Zenescope - Omnibusted #29: The Dream Eater Saga Volume 2
Retrospective Dreamer,
Myth, Legend,
Wishful, Conflicted,
Vernal, Fernal, Disappointed Omnibuster.
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The Dream Eater Saga #7
Myths & Legends #7
I'm done leaving how lucky I feel up to the whim of numerical superstitions and coin flips (the seven-on-seven numbering of this crossover is worth acknowledging but should be left notwithstanding, especially given my long, recent history with gambling), so it's time to pay The Piper, or rather, it's time for The Piper to pay.
This seventh issue of both The Dream Eater Saga and Myths & Legends features two covers by one of Zenescope's go-to artists, Eric "EBas" Basaldua: the common variant shown here with Cesar Rodriguez on colors, and a risqué swimsuit variant for San Diego Comic Con with colors by Ivan Nunes that's more in line with the style we've seen from EBas before and will see more of in the future. The issue itself has a visual consistency with Alfred Trujillo and Jason Embury (yes, that beast of a colorist again) returning from the previous crossover issue to do the art here, and their detail, shot composition, and depiction of energy attacks are as impressive as before.
The story itself picks up where that previous issue left off, with the Pied Piper at the mercy of Baba Yaga (with whom he has a history he'd rather not be reminded of) while Samantha Darren plays good cop (Good Witch?).
Amid this interrogation, we are treated to a flashback where the Piper accompanies Orcus and his army on a mission to find and capture "the seer" (Baba Yaga), after which she is taken to the Dark One to tell his future. Along with dialogue that suggests the writers are Road House fans,
Baba Yaga tells the Dark One of his pre-series banishment to the Nexus (or his failed invasion in Hard Choices?), his future death at the hands of a "forgotten enemy" (which is perhaps less of a premonition and more of a veiled threat of her own vengeance for the events of the Prelude/Prologue issue), Orcus' rise to power in Myst (as of Volume Nine), and the Piper's abandonment to face an inescapable death (meaning Baba Yaga and Samantha will probably sacrifice him to escape the Dream Eater sometime soon). Having earned her place at Malec's side, Baba Yaga begins her plot to socially dismantle the Dark Horde from within, ending the flashback.
In the present, the two witchy allies of convenience trick the Piper into revealing the location of the Serpent's Scepter, an artifact which, an Editor's Note tells us, he has been hanging onto since Hard Choices.
This event hasn't been very consistent with adhering to its lore, so I felt compelled to go back and search the referenced issue for said McGuffin. It isn't referred to by name until this issue, but it was a literal plot device in Hard Choices, which the Piper used to siphon energy from the Casket Of Provenance so the Dark One could retrieve his army from Myst, slay the Council members (with the exception of Thane - who would sacrifice himself to unleash the Dream Eater in "Once Upon A Time" - Blake - who is still alive - and Nyssa - who was killed by Sela to close the remaining portals between the Realms Of Power and Earth), and re-invade the Nexus,
Also, I was reminded that the Piper's name is Anslied, which is cool because the majority of Ains-alike names come from Old English and mean "solitary," "one's own," or "hermitage," and have some kind of nature connotation like a woodland, meadow, or clearing, and a lied is a type of romantic German song. Put that together, and it fits perfectly. Unfortunately, he'll probably be Dream Eater food within the next couple of issues.
Omnibuster's Note: As it turns out, he just kind of goes forgotten, even in the Ever After issue, and it's unclear what his fate is following this event.
Using the remaining Provenance energy in the Serpent's Scepter, the Piper opens a portal to escape his captors in the Inner Sanctum Of the Nexus, but it turns out that Baba Yaga and Samantha were playing him like a flute, and they use the open portal to travel back to Sinbad's time in search of a weapon to use against the Dream Eater, dragging Anslied along with them.
Great art this issue, and Samantha and Baba Yaga's dynamic is always a fun read, even with the stock interrogation narrative presented here. But the story wasn't as interesting for me as my investigative journey proved to be.
