Zenescope - Omnibusted #30: The Dream Eater Saga
by Sean Wilkinson,
Retrospective Dreamer,
Myth, Legend,
Wishful, Conflicted,
Vernal, Fernal, Disappointed Omnibuster.
The following is a compilation of my reviews for The Dream Eater Saga, Zenescope Entertainment's first big, "let's pare down our Universe" event, introducing an ancient, unstoppable force with the power to wipe entire franchises out of existence, kill the previously unkillable, and give good and evil no other choice than to work together to ensure their own survival.
The Dream Eater isn't a wholly original Zenescope concept, which hasn't been the case for their comics for what feels like a long time, as Grimm Fairy Tales has moved more in the direction of telling broader narratives with the characters they have.
The Dream Eater has a variety of origins in myth, folklore, and popular culture.
In the Pokémon series of games, Dream Eater is an attack used on sleeping Pokémon to heal the user's HP for half of the damage dealt. In the Kingdom Hearts games, Dream Eaters are Darkness-born creatures from the Realm Of Sleep, classified as Nightmares (who eat good dreams and create bad dreams to replace them) or Spirits (who eat bad dreams). There is also the Celtic adder stone I mentioned in a previous post, and the indigenous Dreamcatcher, which serve to cleanse evil spirits and/or bad dreams in the lore of their respective cultures. But most fitting to the Dream Eater here is a Japanese folk spirit known as the baku.
 |
| Baku, Wikipedia |
Whereas Zenescope's Dream Eater is more of a conceptual boogeyman that takes human form, the baku was inspired by the Chinese giant panda and Malayan tapir, and is depicted as a chimera with elephant and rhinoceros features, the body of a bear, the tail of a cow, and the clawed limbs of a tiger. It was believed that they warded off evil and pestilence in addition to eating or destroying nightmares, but if summoned too often or mistreated, the baku would devour a person's hopes and dreams as punishment.
Because even psychic librarians can't see their own deaths coming, please Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so my dreams don't get eaten by video game characters or cosmic forces, 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.
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 Dream Eater Saga #0: Prologue/Prelude
Speaking of the cover, it's an homage to Marvel Comics covers for Days Of Future Past and Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, but with the collage of images being issue covers from Escape From Wonderland, Grimm Fairy Tales, Salem's Daughter, Fear Not, Inferno, Sinbad, Neverland, and other Zenescope titles. Derivative, but well drawn and ominous, and I love it.
The art in the issue itself (penciled by Anthony Spay and colored by Falk) is gorgeous, giving a sense of grandeur to the intimate, smallness to the grand, and darkness to the wonderful in every panel.
And I was pleasantly surprised by the reminder that this was an origin story for Baba Yaga.
Born into a holy order of oracles who were charged with recording the history of the four Realms Of Power into a library (not that one) of fairy tale books, including Sela's Book Of Provenance and the Book Of the Lost that Morrigan would later give to Belinda, Baba Yaga was only a child when her mother (with the unfortunately prophetic name of Fel) was killed by the Dark One, who invaded the order's sanctuary looking for the Book Of the Lost, with Morrigan, Orcus, and the Priestess in tow.
Angered by her mother's death at Malec's hands, as well as Thane, Shang, and Hakan for arriving too late to save her, young Baba Yaga realizes that power is more important than good or evil, and vows revenge against both factions, using a page from the Book Of the Lost to empower herself with the souls of her murdered family.
That page: "The Tale Of the Dream Eater."
This issue was featured as the short story for the Grimm Fairy Tales Volume Ten Trade, and being an origin story that fleshes out minutiae of the series' lore, it fits that spot well. But it also does enough to set up The Dream Eater Saga, of which it is an official part, so I covered it here, separate from Volume Ten.
As its supplemental material, this issue comes with a restatement of the explanations of Earth and the four Realms Of Power from Little Miss Muffet Part 2, the Highborn, Pureblood, Falseblood, and Lowborn character classes and the Dark Horde from Cinderella Revisited, and the Council and Realm Knights who were introduced in Hard Choices.
