GFT Retrospective #93: Jack the Giant Killer
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster
Today, Ticketholders and Retrospective fans, I'm going back to the main Grimm Fairy Tales series to see what Sela Mathers has gotten up to now that The Dream Eater Saga is over.
However, you can expect me to include seasonally appropriate reviews of the 2012 Cosplay and Swimsuit edition stories, either as their own individual posts later, or exclusively in the Omnibusted compilation depending on how much I end up having to say about them.
Also, depending on when a certain revelation comes about that I vaguely remember, I may also review the 2012 Giant-Size issue as part of this Volume.
This is an individual issue review, though, so I'll leave my future plans and any further gripes I have about the Volume for, well, the future. But first (though I don't know if they are connected or if there are just minor plot similarities), here's an edited reprint of my Jack and the Beanstalk review FROM August 19, 2017 (GFT Retrospective #7: Jack and the Beanstalk):
GFT #8: Jack and the Beanstalk
A drug dealer named Jim is trying to earn enough money to move his wife and child out of the bad neighborhood they’re living in, but he’s getting greedy and selling on a rival’s turf.
When Jim goes out to meet his supplier, he finds Sela waiting for him. What she did with the supplier, I shudder to think….
Jim starts reading, and (see previous explanations of the book) becomes Jack, a poor farmer who trades his cow for beans and runs afoul of the giant (who looks vaguely like a fat, zombified version of the rival dealer) in a quest for beyond-ludicrous wealth. Jack’s wife, child, and home are crushed by the falling giant, and Jim snaps back to reality with a second chance at his disposal.
It was another filler issue at that earlier point in the series, but hinted here and there at a bigger picture. Look at Sela’s closing remark, for instance: “Take it from someone who knows, Jim. There are things in life that are much more important than money. Things you can’t put a price on.”
In the scope of the issue, this could be interpreted as a reference to Jim’s family, and the peaceful life they could have if he quit dealing and learned to live on the money he has. In the larger scope (the Zene-scope, if you will), Sela could be referring to her own lost family. Deeper still, she could be talking about the soul. Maybe Paco (the rival dealer) or Manny (the supplier) were working for the Dark Horde, and had planned to either kill or recruit Jim if he had continued on the path he was on. And maybe Sela was expressing regrets about the deal she made with Cindy in a previous issue. Maybe on some level, Sela sees the book as her drug, her magic beans, her symbol of greed, and she regrets ever going into Allexa’s house to begin with.
It was another filler issue at that earlier point in the series, but hinted here and there at a bigger picture. Look at Sela’s closing remark, for instance: “Take it from someone who knows, Jim. There are things in life that are much more important than money. Things you can’t put a price on.”
In the scope of the issue, this could be interpreted as a reference to Jim’s family, and the peaceful life they could have if he quit dealing and learned to live on the money he has. In the larger scope (the Zene-scope, if you will), Sela could be referring to her own lost family. Deeper still, she could be talking about the soul. Maybe Paco (the rival dealer) or Manny (the supplier) were working for the Dark Horde, and had planned to either kill or recruit Jim if he had continued on the path he was on. And maybe Sela was expressing regrets about the deal she made with Cindy in a previous issue. Maybe on some level, Sela sees the book as her drug, her magic beans, her symbol of greed, and she regrets ever going into Allexa’s house to begin with.
As you read on, you will notice some plot points in today's issue up for review that echo the Jack character in Zenescope's eighth issue, just with some variation in detail. It's never suggested that the Jack character there is the same as the Giant Killer, especially not on Sela's part, though this can be waved away by her frequent instances of magically-induced amnesia at the time.
It's also important to know for later in the review and analysis that Jack the Giant Killer is the first Zenescope comic that I've talked about in some time to have a folk/fairytale source (this one a Cornish tale from 1711 that was adapted much later—1962—into a film, and then re-adapted in 2013 along with Jack and the Beanstalk into Jack the Giant Slayer, which received an Asylum mockbuster companion titled Jack the Giant Killer in the same year. I haven't seen any of the films or read the original fairytale, so as any good informative writer does in a crunch, any details I mention regarding these source materials will be straight from Wikipedia. Now, onto the new issue!
Grimm Fairy Tales #65
Jack the Giant Killer
The same, detailed, expressive work we've come to expect from the duo, just with a noticeably darker palette to offset the drawing style and match the issue's tone.
