GFT Retrospective #91: The Dream Eater Saga #11 (Inferno One-Shot)

Article By Sean Wilkinson,

Retrospective Dreamer,

Fernal Ticketmaster.

"Infernal" can be traced through old English and French precursors back to Latin, literally meaning "underground" or "nether region" (yes, I'm serious), as a general descriptive term for the underworld or hell...rather than genitalia (though with the whole, ignorance of nudity in the Garden of Eden, Virgin Mary, Deadly Sin of Lust business, who's to say old Western religions didn't think of reproductive anatomy as a gateway to Hell?). The Hell association still lingers to the modern day, thanks in no small part to Dante Allighieri's "Inferno" and "Divine Comedy," as well as John Milton's "Paradise Lost." It's also been used as a flowery substitute for another hellish adjective, "damned," to refer to something or someone who is irritating or tiresome (e.g.: "Cut out that infernal racket!").

But then someone tiresome and irritating like me comes along and notices that the "in-" prefix (unless you get into the "flammable and inflammable sometimes mean kind of the same thing" argument) is an opposite signifier. So, is "fernal" the opposite of "infernal"?

The simple answer (such as tracing words back to their origins can be thought of as simple) is no. Both are actual words, but they share no association with each other...except for that original, simple Latin definition, if you squint and think far enough outside the box. See, Fernal is one of those "there were a lot of this plant where my ancestors lived" surnames, like Marsh, Glenn, Reed, Pine, etc., and ferns grow above ground, so, yeah; I may be infernal for making you all read this, but I'm also feeling pretty fernal right now because I finished watching the Punk Hazard arc of One Piece earlier this week, so I'll be working on converting my notes into a review for release in mid-to-late April.

And all of that was to say that today, I'm reviewing the Inferno One-Shot issue of Zenescope's Dream Eater Saga. The lore isn't that dense for Zenescope’s Inferno property yet (a couple of set-up issues and a miniseries), but I'm going to try keeping the repeated content to a minimum for awhile, which (aside from Omnibusted compilations) includes not wholesale copy-pasting of old posts, and not having two instances of the call to action in each post. So the only call to action I'll have for you until the end of this post is that you please check out my Inferno Omnibusted post at the link provided.

The Dream Eater Saga #11

Inferno One-Shot

There's a decent amount of characterization and lore in this issue...and it would have landed better with me if the interior art didn't look so awful. Alex Sanchez is not a bad artist, mind you. He's done amazing work outside of Zenescope titles, like with Power Rangers/Godzilla and TMNT vs. Street Fighter. I've even praised the colorist (Falk) in the previous review for how their "lines are only a suggestion" inking style complemented the artist they worked with. But Sanchez already has kind of a soft-lined, sketchy, interpretive drawing style, and the artistic combination here often looks like someone tried to watercolor the "Take On Me" music video with a blindfold on while a free AI was converting it to sixty frames per second. It's not all bad art, but when it is, it's distractingly so.

Meanwhile, two of the covers are being soloed by the legendary Stjepan Šejić (Sunstone, Fine Print, and Harleen) and a third by Nei Ruffino. If you've seen Šejić's work before, it's pretty recognizable (and given some of the character choices that the writing team made regarding Mercy Dante here, perhaps he would have been a better choice as interior artist as well).

After using the ring Belinda recovered from Ursula/Esmeralda in Grimm Fairy Tales #63, our newly bonded duo have traveled to the Inferno in search of Malec so they can learn the whereabouts of their children and use him as bait to lure the Dream Eater back into its cage. They meet a...man? (he's green and fat like Mojo from Marvel Comics, and has several other hellish beings hooked to his nipples and vital organs via gas mask, because Hell and Zenescope)...whom Sela refers to as Babage.

I looked up the name, and though the spelling is different (not that Zenescope has been that good with names in the past), it's possible the character could be a reference to "father of the computer," Charles Babbage. Though he was considered such a brilliant mind that his brain became a museum exhibit, and I couldn't find any reference to religious backlash against his work, I can sort of imagine Dante writing him into the circle of Envy or Pride as a walking life-support system for demons; sort of a "he who dared create something beyond mortal ken shall become the machine himself" punishment situation.

Not that the character matters beyond the first few pages, but I like looking into these things.

Amid some mildly incomprehensible paneling and awkwardly transitioned dialogue, we are told that the Dark One originated from the Inferno, and reminded (in a bad mix of "as you know" and "things that should have been brought to my attention yesterday!"

that screams of "it doesn't make sense, but we needed it written this way so the story can happen the way we want it to") that the Inferno is a place outside of the four Realms Of Power and the Nexus that the Dream Eater cannot enter because it is death personified (never mind the two other personifications of death - one of whom we first saw in the Inferno miniseries - the Voodoo Queen of Caracas, the female voodoo spirit living in Anna Williams' body, and any other Death figures I forgot about), and the Inferno is beyond the "final death."

Speaking of death personified, even those in the realm beyond the final death can be killed, apparently, because now Mercy Dante has a kinky business relationship with the Queen of the Inferno that affords her the ability to nullify magic and immortality. And if the greatest threat to the Nexus is just hanging out in "Downtown Inferno" (yes, Hell just has a major city where demons can chill; how do you think Mercy spent all that time with an office job and a boyfriend, a boss, and a therapist who treated her like shit on repeat?), why not dress up like a blonde maid (having Cindy wearing a similar outfit and everything being drawn and colored in the style it is totally didn't make things confusing at all) and kick him out a window at terminal velocity with enough force to crumple an entire taxi...and then put a few bullets in him?

Mercy gets a bit of development with Sela and Belinda (the soul assassin, her morally complicated savior, and a dark soul in the process of redemption) as they come to words and blows over the Dark One's fate, and his apparent death results in a truly surreal moment: Belinda giving Sela a pep talk when - surprise! - the designated heroine of the franchise kneels on the verge of giving up, with a dying man in her lap.

It's a scene we've seen many times since Volume Eight, and Sela and Belinda get what and who they came for with relatively little opposition, but this panel made the inconsistent art and odd dialogue worth wading through.

Speaking of odd dialogue, the final page sees Lucifer (who looks like someone beat a Zelda CDI NPC to death with a smudge filter)

backpedaling on the whole, "the Dark One must be killed" plan by saying she knew Sela would be able to save him, and hints at some deeply personal history with him that calls for a retributive fate worse than death if all of the important characters manage to survive the crossover.

I will review the final issue of said crossover next week, and I'd like to note that, unlike other Zenescope titles that have seen canceled branding expansions and/or were given One-Shot issues in the Dream Eater Saga, Inferno is among the few that would survive the culling for longer than another miniseries. Such as I can recall, the Piper, Sinbad, and Salem's Daughter are done for, Neverland will essentially conclude its story in a sequel Volume before being reduced to occasional crossover and event fodder, Wonderland is still getting miniseries published to this day, and the characters introduced in Myths & Legends (originally meant to be the canceled Grimm Tales ongoing series) would inform the evolution of Zenescope's world for the next decade or more. Inferno is...kind of in the same boat as Neverland, now that I think about it: a few follow-up miniseries and crossover appearances into the decade to come. But those crossovers, like with Myths & Legends, would inform the world-building in that time, and the canceled Soul Collector title would make a modern appearance, proving that Inferno may go to Hell on occasion, but it also may never die.

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Ticketmaster,

Staying Fernal,

Soon to be Vernal.

Out!