I looked forward to revisiting what would ultimately be one of Sinbad's final chronological Zenescope appearances, but again reminded myself that the legendary sailor and his crew (not to be confused with the other legendary sailor and crew I've been reviewing on this blog) would not be Rolling 7s Again.
Sinbad, if you recall from some of my posts early on in the Retrospective, is a property that originally had big brand expansion and integration plans, the cancelation of which led to a late-stage title change. Zenescope once had plans for a series continuation of The Lamp that would have elaborated on Belinda’s time as a genie and crossed over with a 1001 Arabian Nights sub-franchise that would have included Sinbad and Aladdin among other One-Shot and miniseries adaptations of the famous Middle Eastern fairy tale collection. After those plans were scrapped, the Arabian Nights branding was dropped and Zenescope planned to make Sinbad an ongoing series (at least until the remaining two pieces of the Jericho Visor were found and recurring villains like Alorana and General Tipu were defeated), but probably because money, Sinbad was canceled after the City Of the Dead storyline, and we wouldn't get more of the legendary sailor until the time travel Crossover, and the One-Shot I'm reviewing today. The lore is too dense and lengthy to copy here, so check out the links to my old posts in this preceding paragraph, and read the following bio images for some Notes from the Cliff:
The Dream Eater Saga #8
Sinbad One-Shot
Thankfully, the Sinbad One-Shot has such a panel to make things easier for readers like me, so I can tell you that with Shamus Beyale on pencils (Grimm Fairy Tales 2011 Special Edition), and Andrew Elder on colors (Once Upon A Time and Myths & Legends #6), the interior art ranges from impressively detailed to rushed and sketchy, and with Dan Wickline returning from previous Sinbad projects to do the writing, the story is bare and full of on-brand quips and character moments, and feels off with the absence of Belinda and the underutilization of Samantha to even out Baba Yaga here.
Following their trip through a Provenance portal at the end of the last issue, Baba Yaga, Anslied the Piper, and Samantha Darren (who is also there, looking totally inconspicuous in her bright blue-and-white superhero costume with a ratty cloak over it like a pair of Groucho glasses on Superman) find themselves in late 700s Yanbu' Al Bahr (in what would now be Saudi Arabia, and in continuity with the established Abbasid Caliphate time period of the Sinbad maxi-series, if not also the crossover). General Tipu being in charge, Osmium being present, and Wilhelm and Shon'du having elemental powers sets this after City Of the Dead but before any future - and canceled! - adventures. Tipu has captured Pots and staged a public execution to lure out and capture Sinbad, but he's Sinbad, and his crew are the Arabian Avengers, so things don't go according to plan. Also, according to Baba Yaga, our time-wandering trio need "one of the strongest and most powerful men in any of the Realms" to defeat the Dream Eater. You'd think they mean Sinbad, but even though it's sort of obvious (really obvious if you count the amazing cover by EBas and Jason Embury shown above), it turns out that Pots is the one they need. Not only was he established in Once Upon A Time to be sensitive to the Dream Eater's presence, but we find out here that he still has the lamp!
There's a cool magical standoff between our trio and the combined forces of Wilhelm, Samelia, Old Man, and Sinbad, but somehow, Baba Yaga being evil and demanding gets the job done faster than if Samantha had explained what's going on (which would have been more interesting in terms of character, but would have also been repetitive, forced exposition, and therefore bad content execution). So instead, Samantha gets knocked on her ass by a protection spell on the lamp, Baba Yaga coerces Pots into wishing for a portal, and the issue ends with Sinbad and Samelia following Pots, the Piper, Baba Yaga, and Samantha back to the modern day, with a stinger promise that the event will continue in Grimm Fairy Tales.
It's frustrating that interesting character dynamics and dimension were sacrificed here for easy quips and an accelerated pace, but the Sinbad One-Shot had its moments (Pots was the best written, and that magic duel was kind of fun and innovative).
