GFT Retrospective #85: The Dream Eater Saga #5 (Neverland One-Shot)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Ticketmaster

It feels like it's been awhile since I did one of these because Christmas fell on a Wednesday last year, and I was had my Maniac Cop review scheduled for that day.

It also feels weird to use the phrase, "last year," because last year was literally yesterday. And speaking of yesterday, there are some things I forgot to mention in the State Of the TicketVerse Address, starting with the big accomplishment that I doubled my all-time view count from between 2012 and 2023 in less than a year. 2024 was also the year that I got my first comment from a real human in three years. That makes a total of two real humans and three comments ever, but I appreciate it. If I haven't yet, shoutouts go to jasonx for his comment on my Chucky #3: I Like To Be Hugged post in 2021, and Xelio for their comments on my Zenescope - Omnibusted #1: Grimm Fairy Tales TPB Volume 1 and Countdown to TixMas #9: Winter Wonderland (Zenescope - Omnibusted #6) posts in 2024. I'm happy to have you.

Now, if only you, and the hundreds of other pairs of eyeballs who read my content every day, would 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, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my never-landing content, it would go a long way to helping me think happy thoughts about the future.

As I mentioned in my review of the Wonderland One-Shot issue of The Dream Eater Saga, if the focus issue's background lore is too dense to reprint, I will instead include a link to the most recent, relevant Retrospective or Omnibusted post to keep you engaged and avoid The Algorithm (a.k.a. the Analytics Eater) flagging me for repetitive content. Like Wonderland last month, Neverland falls into the "too dense" category. But once The Dream Eater Saga is behind us and I have finished reading and reviewing Neverland: Hook, I will include everything in another update to the chronological Neverland Omnibusted post, but that won't happen for quite some time.

The Dream Eater Saga #5

Neverland One-Shot

Though the Wonderland One-Shot claimed in its ending that its story would continue here, that turns out to not be entirely true for a few reasons: the Liddles aren't up to scale with the bigger players in the Saga and have their own future nightmares to deal with (before the Wonderland ongoing series begins, I will subject myself to the madness of compiling a chronological Omnibusted on the franchise, but that will also be a long time coming), and though that issue spent a lot of time on the Liddles, the hero of this event, for lack of a better word at this time, is the Dream Eater itself. So the continuing story here isn't that of Calie and Violet, but of the Dream Eater as it seeks out new targets and saves or restores collateral humans from certain death, as it was designed to do.

But of course, this is a Neverland issue now, and as we've seen in the "Once Upon A Time" issue, the Neverland character of importance here (for lack of a better word because he's a flat pile of self-important garbage founded on lies) is Pan.

I like that, after abandoning his unexplored path of vengeance (for his brother's murder) so that he can be a generic power glutton and puppet king under the Dark One, Pan is now reduced to a weak, wounded animal, living among, and feeding on the life force of, the homeless, and this has brought him right back where his journey truly began: the sewers of New York City. And I don't just mean that I'm deriving joy from the contrived suffering of a fictional character (which I am); I mean that Pan's suffering makes him thematically interesting for once.

Unfortunately, that interest doesn't last longer than its own setup because no sooner does Pan stop inner-monologuing about getting revenge on the people who took everything from him that distracted him from his original revenge, than we are introduced to Angelica the water nymph. Story-wise, she's Belle: one of the last surviving members of her kind, unable to return to her world, and possessed of a yearning for a time when she was important and needed. There's even a bit of lore where Pan reveals that fairies and elemental creatures like water nymphs don't have souls (add this bit to your cosmology speculations collection, alongside fairies being composed of Provenance energy, the existence of the Yaga Clan's Library and the white-robed observers, the Inner Sanctum Of the Nexus, and Belle's mention of a First Master in the Neverland series), drawing further comparison between Angelica and Belle.

And because this is Grimm Fairy Tales, where souls are up for exchange on the regular, Angelica is only important long enough to lead Pan to a powerful "Gypsy" (the technically correct term is Romani, but this is a comic book from 2011 and Angelica is a fictional character who's existed since the dawn of time in-Universe and somehow survived prolonged, direct exposure to the New York sewer system despite clearly stating that others of her kind were killed by much lower levels of pollution, so cut her some slack for not knowing that it will be considered a geographically incorrect ethnic slur nine years in the future, okay?) who may be able to help him regain his powers and return to Neverland...for a price.

Pan is pompous enough to think he can choke water to death, so Angelica is silenced for the majority of the issue while he engages the fortune teller Esmeralda (because why not throw a Hunchback Of Notre Dame reference in while we're at it‽) in a war of wits and wills...only to learn that he brought a dumbass to a gunfight and the dumbass wasn't loaded.

Yeah, despite her claims to be an ordinary businesswoman (who can accept American Express as payment instead of Mariken Xpriss now), Esmeralda is the genuine article of oracles, and has her shack warded to the hilt with power-dampening magic (because if you're going to be a power player in this Saga, you've gotta have a hiding place saturated in anti-magic magic so that the magic-sensing gluttony machine can't find you or hurt you).

Not that it matters, but Esmeralda also gives us a last name for Pan: his full, human name is Jacob Wiles. The issue gives an Editor's Note tying this to the 2008 Annual (the "Hush, Little Baby" segment focuses on Mary and Daniel Darling, not the Wiles'), which is wrong because we don't learn about Jacob until Family History, and there is no mention of Pan by name until the Neverland miniseries.

Pan is not only pompous enough to think he can choke water to death, but pompous enough to think he can drain the Dream Eater's power and claim it for himself, so in exchange for "anything" (the default price of desperate fools in the Grimm Universe), Pan is stripped of his youth and sent to the past to find "a being of incredible power, but one not fully aware of how powerful they truly might be" (and if you remember the part of "Once Upon A Time" with Anna and Braden, you can probably guess where this is going).

Surprise! Angelica is still alive because you can't choke water to death! But actual surprise! Esmeralda was Ursula the Sea Witch all along!

Or, it would have been an actual surprise if the covers weren't the comic book equivalent of a gratuitous anime OP. Both the selected Khary Randolph cover and the B variant by Alé Garza and Ivan Nunes give away the Ursula twist, and the Qualano/Nivangune convention cover has Angelica on it. All three are beautiful covers; I just take issue (comic book puns!) with how they spoil the twist.

The art in the issue is good for what it's trying to do, though. Maybe not on par with previous Dream Eater issues or the last two GFT Volumes in terms of realism or definition, but Jean-Paul DeShong's penciling achieves fluidity and expression by balancing defined, dramatic shadows and loosely lined facial boundaries, aided by the coloring of the Saga's powerhouse contributor, Jason Embury, allowing the characters to shift from sinister to vulnerable and back again with ease. On the other hand, the story is rather thin and simple, recycling a character type as a mere plot device to bring together the two characters who actually matter and facilitate a twist reveal that's spoiled before you even read a single word, which makes Angelica almost unnecessary. This issue can't even cite its own lore properly.. Plus, I really hate Pan and the execution of Neverland as a brand so far.

My least favorite Zenescope IP in recent memory, and least favorite Dream Eater Saga issue, no question.

There's also no question that you should 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, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest Grimm news on my never-landing content.

Until my financial future is more certain, the GFT Retrospective is going on hiatus, so the Salem's Daughter One-Shot review (which will be an Omnibusted post) won't be out for a month or so. Have a happy new year, and

Ticketmaster,

Thinking happy thoughts.