I literally have nothing bad to say about the Prelude (or Prologue, or whatever you want to call it), save for one question: why is it that psychics in fiction almost never see their own deaths coming, but when they do, they're just cool with it?
While you're pondering that, let's move on to issue #1, where the Dream Eater makes its first official appearance. Its Bio from Dream Eater Saga #0 reads as follows:
This will start to have context once I get into talking about the issue itself (which was the random insert from the first Myths and Legends Volume, and the short story from the Tales From Neverland Trade, a review where I mistakenly referred to it as issue #0).
The Dream Eater Saga #1:
Once Upon A Time
Perhaps my Third Demon World fatigue from watching Dragon Ball DAIMA had something to do with it, but I'm not a fan of this cover. It may stand out stylistically when compared to the zero issue's chosen cover, and fit the tone and style of this issue better than the others, and I get why the other covers weren't chosen, but the all-warm color scheme with some creepy old man standing in a desert with this high Dutch angle perspective looks more like it belongs on a Goosebumps book than a Grimm Fairy Tales comic.
Aside from the usual, sexy convention exclusives (Sela or Belinda posing in booty shorts or a bikini with a car or motorcycle was a common theme), the main available covers also included a Justice League homage with a beautiful, painted realism to it, the sprawling, "everyone is here!" double-wide mural (my two favorites this issue) that I edited for the banner way up top, and what I think is a bloody variant of an old Wonderland cover because SPOILERS.
Retcons can suck.
They aren't always bad (I again point to Dragon Ball DAIMA for its cool lore drops), but they can absolutely suck if not handled right. Case in point, the Dream Eater. The previous issue would lead one to believe that the Dream Eater was unleashed hundreds or thousands of years ago within Baba Yaga. Hard Choices (and GFT #51) would have one believe that the Dark Horde killed the entire Realm Council except for Blake.
But because the Dream Eater only needed to be a thing now, continuity is what it needs to be so the new threat can exist.
Following the Dark One's short-lived invasion of Earth (stopped, unbeknownst to anyone left in Myst, by a time-traveling Belinda and Baba Yaga and their magic Pokéball made of crystallized cyclops blood), it turns out that Thane was the one to unleash the Dream Eater, desperately sacrificing himself in a last-ditch, scorched earth play to stop Malec from doing what every big comic book villain wants to do.
.gif)
Speaking of Sela, her issue #0 bio is pretty on-point, with the exception that it says she is currently trapped in Myst (the last time we actually saw her, Sela had been kidnapped by Belinda, leading into a cliffhanger ending for Volume Ten), but this is less a case of continuity errors than of publication order, as the individual Mother Nature issues hadn't finished releasing when The Dream Eater Saga started its run.
Getting back to continuity, it turns out that the Dream Eater retcon isn't that bad because we're shown a montage of the same shooting star across time and space, including South Dakota (where Belinda and Baba Yaga are preparing to recruit Britney and Sela), New York (where Pan is shown to be alive and feeding on the homeless like a hobo vampire), the Salem's Daughter timeline (where Anna is having visions of an approaching evil and she and Braden encounter a teenage girl who has had the youth sucked from her body - bringing to mind Allexa's fate from the Baba Yaga issue, as well as Pan's vampirism and necromancy-like abilities), Arizona (where Calie and Violet Liddle are trying to cope with the former's Wonderland trauma as an ethereal figure in white observes them from afar), Sinbad's timeline (where Pots has a nightmare, but can't articulate anything beyond binary responses because of a wish he made on Belinda during that unreleased Lamp series), and an unknown location that's probably the cabin from The Good Witch (where Samantha has a 90s Jean Grey faint-gasm while trying to sense the Dream Eater because being able to Big Brother everything and everyone in the Universe and display them as magic holograms is a thing she can do now.
Which is where I start criticizing the character bios.