I began reading this next issue, and hit upon an Editor's Note that referenced something I hadn't read yet, and I've been trying to adhere to a rule of chronological continuity as much as possible (which is why my Grimm Fairy Tales Volume Eight Omnibusted post also includes the Sinbad Crossover reviews even though the individual issue publication dates were years apart, and why I did that restructured Neverland post a few months back), so I was conflicted, as the byline says, about what I would even review here.
I skimmed through the referenced Volume and found that the Retrospective would flow better if I kept going with the Dream Eater Saga rather than shoehorning in an entirely separate Volume of reviews (and I could write a better product with a two-week buffer instead of trying to blitz it in a few days).
So, the second Volume of Myths & Legends will have to wait awhile. But it isn't a total loss because we get to see what happened after Belinda kidnapped Sela at the end of Grimm Fairy Tales Volume Ten.
The Dream Eater Saga #9
Grimm Fairy Tales #63
This week, though, sees the return of two more dynamic duos: EBas and Jason Embury handle yet another awesome A cover (seen above) for an issue with Sela and Belinda as the focus.
But so I don't leave them out again, there's a B Cover by frequent contributor Nei Ruffino (who's great at dramatic, detailed covers and does the pencils and colors for most of her work) and a Mike DeBalfo/Milen Parvanov convention exclusive (because DeBalfo is a go-to for convention exclusives and he likes drawing Sela and Belinda).
As for the interior art, it's frequently off-model in a bad way but penciler Randy Valiente and colorist Jorge Maese make their style work with great action paneling, animated facial expressions, and tons of environmental detail.
The character writing here (I don't usually name the writers because the bulk of Zenescope's work in these first six years was handled by founders Ralph Tedesco and Joe Brusha, as well as head writer Raven Gregory) is mostly on point, too, as Sela and Belinda battle their trust issues, the Sea Witch, and each other. Furious at Belinda for abducting her from Myst at the worst possible moment (plus their centuries of spiritual and emotional baggage from all of the soul bargains, memory erasure, kidnapping, brainwashing, murder, and fights to the death, and the non-Belinda-related mental anguish she's had to endure with Erik's death, remembering her stolen child, and witnessing the evils of Myst firsthand), Sela has no chill and no ear for bullshit where Belinda is concerned. But as the two are coming to blows, Sela is dragged underwater by the Sea Witch's maga eels (not a real species of eel, as far as I can tell, and it certainly had a different connotation in 2011 than it does now), and Belinda has to come to grips with herself while keeping Sela alive because she needs her that way to fight the Dream Eater.
Belinda's reasoning for why they have to venture into the Sea Witch's cave is kind of dumb ("if we swim to the surface, we'll be eaten by sharks!"), especially considering she killed two giant eels by herself and both women can shoot magic from their hands. But the story has to happen and another vengeful villain origin has to drop, so into the underwater boneyard they go.
As the cover happens (I don't know if I should be disappointed at the spoilers or grateful that comic book covers have evolved past their long history of being analog clickbait), Sela acknowledges a similarity between Belinda and herself that we know the nature of but she can only intuit the existence of (that being their stolen children), and momentarily sets her own bloodlust aside to try to save Belinda.
Belinda, on the other hand (or tentacle, as is the case here), manages to talk herself free thanks to a tale she heard from the Dark One. Said vengeful origin tells of the Sea Witch as a human woman who had an affair with a married Highborn, whose wife murdered their children out of jealousy and turned her into the monstrous octopus-woman she is now (after some thought, I'm guessing it was Venus who cursed her because Venus wants all powerful hot dudes to herself).