Five covers for this one, with DeBalfo once again on Exclusives duty and Basaldua providing the two retail covers. Nivangune colored the chosen EBas cover, and the beast Nei Ruffino colored the other four. Even if you consider that DeBalfo's covers are duplicates, it's all good, quality art. EBas gets bonus points for the chosen cover looking different from his usual work (like the B Cover), and Ruffino is impressively prolific and talented as both an inker and a colorist.
I hope you enjoyed this attempt at a new format! Let me know 👇 if I should keep doing it, go back to integrating the art credits into my reviews, or just stick to story analysis and speculation and never mention the art again.
This is the first issue of Grimm Fairy Tales since the defeat of the Dream Eater, and while it does almost nothing to move the plot forward, it serves its purpose of establishing a clear point of continuity and setting up a future threat.
Following a cold opening where Sela has buried Belinda and finished paying her respects (Belinda died in her arms at the end of the Dream Eater Saga) and Druanna reveals that Blake and Bolder have already set out on their Quest to re-form the Council Of the Realms (in the aforementioned Giant-Size, which I have strong nostalgia for), the issue awkwardly and forcefully segues into the titular story.
How did Druanna know that some random old man would be telling some random children the exact story she wanted Sela to hear? Why didn't Druanna just tell Sela the story herself? Does it matter and do I care? I mean, I care that it's bad, unnecessary writing because writing quality matters, but I don't really care to know the in-Universe reason why such redundant contrivances happened.
I don't really even care about the contents of the Jack the Giant Killer origin tale because it's your basic Horde fodder story about a guy named Jack who's related to the queen of some corrupt asshole's kingdom from a time before the Dark One began his Universal domination schemes, when royalty had the power to command giants. And because this evil king cared more about wealth than society, he used his giant to force his people into agricultural slavery to harvest the benefits of some ambiguously undefined "magic seeds." So when Jack drives the farmers to revolt because of a travel ban that would prevent him from fetching a mage from Tallus to cure his wife's illness, the king sends the giant to smash Jack's home and family to pieces. Thus Jack becomes the first and only human to ever kill a giant, making himself both a figure of legend and a fugitive of the Council (who set up the king/giant hierarchy in the first place...maybe to help develop the land of Myst in the wake of the dragon calamity?).
So because giant racism (I mean that both in the sense of racism against giants and that racism itself is a problem of colossal proportions) and both Jack and the Council lacking pertinent information that should have been brought to their respective attentions yesterday, but also communication being conveniently impossible so the matter is never cleared up, the Council hunts Jack, the giants flee into the mountains because they fear Jack, the kings of Myst are left defenseless, and Jack is found by the Dark One, who (say it with me!) promises Jack the power to take revenge on the giants in exchange for his eternal service in the Dark Horde (even though he already killed the giant who turned his home and family into bloodstained debris, so if you thought it would've made more sense for the Dark One to have Morrigan or his apprentice or Charon or Doc Carou or Acacia restore Jack's family instead of giving him giant strength so he could commit gianticide, you'd be right...kind of).
As incompetent as the Dark One often is with his choice of subordinates (just look at Pinocchio, the Piper, Erica's foster family, Gruel, Sela and Belinda, Orcus, Pan, Baba Yaga, and even Cindy and Fenton, all of whom were either too fixated on their own vices to survive, too loyal to survive, too stupid to be more than mildly situationally effective, too overpowered to be narratively compelling, or just straight up betrayed him), he is also brilliant at using certain of his people to eliminate threats to his conquest. If Jack's family were restored, he would have ended up as one of those who focus more on their reward for their loyalty than the loyalty itself, and the Dark One would have had to manipulate someone else into killing him, which would have been a waste of resources. As a powerful tool of genocide, Jack was easier to manipulate, even with the inevitably that he would one day have no more giants to kill, and therefore have no purpose. It's basic cult psychology that those who feel they are without purpose are easier to manipulate than those who are fulfilled on a deeper, more consistent level, and giving someone the illusion of purpose (or a group of people a shared but subjective purpose like getting into Heaven or Making America Great Again) is even "better." Like the old song says, "Edroh Krad eht Nioj," people!
