigo, and shapeshifter. So this, combined with the suspicious aspects of the patients and Doctor Two First Names (why does Lydia really need pain-killers? What's up with Brian's and Lewis' sexual cannibalism dialogue? Is David's eating disorder based in something more sinister than trauma? Annie has kind of a feral streak and really hates her body, huh?) opens up the possibilities of literally anyone being the monster.

After an on-location weather report from Miley Spears (yes, I'm serious), we get a bit more of Samantha Darren (who may be looking for Britney - no relation) and Zenescope's new favorite line: "this weather isn't natural."

Back in the Institute, Kasey is the one to find the slaughtered orderlies in the storage room and the smashed fusebox. It looks like he also found the janitor's remains, but when he tries to tell Dr. Wilson, he says "they're both dead" (though in a later issue, he tells Britney and Dr. Patrick that he did find the janitor as well). Also, Dr. Wilson casts suspicion on himself by wanting to keep the carnage a secret and not "agitate" the patients.

We don't see him again for the rest of the issue, Lydia, David, and Tanya go missing, doctors and patients go off on their own or walk in and out of rooms, and pretty much everyone but Britney Walters/Waters does whatever illogical things they can to make a jumble-@#$% out of the suspect list.

I mean, if you're going into this blind, she's a suspect, too, because there's a page where she reveals that this is a canon continuation of Grimm Fairy Tales #1, and that she's had "fugue states" her entire life, so maybe she's the killer and she doesn't know it? Except for a few things: Samantha is looking for the creature, the creature is looking for Britney, Britney is the main character of the arc, and she, Kasey, and Dr. Two First Names find Annie sitting in the group meeting room, covered in cut marks, with pieces and splashes of the DUI Duo scattered everywhere. Is she the monster? Did the monster slaughter them in front of her and let her live? Why is there a preview of The Dream Eater Saga #1 in the middle of the Trade here?

I genuinely got confused by that because there are supposed to be two more parts to this story.

Which there are.

So...Britney's a Falseblood with the power to talk to wolves. It isn't stated outright, but she gets a flashback sequence at the beginning of this fourth issue that strongly suggests as much.

In the present, paranoia mounts between Britney, Kasey, Dr. Patrick, and Annie as the were-skin-digo-walker is finally revealed to the characters and all sense of mystery is thrown out the window before it can overstay its welcome. With all hope of escape gone and the heartless bodies piling up (and Lydia, Dave, and Tanya totally fine because I call bull@#$%), Dr. Patrick goes off by himself to rescue Eric before the creature can get him, and comes back alone, panicked, and in need of a good venting because (for the first time, legitimately) he is the Impostor. Also, he may be the same creature from the Little Red Riding Hood issue, and has some connection to Annie (explaining why he didn't kill her along with Brian and Lewis in the previous part).

We don't get an answer as to how the monster is connected to Annie, as the finale picks up in medias res with Britney, Lydia, and David fleeing through the woods surrounding the Institute, hoping to reach a ranger's station some two miles away.

While Lydia and David go ahead, Britney becomes one of the only "I'll hold him off to buy you time" characters to be worth a damn because, as I said before, she's a Falseblood with the Disney power to talk to wolves. There's some cool, Evil Dead/The Exorcist/Invasion Of the Body Snatchers psychological manipulation going on where the creature shifts into everyone it killed (not including Annie, hinting that she may still be alive), blaming her for their deaths in their voices and telling her how good it feels to be part of the beast as it chases her down.

Her powers kick in during a moment of stress, and Britney commands a pack of wolves to attack the monster. It survives this, as well as its torso being multiply penetrated by a jagged tree stump, but then we see its horrified expression as the pack drags it into the underbrush like a supporting character in a Paranormal Activity trailer, with Britney in full girl-boss mode as Samantha arrives to recruit her for the side of good in a coming war. Whether that is against the Dream Eater, the Horde, or some greater threat remains to be seen, but the arc ends with a cut to Baba Yaga lamenting her failure to get Britney on-side, the final exposition box stating that The Dream Eater Saga is officially next.

Something came to my attention in the course of re-reading this that is definitely a Mandela Effect for me: Britney's last name. I've always thought it was Walters. I even made jokes in this very review about other characters saying her name wrong and her and Philip being victims of "The L Thief." But I went back and looked for every instance of Britney's last name in this series, and it's...Waters. Sites like the Zenescope Fandom Wiki and Comic Vine, and even Zenescope itself, list her as Britney Waters, not Walters.

This is boring.

Walters is a surname of English origin that means "descended from Walter" (the s on the end being a possessive lineage indicator rather than a plural, similar to the Nordic "-sson" suffix), where Walter means something like "powerful ruler," "ruler of armies," or "warrior king." So, Britney being a child of the Realms Of Power with the ability to command wolves like a magical pack leader fits the Walters name. Waters, on the other hand, is just the plural of Water by most dictionary and name origin definitions because a bunch of unoriginal, primitive Anglos settled near water thousands of years ago and people had to name them something. Now, it takes some scrolling on the Googler, but Waters is eventually mentioned to be a regional variation on Walters. Which makes it seem like even more of a stretch than Zenescope has been known to make with their naming conventions in the past. She should be Britney Walters. It's less boring and more fitting for her character. Fight me.

Or just tune back in on Friday for November's List Lookback selection that also has a character with a cool name that probably isn't real but should be. Spoilers, I guess?

And please Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a legendary comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't get slaughtered by a werewolf in the middle of the woods, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and so you don't myth the latest Grimm news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.