Zenescope - Omnibusted #32: Alice In Wonderland

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster

Since this is the last week of April and the Wonderland comics have at least two rabbits in them somewhere, it seems like the perfect time to fall (or to be more seasonally accurate, spring) back into the franchise with an expansion and continuation of the chronologically confusing comic book, Tales From Wonderland #3: Alice.

I've crossed time, dimensions, and the internet using the tactile, reflective surface of my smartphone, dodging its immortal sources of madness to copy, paste, and edit my original review of said issue here, all the way FROM October 9, 2017 (GFT Retrospective #28: Alice):

To say the Alice One-Shot has a wonky sense of time would be a massive understatement of how confusing the mechanics of Wonderland are. To simply say that it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s Wonderland is to defeat the enjoyment of the progressive and mostly logical story that the writers have tried to craft on top of it (or through it, if the opportunity presents). To recognize the sense of the story and attempt to glean logic from all that supports and surrounds it is likewise an exercise in madness that may drive one down a rabbit hole or through a magic looking glass and on a path to becoming a nigh-indestructible, costumed murderer. I do not advocate this course of action, nor do I believe it to be a realistic outcome of insanity in the world. I only mean to draw symbolic allegories to the fate of characters in the series who have thus far attempted to force something about themselves or their world to be something that it cannot, in reason and reality, ever be.
That said, from what little sense I could make of this story, Alice has lost her parents to something undefined (but probably Wonderland related) and is living with her grandparents, one of whom is the all-knowing and financially all-powerful Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. “Pappy.” The period dress of Alice and her grandparents, as depicted in the photo from Return to Wonderland #0 and explained in a diary entry of Alice’s from the RTW Trade Paperback, is attributed to a costume fair, not an extreme case of Wonderland-based time travel weirdness.
The Dodgsons attempt to send Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, but she somehow comes back. Pondering the unique case of Alice (since no other intended sacrifices ever returned from Wonderland before her), they put the looking glass in her room and she is sucked into the clutches of the green, Chinese dragon-looking thing (the Jabberwocky), who seems to be a ruler of sorts in Wonderland. Alice, because children with questions, seemingly escapes from Wonderland by annoying the creature out of its mind.
Then there’s this whole part where Alice is growing up and meeting Lewis for the first time, but also still a little girl trapped on the other side of the looking glass in Wonderland. Even though Alice had already escaped from the rabbit hole and the mirror, Little Alice made a deal with the Jabberwocky that she would help it get into the sane world if it let her go back home. Except that it let her go back as the Alice who came out of the rabbit hole, while keeping her sanity trapped in Wonderland? Maybe? So Alice goes into the rabbit hole, comes out of the rabbit hole, goes into the mirror, then gets split in half so she can get trapped in the mirror and come out of the rabbit hole, after which she is trapped in the mirror, allowed to escape the mirror, and allowed to come out of the rabbit hole, all at the “same time?” So if there’s only Alice and her trapped sanity (who I’m guessing will turn out to be Lacie some indeterminate time later), where are all of the other Alices that were created by this god-awful time paradox loop scenario? If Alice stayed a girl in Wonderland while watching herself grow up, why is Lacie a grown woman when Calie meets her?
I had some other convoluted question regarding which Alices still existed at which points in the issue, but it’s late and attempting to start writing it made my head hurt, so since I should probably be asleep by two hours ago, I’ll just assume that it was all a dream and it doesn’t have to make sense because comic books and it’s Wonderland.

Before I get into the plot of the Alice In Wonderland miniseries, I'd like to make note of the unique arrangement and production attention that the Trade Paperback received compared to the "let's just slam the individual issues together verbatim" style that many of the post-Hard Choices, pre-Dream Eater TPBs were treated to.

As you will see below, each issue is labeled as a Chapter, and the chosen covers get nice frames with Chapter enumeration and art and writing credits. Even the Cover Gallery gets a cool, if incongruous, title page.