Speaking of the Dark One's invasion, his bio says it was "thwarted by Sela's brave actions." To recount those brave actions, they include fixating on a dead man she met in her dreams once while all of her allies get slaughtered around her, distracting an ally from making a weapon that could close all portals to the Nexus, using that weapon to destroy the book that she had used to help countless people find their way as well as the box of all remaining Provenance energy in the Realms (which accomplished nothing), being defeated by a swarm of insects, failing to stop the Horde from invading Earth, killing the last fairy in existence, and as we learned this issue, leaving Thane with no option but to unleash a beyond-multiversal shapeshifter programmed to eat all magical beings across time and space. The real heroes of Earth? Belinda and Baba Yaga.
When the Dream Eater lands, we see it is something like a mix between the T-1000 and a Transformer, as it magically scans humanity before taking the form of an old man and heading straight for the Queen Of Hearts' House Of Mirrors (she/they have seemingly been operating a legit carnival attraction and are in the beginnings of a romantic relationship with a co-worker...but also have dismembered body parts hanging all over their home like grotesque popcorn string ornaments). The Dream Eater devours the conjoined sisters one by one, with the dark-haired bottom half (pause) repenting before her death, asking the Dream Eater if it will hurt.
We don't get an answer from it, but when the issue cuts to the Pied Piper, it's clear from the scream he (and Malec and Lucifer, because it's more magical than it is sonic) hears that being eaten by the Dream Eater does hurt. A lot.
Mercy's bio is a mix of inoffensive inaccuracy (referring to Lucifer as Satan, when we know from Inferno that her name is Lucifer, and Satan will be revealed as a separate character much later on) and things that would have been nice to see in print (Mercy killing unrepentant souls on Earth in the canceled Soul Collector series).
As for the Piper, it's unclear if he's the one from his debut issue or the miniseries (logic says it's the latter because the one from the issue was a construct in Sela's book - which was destroyed - while the miniseries Piper was a real character chronicled and imprisoned in Belinda’s book. Whatever the case, like a lot of the bios mentioned here, it is fleshed out with information that wasn't made explicitly clear in the then-six-year-old original material, retconning the importance and depth of an under-utilized character (since the miniseries, he had only appeared in Hard Choices as Prince Erik's puppeteer) who is guaranteed to be eaten to death despite already being dead. Even Malec and the mysterious white-clad observer from earlier have written him off as a doomed soul.
Leaving the Piper to his own devices, Malec grabs Cindy and transports her to the Inferno with him to team up with Lucifer and Mercy because it's apparently not considered a Realm so travel there isn't restricted?
It makes more sense than Baba Yaga just being able to magic a crack in reality with her bare hands that pinpoints to Sela's exact location so the end of GFT #62 can happen, though.
The issue ends with the reveal that the white-robed observer is one of a group of five who exist in a foggy, Stonehenge-like dimension beyond the Realms. They will be relevant in a future event as well.
I can't recall if her identity is ever revealed, but I like to speculate that she is the innocence Baba Yaga abandoned in her vow of revenge, as she bears some resemblance to the young Baba from the Prelude/Prologue.
The art this issue (by Roberto Viacava, colored by Jason Embury and two others because this is a packed story and Embury worked on two of the covers), while not being on par with the beauty of the zero issue, is still really good (though some properties and characters benefit more from the style than others).
Now, it's time to see what happens when the Piper gets his own One-Shot, which has the distinction of being the first One-Shot Zenescope has ever done that isn't a Tale From Wonderland or Neverland. Typically, like those aforementioned Tales, a One-Shot is a single-issue, standalone comic that highlights a particular character or franchise. But this is different because of its place in a major company-wide crossover event, which Zenescope had never done before. Sure, they had revealed links between GFT, Wonderland, and Neverland (and hinted at similar events transpiring in Oz, which had yet to have a published series at this point) and done a smaller crossover with Sinbad, but this was something new for the little pulp juggernaut that could.
Also, it's been awhile since we've seen The Piper do...anything.
As his bio says The Piper began his short tenure as a member of the Underutilized & Overpowered Club in Grimm Fairy Tales #12 before getting his own limited spin-off series.