Belinda's offer to take revenge in the Sea Witch's name apparently didn't include Sela's freedom (and Sela has "one thing of worth to me...so dear to her she will never part with it"; gotta love the Tim Curry-meets-Christopher Walken emphases in comic book dialogue), but not only does Belinda need Sela for the battle ahead, she needs Sela as leverage to get information out of Baba Yaga (probably the whereabouts of her child, but I don't remember). She also needs to get her hands on a ring that the Sea Witch has (the aforementioned Editor's Note says it will be explained in the next Volume of Myths & Legends). So that comment I made about why they didn't just swim to the surface and blast their way through the feeding frenzy? It turns out the only stupid thing about Belinda’s reasoning is how stupid-convoluted her plan is so far. I guess she knew exactly where she and Sela would end up, and led her to Ursula's cave on purpose to get the ring (which can let a person travel to any Realm - a bargaining chip she uses to incentivize Sela's cooperation...kind of, because Sela's still on a "don't trust Belinda; just kill her and take it" kick). And we learn here that this issue takes place earlier in the Saga because the ring sort of operates on Goku Black-meets-Lord Of the Rings logic: without it on her person, the Sea Witch is sucked through a portal into New York, where she would later set up a fortune-telling operation in the guise of Esmeralda, and cross paths with Pan in the Neverland One-Shot. Continuity be damned, I guess?
Anyway, before the main heroine of this Universe can behead her arch-nemesis for some magic jewelry and damn four fifths of reality to serve her own self-interest, that white-robed girl we've seen in the early first Volume of the Saga shows up (spoilers if you got the Ruffino cover), and the issue ends.
I still don't like what Sela has become since her resurrection. It was interesting at first to explore what a morality-driven heroine would be like with the re-emerging baggage of her past to color her personality and her perspective on the world. But as the big milestone of the time was approaching, that weight and the writing choices around it turned Sela into a hopeless, defeated, hyper-focused, idealistically entitled damsel who wants her man back and feels so put upon by her archetype-defined duty that she'd probably give up on everything if the shitty state of the Universe didn't piss her off so fucking much.
But hero/villain team-up dynamics are almost always fun, and Belinda shines here, even if her scheme has a bit of that BVS/Civil War convolutedness to it. I sort of remember how her story evolves going forward, and being reminded of how low-key deep her character is and noticing the progression as I read is fun.
The fun continues as I'm reminded of something that will have more of an impact on Zenescope going forward than a simple milestone issue, or even The Dream Eater Saga as a whole.
The Dream Eater Saga #9
Grimm Fairy Tales #63
B-Cover boss Ale Garza contributes another dynamic, stylish variant, this time with Ivan Nunes providing a brighter, simpler, more cartoonish palette than I'm used to seeing from Garza's work so far. Sanju Nivangune, Garza's usual go-to colorist, is instead working on a publisher exclusive by Mike DeBalfo (whom, I've established previously, really likes drawing Sela and Belinda posing with vehicles).
The hyper-detailed, hyper-expressive style of the interior art this issue is one you might recognize from the "Mother Nature" arc of Grimm Fairy Tales, as Carlos Granda (issues #59 to #61) handles the penciling here, as well, with Guillermo Gustavo Ucha on color duty for his only Zenescope credit (that I could find).
As for that big moment I mentioned above, Sela and Belinda begin the issue in a bar (letting the reader know that Zenescope hasn't lost their Wonderland cred by upending expectations of continuity with a fake reality made of paper, so it's meta, too) where that common thread we've been teased with since "Rumpelstiltzkin" finally comes to light between the long-time rivals: Sela's stolen daughter and Belinda’s stolen son.
Unfortunately, their banter about Prince Erik in this...scene, I guess?; comic books don't really have scenes, but I review so much video content that that's what I'm calling it...but anyway, all I could think about while Sela and Belinda were talking about Erik ("my true love," "the one thing I remembered," etc.) was how Zenescope did Vanilla Ice dirty. His death from old age notwithstanding, Robert "Rip" Van Winkle was the company's first go at a romantic subplot for Sela back in "Timepiece," and the most emotionally impactful one. So to blatantly retcon his importance and force the most shallow, trite, fairy tale relationship possible to suddenly be the basis of Sela's entire character motivation for no less than four Volumes of story (and for their legacy to inform the franchise into the modern day) still lands wrong for me. Sela could have had a child with Robert instead of Erik. The abduction at birth could have still happened as normal. Sela could have been motivated on her journey through Myst to connect instead with Robert's spirit in the afterlife to learn their daughter's whereabouts, rather than restoring a man she's obsessed with who won't have any future bearing on the plot. Erik is not necessary. So why does he exist?