I understand the need to cut certain elements for consistent page counts and pricing where the physical editions are concerned, but the absence of Zenescope's usual issue credits pages and preview pages, and the inconsistent use of divider pages, bugs my OCD brain. Yes, the latter keeps the physical editions' layouts faithful to the individual issues, but in a digital edition, double spreads can appear as single images, so that consideration is moot and makes the inconsistency look even more...inconsistent in its new context.

Moving on to the story itself, Chapter One starts off as a more detailed retelling of the Alice Tale, with the Dodgsons convincing Alice to go down the rabbit hole because "doing things you don't want to do" is a fact of life that you have to accept to grow up, after which point the White Rabbit makes the reader's brain explode by stealing her voice (because that's a thing in Zenescope stuff now, I guess) and revealing that Gravity is a woman and dreams are a blue multiverse full of farting doors, upside-down islands, flying boats, broken clocks, canned peaches (oranges?), card suits, random arrows, glowing pink fish, and...mice in bondage gear?

The story jumps and lands right on its ass with Alice meeting the Jabberwocky and all of the time travel nonsense (Alice watches herself grow up and get married but then takes the looking glass out of the rabbit hole as a child without her sanity, which stays behind with the Jabberwocky to watch her crazy self grow up and meet Lewis, et cetera ad nauseum et infinitum, ergo cranium explodium....).

Things divert from the Tale with Alice’s sanity trying to escape the Jabberwocky and growing up into Sexy Cover Art Alice, who is offered a...permanent escape from consciousness, let's call it, by the White Rabbit.

Instead, to her surprise, he leaves the death mushroom near the Jabberwocky and helps her escape into a nearby forest, where they are pursued by the Cheshire Cat until he gets caught by a Sarlacc Tree.

But as we know, freedom in Wonderland is unexpectedly fleeting, and Alice next stumbles upon a certain beachside restaurant...and a giant walrus.

Chapter Two reveals that the White Rabbit was operating in service of the Queen Of Spades (the burlesque cigarette girl-looking Queen with shadow powers—like a cross between Moria and Blackbeard from One Piece—who captured Merlin and corrupted the White Knight).

I remember hating my first reading experience with this because of my thoughts on the original Tale and Lewis Carroll's source material, as well as how it felt like an unnecessary retread of territory that had seen a proper conclusion and spent its time in the Dream Eater Saga looking forward. But that said, I appreciate the writers' attempt at exploring a free-spirited, resourceful Alice, unlike what her Nexus counterpart suffered in the opening pages of Return to Wonderland.

Sane Alice manages to talk her way out of being a giant Walrus' dinner by leveraging her "belonging to the Jabberwocky."

We soon learn that the Walrus was once a human explorer from the Nexus named Tiberius, whose ship wrecked on the shores of Wonderland (suggesting that at one point prior to—or early in—the Dark One's reign of tyranny, it was possible to accidentally sail through open portals between the Realms, hence the wreck of the prince's ship in The Little Mermaid—mermaids are suggested to hail from Neverland—and the wreck of Tiberius' ship here). The presence of the White Rabbit (barring seriously mad levels of time dilation) and Tiberius' clothing suggests that the Walrus' origin takes place sometime shortly after The Experiment. Through some unforgettable body horror, Tiberius gets drowned and bonded to a living walrus skeleton that imbues him with the full iceberg of Wonderland's mad knowledge (more of that twisted irony where Wonderland gives an explorer's brain a denial of service overload of knowledge that is divorced and devoid of reason).

While Alice gets caught between a Walrus and a cannibal-poet Carpenter (who most likely has yet to reunite with his Tweedle Sons), the Rabbit is shown to be playing all of the sides, getting the Queen Of Hearts, the March Hare, and the Mad Hatter searching for Alice "in service of the Jabberwocky" (those are sarcastic quotations, not quote quotations, and this little power play is correctly cited to lead directly into the events of the first Mad Hatter Tale—Uncle Drake's backstory—though the Editor's Note merely references the first Volume of Tales From Wonderland, not the individual Tales issue). There's also an Editor's Note tying Tales Volume Three to the Rabbit's conversation with the Drake Hatter (White Rabbit apparently moved Drake into the Ripper's old house after Cheshire ate him at the end of Queen Of Hearts vs. The Mad Hatter), and making Wonderland, of all of Zenescope's properties thus far in the Retrospective, the most consistent with its lore references.