For obvious reasons (he can easily control people and animals to do his bidding from a distance without being seen, including those with similar powers, making him uninteresting and sucking any tension out of whatever scenario he might have otherwise appeared in), the Piper would not be used again until Hard Choices as the puppetmaster behind Prince Erik's murderous heel turn at the end of GFT #49, and wasn't seen after that until the previous issue of The Dream Eater Saga, where he failed to slaughter some nameless coeds because he was scared by the Queen Of Hearts' psychic death knell, and was promptly disowned by Malec, calling into question the white-robed girl's claim that he is important and worth observing. So...he's going to die screaming, too, right?
The Dream Eater Saga #2: The Piper (One-Shot)
In The Piper One-Shot, things begin as the miniseries did by going back to the year of origin, but surpassing the source material in terms of darkness when the Piper (looking considerably non-Pied) uses his Falseblood gift to march the children into a river to drown.
Now that the Dark One and his Horde have been known entities for quite some time, the Piper's simple, financially-driven act of revenge is muddled here by the use of the children's souls as an offering to the Dark One in exchange for "power so great that not even death will hold sway over me." So...was it never about money and revenge? Would he have taken the children even if he was paid fairly because he wanted power that badly? That becomes slightly more clear later in the issue, but for now, I said what I said and simpler is better, even with the exposition boxes telling us that the Piper may already be dead here.
When the issue isn't expositing how unique, unstoppable, and important the Piper is to a crossover event where seldom-used and abandoned characters like himself are set to be cannibalized to death, the story focuses on the elderly Mr. Douglas, a man so distraught over the death of his wife that he summoned the Piper to get revenge on the doctor who failed to save her life (and presumably the drunk driver who landed Mrs. Douglas in the hospital to begin with).
When the old man has regrets after the fact, the Piper tries in vain to transfer his own petty, emo motivations, but Mr. Douglas is too old and ill-versed in psychology to know what emo transference is, so the Piper eats his soul.
Which is when the Dream Eater shows up, reaches down the Piper's throat (which, given the vagina dentata design of his face,
is probably someone's demonetizable fetish), and rips Mr. Douglas' soul out of him to return it where it belongs.
I've criticized the Dream Eater's chosen appearance in the previous issue, but I love that, despite being designed as a primordial genocide machine to protect humanity, it has a personality. The Dream Eater cracks jokes, shows concern for the Lowborn, and listens to those of the Realms who repent in their final moments even though it treats existential cannibalism like an office job. And the fact that it is an unstoppable force in the form of an old man actually serves that personality well and plays into the subversion of expectations when its targets see it and believe that they have a fighting chance.
There is also more to the Piper's past (developing a hatred for humanity because generic witch hunt tropes made his girlfriend's father think their relationship was based in brainwashing), but it felt too little, too late, and I was genuinely disappointed when the issue ended not with the Piper being eaten "alive," but being summoned away by Baba Yaga at the last possible moment.
The art this issue (drawn by Allan Otero and colored by Volume Nine beasts, Studio Cirque) is beautiful and detailed, with a cool color pallette and a style reminiscent of Wonderland and the better parts of Neverland. My only real gripe is the returning plot device of the Piper being summoned with the Book Of the Lost. It raises so many inconsistencies regarding Belinda’s connection to the book, and made me question which book it was (the cover is seemingly red in color in the one panel we see Mr. Douglas with it,
but at the end, when Baba Yaga summons him, she's clearly using Belinda’s book).
There's also a B Cover from Jason Embury that features Belinda holding the Piper's severed head, and a retailer exclusive that's a Psycho homage, and I like them all. The shown A Cover is my favorite, though, because of its rough, gleefully morbid, dynamic imagery (and my feelings about the Piper as a hastily fleshed out, sarcastically quoted "character").
Next, The Dream Eater Saga meets Myths and Legends as witches collide, and a psychic and a florist attempt to beat up an old man.
The Dream Eater Saga #3
Myths & Legends #6
Set two days before the events of The Piper One-Shot, this cross-promotion begins with Baba Yaga hiding out in her cave in South Dakota from snippets of Myths & Legends Volume 1 and the Once Upon A Time issue of this event series. This most likely takes place after those events, as she is still in the cave here and Belinda is not (having already taken Baba Yaga's portal to the end of Grimm Fairy Tales #62).