The problematic reminders of early Zenescope don't stop here, though, as what follows is a "Little Miss Muffet"/"Rip Van Winkle"-esque origin story (this time, for the entire Grimm Universe) as told by The Innocent (the girl in a white robe who's been watching everyone since "Once Upon A Time"). It's your basic, "something fought nothing until they killed each other in a massive explosion of energy and personified cosmic constants" (Love, Hate, Innocence, Corruption, and The Maker) "came into existence and made the Realms Of Power and the Nexus, but the creation was flawed so the gods left mortal matters in mortal hands and hoped they wouldn't destroy each other...but gave them a way to fix everything by destroying each other if they got too fixated on destroying each other" creation myth that complicates matters the simpler it gets. The origin of the Council Of the Realms is given a double-spread, complete with Shang getting undeservedly glazed ("the best of them all"), Thane being referred to as the Warlord Of Oz (a title that will become important much later), Blake being referred to as the White Knight of Wonderland (further complicating Wonderland's convoluted continuity and elastic sense of time), and the Shaman of Neverland going unnamed even though we've seen that Hakan held the title as early as Baba Yaga's childhood.
I appreciate the Innocent's mention that the Dream Eater is more than a failsafe mechanism and could evolve into a greater threat than those it was made to destroy (calling back to the end of the Salem's Daughter One-Shot when Pan managed to influence it slightly), but once the major exposition is over with, she becomes the worst part of the issue (it's biggest issue, if you will), exhibiting some of Shang's awful "mentor" qualities ("you will know what to do when the time is right") and conveniently handing both women everything they need to succeed with seemingly no strings attached before she vanishes without pleasantry or ceremony.
Sela gets what looks like a cross between a lantern and a small birdcage (the thing she will use "when the time is right").
Belinda gets a spiky necklace that will make the Dark One "more docile" to use him as bait for the Dream Eater. But for it to work properly, Belinda has to free her own soul of the darkness that has defined her life...so the Innocent just tells her that Orcus and the Dark One took her son (which is what she would have eventually learned from Baba Yaga) and that he is still alive (but not where he is, because the best way to help someone purify their mind and soul of uncertainty and rage is to make the person even more furious at the focus of their rage and leave them stewing on unanswered questions and my biting sarcasm).
But although the means were convenient and made an absolute deficit of sense, at least it led to Sela and Belinda genuinely bonding and agreeing to work together to find their lost children...which will happen much, much, much later.
As the saying goes (with some liberties taken), the journey of a million pages begins with a single step, and their first step will be on that old sulfur-brick road paved with good intentions and handbaskets. Yep; Sela and Belinda travel to the Inferno for a One-Shot that isn't as important or well-drawn as it could have been.
But first, a little digression on why the English language can be Hell: "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.
And all of that was to say that next is my reprinted review of 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 (and I don't include that stuff in Volume-specific Omnibusted compilations anyway).
The Dream Eater Saga #11
Inferno One-Shot
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.
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?
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.
I will review the final issue of said crossover next, 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.
One thing I don't miss being reminded of is how much hype Zenescope (and comic book companies at large, and even Japanese media sometimes) build with big events like this, promising to shake things up, escalate threat levels, and make good on forgotten plot elements, only to trade an epic final battle and impactful moments for a pointless squabble and a slow winding down after the seemingly unstoppable, world-ending threat suffers from a plot armor malfunction out of nowhere and can be defeated by a random extra poking it with a stick or something.