Getting back to the story, Alice trading A-B rhymes with the Carpenter like they're in the finale of a straight-to-video 8 Mile ripoff perfectly straddled the line between hilarious and badass.

Unfortunately, Cheshire isn't far behind as Alice makes her way through the Forest Of Signs (which seems to be a fan of LMFAO, John Cena, Lost, Jean Grey, Arbor Day, boobs, murder, voyeurism, and BDSM, but not digital comics, two-page layouts, or nerds who try to read hidden messages. Also, Wonderland is apparently in New Jersey, and Calie just came through recently, so we're lined up with Return to Wonderland by now), her inner monologue making Beyond Wonderland and Escape From Wonderland puns as she goes. But if you know your Wonderland, you know what comes next after the Forest Of Signs, right?

I don't know if I mentioned it, but I love how creative the writing is getting here. Chapter Three opens with the Mad Hatter threatening the narrator of the comic with taint-to-throat disembowelment before the Queen Of Spades pops out of his shadow to offer him the Ebony Blade.

Soon after, Alice comes face-to-face with a "woman" named Louise Ekard (with the surname rendered in bold so the reader maybe stops to spell it backwards because we all know who "she" really is).

Long chapter short, it was Drake, he drugged Alice, and the story catches up to the end of the Mad Hatter Tale with him bringing her to the Tea Party. Alice telling "Louise" her backstory end-first was a cute touch because Wonderland, and I feel like the March Hare would have been better served to get an origin flashback than the Walrus was, but basically, Alice is only able to escape from being the victim of multiple counts of multiple domestic and federal crimes because her captors are all greedy, stupid, insane, selfish, bloodthirsty assholes who treat magical controlled substances like an hourly balanced diet. Also, there's that little matter of Morrigan showing up to guide victims of the Ebony Blade (probably changed to the Death Blade here to avoid legal confusion with Dane Whitman's Ebony Blade in Marvel Comics, but I can't confirm that) to the "final death" (a phrase we last saw in The Dream Eater Saga).

The first page of the next chapter is another treasure trove from the Forest Of Signs (mostly the trees are horny for Alice and/or want her dead, but legally distinct Mario and Luigi facsimiles make an appearance and there's a sign that says "—37 to 2009," the referential significance of which is unclear) and Alice reveals herself to be on Team Kendrick ("I don't want to think about Drake"). After stumbling through a surreally terrifying and Lovecraftian effort to drive her insane (because she's still trying to shrug off the effects of her brother drugging her in the previous chapter), Alice falls at the feet of three nearly identical women (their dresses are different colors and their hairstyles are slightly different) who were responsible for planting white roses in the Queen Of Hearts' hedge maze in RTW, and she begins a dream/hallucination where she talks to the Jabberwocky in her real world, insane body.

When she wakes, Alice is treated to a tour of the Queendom Of Hearts, including the infamous croquet tournament and her nonsensical kangaroo trial (where the Suicide King passes her something from Calie...who isn't born yet despite reaching the Mad Hatter's house before her because "time cannot be trusted." Once her sentence of being turned into a jigsaw puzzle has been carried out, Alice is restored and rescued by the Queen Of Spades, who wants her to kill the Jabberwocky.

Chapter Five was, and still is, such a cool issue to me.