We learn that the Dream Eater can shed its old man disguise to network with the land and sense its prey, the visuals for which are cool and sinister and expressed well for a static medium.
Of course, being mainly coded as a villain means that Baba Yaga's thirst for power beyond her...means...is fruitless. She's been shown and said to have precognitive abilities that were trained into her from birth, and yet she shows genuine surprise when the unkillable, shapeshifting, primordial embodiment of gluttony and magical genocide casually chomps its way through her entire army between panels. We even learn that the literal dragon she summons from the Cyclops Eye (one of the last of a race so powerful that their mere existence burned Myst to the ground and the only means of killing them was to let them destroy each other, and yet, the Dream Eater just looks up at it like, "oh, hi; it's you again...") wasn't a match for it, either.
That's right, folks! When she isn't raiding Storm's wardrobe or watching holograms of everyone on Earth throughout space-time on magical holograms in her Sanctum Sanctorum, Samantha Darren works in a flower shop. And because irony is just as important as thematic juxtaposition, we not only have the "two women who can see all but are too myopic to know what's coming" trope, we also have Samantha and Baba Yaga as a bright mirror composite of the Dream Eater. Samantha reflects the Dream Eater's inexperience and deep connection with and desire to protect humanity, though it lacks the compassion to include Falseblood humanity in its directive as well as the nuance to guide those it is designed to protect. Baba Yaga reflects the Dream Eater's moral neutrality in service of its goals and hunger, compromising her compassion for those she deems lesser beings despite power being a more complex need than mere mechanical hunger.
Note also the irony of Samantha connecting to the Earth but also having a job where she dismembers and mutilates plant life for human commercial consumption.
That aside, it's a pleasant, unique circumstance to see Baba Yaga approach Samantha with a civilian appearance, and their tense, witty banter as they feel each other out and come to blows is among Zenescope's best character moments.
Baba Yaga intends to imprison Samantha in the Cyclops Eye, but their conflict is interrupted when the Dream Eater shows up.
Because Zenescope will continue to publish comic books long after this, there must be a way to kill the unkillable (a weapon "of this Earth, but not of this time"), and the key to transcending time (now that Baba Yaga blew all of her time travel magic on the Sinbad crossover...I guess?) is the not-so-Pied Piper. So this issue ends as the previous one did, with Baba Yaga summoning him through the Book Of the Lost, to be continued in the Wonderland One-Shot.
In terms of art, the covers don't give much to talk about, save the A variant (that you'd have to seek out a physical copy of or find it in the cover gallery at the end of the TPB) by frequent contributor Ale Garza being cartoonishly unsettling with the Dream Eater sucking energy out of the back of Baba Yaga's head. In the issue itself (penciled by Alfred Trujillo and colored by Jason Embury and Andrew Elder), there's a lot to like, from the early panels of the Dream Eater shifting form, to the detail work on the dragon, to Baba Yaga's human disguise, to the chalky, simplified off-modeling that's used when the ladies fire their magic beams, to the panels that show size differences between characters by forcing perspective or simply putting the short-statured Dream Eater nose-to-nose with a dragon the size of a small mountain.
In the individual Dream Eater and Myths & Legends reviews, I initially included reprints of content relevant to each issue’s focus property (like I did with The Piper One-Shot and Britney's M&L Volume). But if the reprint content was dense enough (Samantha already got her own character-focused post, plus some appearances in Myths & Legends, and Baba Yaga has had her introductory issue, a Halloween appearance, a Tales From Wonderland appearance, appearances throughout Volume Eight, and the entire Sinbad Crossover trilogy, not to mention Myths & Legends and her focus in this very event series), I simply included a link if you wished to catch up.
Don't at me for being weird, Ticketholders; this is Wonderland I'm talking about here. Weirdness is how you keep the sanity from driving you mad. Now have some tea and let's get back to the reviews.