I'm joking, of course; but as much as I've crapped on this issue for its contrived writing and for being another boilerplate Zenescope villain origin story, it's kind of made me...appreciate?...the Dark One and his Horde as a study in cult behavior. Yes, Grimm Fairy Tales is a comic book franchise where public domain folk characters in shiny bodysuits, bikini armor, lingerie, and booty shorts throw magic at each other, but as cringe as it can be, the subtext (and sometimes just the text) is more fascinating than you'd expect.
I also understand that "we drew attention to how predictable our story is, so the self-awareness makes the bad go away" has become a much-derided writing tactic in recent years, particularly in the movie industry, but Sela's newly discovered (and tragically ended too soon) connection to Belinda informing her understanding of the Giant Killer's origin was another highlight for me.
As was the ending, because remember how I said Jack was easy to manipulate and I rattled off a list of Death characters who could have revived Jack's family? Well, the whole point of this issue was to introduce Jack as a threat (ignoring all the usual, in-Universe, non-meta questions like why Jack only became relevant now if he is that powerful), and to drop the bomb that he is specifically a threat to Sela because he has pledged himself to the service of the Limbo Queen. Never mind how contrived this all is (because I've harped on that enough for one day, and I'm trying to be objective here), I love how much this lets me read between the lines. Like, it kind of seems like the Dark One is trying to edge Morrigan out because of his ties to the Ebony Blade. We've seen that it can kill the unkillable in Wonderland (why no one thought to use it against the Dream Eater is beyond me, since we also saw that the Dream Eater was incapable of killing Morrigan), including the Jabberwocky, who was stated to have been installed as a puppet ruler of Wonderland by the Dark One (like Pan in Neverland) before Alice In Wonderland retconned it. And whenever the Blade is used, Morrigan is duty-bound to usher the killed soul(s) to the Final Death. So possibly because Morrigan had an indirect hand in the Jabberwocky's death and his loyalty is divided by his duty to the natural order (a variation on one of the reasons that villains die or are marginalized in Zenescope comics circa 2012), one can speculate that the Dark One manipulated Jack into lending his might to Alicia to push Morrigan out of Limbo so she could take his throne on the Horde's behalf, on the false promise that she would resurrect Jack's family.
I love speculating, especially when I think I know exactly how much the eventual reality will or won't disappoint me.
And I'm not done yet because it's time to talk about the 1711 original tale!
The Cornish tale of Jack the Giant Killer follows a farmer's son named Jack as he roams the Arthurian countryside, tricking and slaying evil giants in a manner similar to how Odysseus helped his crew escape the Cyclops in the Odyssey, but with a tone more like the Grimm brothers' "Good Bowling and Card Playing" (the inspiration for Fear Not), being juvenile and nonchalant with its heroic presentation of criminal activity and gory violence, and rewarding Jack with fame, glory, magical items, and women for his actions. The setting of the tale (in the same time period, and featuring some of the same characters, as the Arthurian legends) is interesting because in Zenescope's adaptation, the greedy king addresses one of his knights by name as Percival, suggesting that the king may be King Arthur (though he is never named in the issue), and possibly connecting Jack the Giant Killer to Wonderland via the White Knight Tale.
Getting back to the comics, I'd like to note the Giant Killer issue's similarities to Jack and the Beanstalk.
Both issues feature a main character named Jack whose home and family are crushed by a giant as a result of his actions (acting on his own greed in the older story, as opposed to protesting the king's greed and selfishness here), and Jack the Giant Killer makes reference to magic seeds rather than beans (not stating what the seeds will bear, but perhaps relying on the reader's familiarity with Jack and the Beanstalk to fill in the gaps for themselves). We know from multiple points of reference throughout Grimm Fairy Tales that Sela's book held stories that were attuned to particular people with Falseblood origins in Myst or past lives as Highborns from Myst, allowing the characters to experience those connections and learn from them (or die horribly if they could not). We also know that the Yaga Order created the book (and others, including the Book Of the Lost) to chronicle tales of moral and historical importance from across the Realms Of Power. And we know from real world history and quotations that history is often made by the victor. So which is the truth? The Yagas could see all, so is it Sela's version from issue #8 and Jack was meant to be a villain from the start? Is it the old man's version and the king presented what would become Sela's version as a revisionist history that painted Jack as the villain? Does the truth lie somewhere in the middle, or did there just happen to be two different guys in Myst named Jack who got their families crushed to death by a giant because of greed and magic plants? The world may never lick its way to the center of that particular Tootsie Pop because comic book retcons also exist, but I like talking about these things.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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