It loses something in the prequel nature of it all; the Queen Of Spades setting up Alice as the one to kill the Jabberwocky when we already know it isn't meant to be without the Ebony Blade. However, the mere idea of Alice getting a power boost from my favorite Wonderland character (the Red Queen, who is still in the Queen Of Hearts' prison here and has yet to begin playing chess with her son the Suicide King) that she uses to animate a chess set army from the Jabberwocky's birthplace, and teaming up with the Queen Of Spades to wage war on the Axis of Wonderland villains is just crazy-good spectacle. There's also a bit about the Yaga Order (I think?) having brought the Jabberwocky to Wonderland as a newborn child of Lovecraft's Old Ones of Chaos (so he's probably a direct descendant of the Void entity we saw in Grimm Fairy Tales #64?) to purify him, but he was so evil as a baby that he corrupted Wonderland just by being there. That's some prime cosmic lore integration there! Not much else happens beyond the Queen Of Spades manipulating the important characters into place for the final battle to come, but yeah, this issue (let alone this six-issue story) is more competently structured as a "do social warfare to get people ready for actual warfare" narrative than the thirteen issues of The Dream Eater Saga combined, and somehow manages to bring some sense to the most brain-melting Tale in Zenescope's history, and I can't believe I'm saying this about Wonderland!

I know what I said earlier about each Chapter of Alice In Wonderland being given a specially framed cover from its respective individual issue in this Trade compilation, but what you see above is not a cover from Alice In Wonderland #6. It's a double spread made by combining the last page of the Chapter Five issue with the first page of the Chapter Six issue. And while the seams are obvious and it doesn’t totally match the treatment that previous covers received (I didn't even notice this as the beginning of a sixth Chapter because there was no "to be Wonderfully concluded" stinger on the previous page), the layout choice respects the hype and momentum of the moment and the action that is to follow.

In true Wonderland (and epic Zenescope final battle) fashion, the early pages here feature one chaotic pile of blood and body parts after another as Alice and the Queen Of Hearts smash their living action figures together like they studied combat strategy at the Nutcracker Academy Of Puppet Warfare...that is, until a character we've never seen before and haven't heard word of since the first Chapter shows up: a masked ginger dressed all in black who answers directly to the Jabberwocky, and is soon revealed to be Gravity!

Unfortunately, Gravity proves to be one of those characters, like the Pied Piper or the Red Queen, who are too powerful and too potentially interesting to get more than a handful of appearances before being killed offscreen or shuffled off into obscurity with little more than a hasty lore dump as ceremony.

After an amazing (but ultimately pointless considering that we know how the Wonderland story played out after this) sequence where Alice fights the Jabberwocky by eating the Mega Mushroom the King gave her on Calie's behalf, growing to his size, literally curb-stomping him and throwing him through the Looking Glass to trap him in her insane body, she learns that she cannot return to her old life because her future suicide from the beginning of Return to Wonderland is set in stone. Regretting the manner in which she sealed the Jabberwocky (whom we know will escape later, probably because of said suicide), Alice returns to the battlefield to find Gravity on the verge of death, and learns that Gravity is Howard's sister, Rebecca (which makes her Alice's aunt, I think?), before taking on her mask and adopting the Lacie alias. And because time isn't time in Wonderland, an epilogue shows a younger Alice watching from beyond the mirror as her older self commits suicide and frees the Jabberwocky, signaling the beginning of that which begins and ends so it can begin anew even as it ends in the middle of another beginning, because Wonderland.

Along the way, there are Editor's Notes promoting the Call to Wonderland miniseries (the beginning of Wonderland choosing a new Queen Of Hearts) and a forthcoming Wonderland Ongoing Series (following from the beginning at the end of the Wonderland One-Shot).

Alice In Wonderland still has its moments of nonsense and is devoid of stakes because it's a retread of a prequel, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would based on my first experience with the series. It's full of personality and mostly accurate lore citations, the interior art is really good, and the Trade Paperback got some genuine love and effort. Strong recommendation, especially if you're a big Wonderland fan.

Next week, we get back to individual issues with Volume Eleven of Grimm Fairy Tales because another milestone is soon to be in sight, so Stay Tuned and please remember to 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 I don't feel like a senseless retread, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my Wonderful content.

Omnibuster,
Out.