The Dream Eater Saga #4
Wonderland One-Shot
Cheshire here is an...interesting character. If you recall from previous Wonderland titles, he was the result of Henry Allen sending a normal housecat through the mirror portal in his basement. After being wounded and defeated by Calie Liddle in Beyond Wonderland, Cheshire was forced to revert to his original form in Tales From Wonderland until he could take enough lives to regain his power, at which time he was adopted by a young woman named Lina, whom he would exploit for murder victims and bring with him to Wonderland as his queen. In Escape From Wonderland, Calie would once again defeat Cheshire, trapping him in the Jabberwocky's cave with a ceiling collapse that also killed Lina.
Jumping forward to this issue, Cheshire is now gaunt and skeletal-looking after being trapped for two years of publication time (which is seventeen years in-Universe, and given the nature of time in Wonderland, could be more or less time for him), his paws bloodied from trying to climb and claw his way out of the cave so he can take revenge on the Liddles.
And coincidentally (or because of the time-space-transcending nature of the Dream Eater?), Cheshire is at last able to break through from Wonderland to the Nexus just as a certain, ominous comet goes streaking by overhead.
If you've been following along with the series and my reviews, you know my feelings on psychological horror that wastes time by faking out the audience and is therefore bullshit. But you also know my feelings about what happens when the Wonderland series' writing uses things I don't like, in a new way, to show character progression. The pages with Calie and Violet early on in this issue are full of tense, surreal psychology that combine real-world parental worries with the "it's the anniversary of that time an insane dream dimension tried to kill you and corrupt your daughter, so you can't keep hiding the horrifying truth from her anymore" context of Zenescope's most and least coherent Grimm Universe franchise, giving powerful (if a bit heavy on the tell side of the "show, don't tell" equation) insight into the toll that Wonderland has taken, and will continue to take, on Calie Liddle.
Unfortunately for the Liddle women, we know they are still trapped in a horror movie for three reasons: first and most obvious is that Cheshire has followed Violet to school; second is that Violet's seat in first period English is right by the big picture window so she can see the killer staring at her and vanishing between panels like she's Laurie Strode in Halloween (the first one, not the Rob Zombie one or the one from 2018 that replaces Halloween II); and third is the horror movie trope that said English class is studying H.P. Lovecraft.
What is important is that, meanwhile, Calie is shopping to drown out the suicidal voice in her head when Violet calls her about Cheshire, and gives the worried mom voice in her head plenty to say in response. For lack of a less punny choice of words, a verbal game of cat and mouse ensues, with the Cat adding much dialogue and scenery to his usual diet of human flesh and souls.
With Calie on her way to the rescue and Violet huddled at the mercy of the Cheshire Cat, we are soon reminded that this is a Dream Eater Saga issue as much as it is a part of the ongoing Wonderland narrative, when the being itself shows up to absolutely manhandle the big Cat and devour him.
 |
| See how the dialogue and expressions don't match‽ |
Strong contender for the best Dream Eater issue and the best Wonderland issue so far.
Now that you've had your tea and realized I'm not entirely crazy, it's time to visit that dethroned vampire who lives in the sewer.
The Dream Eater Saga #5
Neverland One-Shot
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 just another 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.
In the original post, I struggled with whether to keep the review as a Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective or expand it into a Zenescope - Omnibusted, as well as whether Salem's Daughter fit into my "just link it because the lore is too dense" rule, especially since my original Salem's Daughter review was an Omnibusted post.
But I don't have to worry about that here because this post is all Dream Eater all the way, so I'm leaving out everything else and letting the links do the heavy lifting if you want to know more.
Said links are up above, so let's go West...to Pennsylvania‽
Said links are up above, so let's go West...to Pennsylvania‽
As formulaic and predictable as those events were, I enjoyed the little blinks of chemistry between Anna and Braden, with her being the pragmatic, spiritual, but insecure one, and him being the stereotypical cowboy who drinks, wastes money, and boldly commits to his actions, whatever they may be. The later addition of Letitia in the second Volume was welcome, and contributed briefly to their dynamic. When not being forced by the plot to go places and solve mysteries, the three leads played off each other pretty well, with witty banter and hints that things could have developed into something more if the series had continued. When not rushed, the pacing was addictively perfect. The action was very clearly depicted and competently paneled, too. It's just a shame that we didn't get much more of it.