It's not like the Zenescope team are or were bad at things like this. The eighteen-plus-issue Wonderland trilogy, for all of its scattershot lore and endgame contrivances, managed a thematically powerful ending. Even Neverland, before the Tales came along to shit the bed with underwhelming retcons, made two grown men grabassing to the death in a shipyard look epic and nailed the thematic weight of its short epilogue.
The Dream Eater Saga #12
Ever After
While Samantha, Baba Yaga, Sinbad (who contributes disappointingly little to the fight ahead despite being fucking Sinbad), Samelia (ditto, despite being the crew's white mage), the Piper (ditto, despite being able to control minds with music, and I forgot he was even here), and Pots (who can somehow make four wishes, probably because the writers forgot he made one at the end of the Sinbad One-Shot) wait in the Inner Sanctum for Sela and Belinda to bring the Dark One as bait (they take a taxi to a magic phone booth to keep the Horde from finding them, which doesn't work because the story needs stakes.
Mmm...steaks....), Pan is "helping" the Dream Eater kill off Samantha's spirit guides (solidifying the message that Grimm Tales is definitely not happening, either) and a few random creatures of myth and legend.
As infuriating as it is to see two characters play off their cosmic-level shortcomings with all the delusional, sociopathic grace of a cat who just ran into a sliding-glass door at thirty miles an hour, it's almost as infuriating that said major threat to the Realms Of Power and the Nexus is revealed to be the green-armored knight we first saw as a game piece way back in Pawns (and who will not be used to the potential he is promoted with here): the Warlord Of Oz.
From what I remember of later appearances, he has almost no direct effect on the overall story (not even in the Oz sequel miniseries that has his name in the title) for the next four years of publication time. I'm glad he proved to be such a formidable threat to reality. And that my obvious sarcasm still works.
Okay, two more things:
One is that, as is commonplace in Zenescope titles, time and location transitions are indicated by parchment-colored exposition boxes, here indicating Myst, Earth, and Sinbad's time of 762 A.D. But you know what else gets a transition text box this issue? Epilogue. So, does that mean the Stonehenge-like dimension is called Epilogue? I guess it makes a sort of sense (and that's what I'm calling it from now on, assuming I remember to do so) because it exists beyond the "present" continuity of the story as an epilogue to time and creation itself, which is better than assuming the letterers lacked the forethought to differentiate their location and story segment indicators from one another.
And finally, you might notice that this issue's interior has three art styles, and that's because there are three artists and three colorists who worked on it. Roberto Viacava and Tomas Aira (the Salem's Daughter One-Shot), and Anthony Spay (Dream Eater Saga Prologue) bring their recognizable styles to this massive, double-sized finale, with Jeff Balke (The White Knight), Eddy Swan (in his first credit with Zenescope), and Jason Embury (like, almost everything at this point, including one of the covers for this very issue) as the colorists. Everyone is used to their best here, particularly Viacava when a panel calls for his elastically expressive style.
The overall story, as I've said, didn't quite hit the mark with using all of its characters to the level they could have been. Many of the One-Shot issues felt less like IP explorations than fleeting stops on an aimless journey to getting "necessary" characters somewhere slightly more "important" as a means of setting up the finale and the next wave of things that mostly get dropped or pushed back because people have ideas.
Actually, I lied.
Not that they matter anymore, but Anslied the Piper and Anna Williams (or at least, the spirit living in her head that she agreed to forget about) have similar mind-control powers. Are they related? Does that mean Samantha and the Piper could be related, too?
As I leave you with this question to ponder, I'd like to lie to you one more time about being done because the Trade Paperback for Volume Two has one final surprise following its Cover Gallery: a two-page announcement that
"I don't yet see how it's connected to the Grimm Universe. The story is decent and the action is easy enough to follow, but all they did was make Mowgli a girl so there would be an excuse to write an unrequited lesbian romance between her and a human mongoose."
Yes, you read that correctly. Now please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of these posts, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't get lost in the distant jungle, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Omnibuster,
Awake.
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