The same issues that plagued other short-lived Zenescope franchises, like Sinbad, also made their appearance in Salem's Daughter, such as placing more importance on formula than lore or character, not finishing an established story (because being too formulaic probably led to its cancellation), and having a bunch of name inconsistencies, continuity errors, and typos (which were early Zenescope problems in general).
And with that, we arrive at the "not much more" that we did get, as part of The Dream Eater Saga.
The Dream Eater Saga #6
Salem's Daughter One-Shot
As we saw in the Once Upon A Time issue, Anna and Braden appeared during the "Dream Eater comet streaks through time and space" montage, where they encountered an elderly woman who claimed to be a teenaged girl before falling unconscious and/or dead. And it's strongly suggested at the end of the Neverland One-Shot that Ursula took Pan's power and youth and sent him back to the Salem's Daughter timeline, where he became the one responsible for the girl's accelerated aging.
The exposition boxes as the duo ride into Royersford, Pennsylvania make it so the audience doesn't have to have read Salem's Daughter or The Haunting, but you could draw the conclusion that Anna's mind-control powers are something she got from the mysterious entity sharing her body, as she seems genuinely surprised that it's something she can do. Also, she shows concern for Braden throughout the issue that suggests they've been traveling and fighting the supernatural together for some time following the events of those Volumes.
Upon reaching the limits of Royersford, Braden and Anna are informed of an epidemic in the town that presents as accelerated aging in the young and quick deaths for adult victims.
So of course, the duo act like 2020 MAGA Conservatives and force their way into town with no protection, plague be damned, where they meet Doctor Barrie (and Braden immediately contracts the plague and starts aging as soon as the doctor is introduced, so anyone with a brain can figure out that the doctor is Pan using a glamour) and his nurse, Charlotte.
Things progress as you'd expect, with the villain reveal being obvious and Anna immolating Pan's new Lost Boy puppets before sending him away through a portal (which reverses Braden's aging despite Pan still being alive because plot convenience)...but not before he's able to absorb enough of Anna's power to save his own ass because on the other side of said portal is the Dream Eater. So, using the same mind-control powers that Anna used to get herself and Braden into Royersford, Pan manages to barely endear himself to the Dream Eater as a "loyal servant" and bringer of sentient magical foodstuffs.
The story also cuts to Charlotte for a bit, who is revealed to be working for Darius, in secret opposition to Pan because he was interfering with Darius' plans for the town.
I don't really remember if Anna plays into later events of the...event, so again, I'm disappointed that this might be the last we'll see of the Salem's Daughter world.
Also, why is Pan still breathing?
Despite still trying to get Pan over after all this time, this One-Shot was a good way to incorporate Salem's Daughter into the larger Grimm Universe while showing how Anna's and Braden's story formula would have worked in a more episodic format.
Perhaps the brand would have survived if it had gone with something more like Grimm Fairy Tales' initial, issue-by-issue, episodic format, rather than trying to follow in the footsteps of the more successful Wonderland, slightly longer-lived Neverland, and similarly ill-fated Sinbad.
But I've speculated and summarized long enough, so let's talk about the art style. Original Salem's Daughter penciler Roberto Viacava returns with colors by The Haunting's Roland Pilcz, and it's easy to recognize Viacava's simple but elastically expressive style from the first Volume's final issues. But I noticed somewhere around this panel
(and maybe a page earlier?) where the line work gets a bit sharper, more defined, and slightly more detailed, and I would guess this is from the second credited penciler, Tomas Aira (the Night Of the Living Dead comics). Neither style is bad; I'm just showing off that I noticed the change. As for the covers, Dream Eater Saga regulars Ale Garza and Sanju Nivangune (the latter of whom also worked on the two convention variants for this issue with Mike DeBalfo) handle the chosen cover shown above, and Pasquale Qualano worked with Studio Cirque (of the ninth and tenth Volumes of Grimm Fairy Tales) on a pretty brutal and dynamic B cover.
From Volume to Volume and decent endpoint to average continuation, the Saga rolls on....
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 reviewed next. 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 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 one more 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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment