GFT Retrospective #97: The Arena
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
Welcome to the arena, Ticketholders!
I want to start out on a positive, informative note for this week's review because I don't know if I'll be in a complimentary mood when it comes time to talk about the issue itself.
You know the game by now, so here are some things I came across while Googling "arena":
First, Google insisted on suggesting the name Aren (which is gender-neutral, but can probably be feminized by affixing an A to the end, taking us back to Arena). It is primarily stated to be of Scandinavian origin, but derives a variety of meanings from German (eagle), Hebrew (exalted/holy mountain), Egyptian (warrior lion), and Gaelic (Ireland) influences.
When Google wasn't auto-incorrecting my search terms, I learned that in addition to the basic definition of "arena" (an indoor sports venue that you'd find in most every major city), there is also an Arena swimwear company, an Arena human resources company that specializes in training, recruiting, and placing campaign staff, and ArenaNet, the development studio behind the Guild Wars games.
But all that matters to this review is the traditional definition, and it's time for me to get back into the thumbs-up/thumbs-down mindset of a Roman dictator...dictating the life or death of his warrior subjects for his own amusement.
GFT #69 (NICE!): The Arena
Covers: Fan Yang (The Little Mermaid), Pasquale Qualano (Lost Souls) & Jason Embury (The Gates Of Limbo), Jamie Tyndall (Lost Souls), Nei Ruffino (Inferno One-Shot).
All of these are great! Yang's work is beautiful, Qualano balances his muscular style well with a Dark One/Sela cover, Tyndall's style is unique and identifiable and he gets the chosen cover here, and Ruffino gets an opportunity at a risqué Sela/Belinda exclusive with apparent EBas and DeBalfo influences that still looks like her work. No complaints...on the covers.
No disrespect to the artists because I've seen how good their other work is, but the interior art for this issue truly is the height of bunge. My first impression upon seeing it was, "what the fuck am I looking at‽" And the answer: you know how sometimes when you want to print out a picture in really good quality, it takes a ton of ink, and just in handling it, you make the image smear into a blurry children's drawing so you wad it up and throw it away, but then you realize that you don't have any more ink or paper to do a reprint, so you pull the first one out of the trash, smudge it even more while trying to smooth it out, and then hang it on your wall anyway? Yeah, that's what every page of this issue looks like. Well, unless they're drawing Alicia or the octo-spider; they look amazing. The character poses and fight paneling even look kind of good. But Sela and Druanna? The fucking main characters of the Limbo arc‽ They're melted, smeared, "baby's first hieroglyphic" monstrosities that give my heart a migraine and my eyes an anal aneurysm.
First and foremost, I like that Druanna is still being more of a mentor to Sela than Shang ever was. Granted, to have these little training sessions, the story must get repetitive, as the two are once again thrown into a dungeon. But the image training that follows (Druanna helps Sela visualize her powers as a rose garden) introduces several concepts that will be important going forward. Rather than Sela's original, retconned reason for being special (the only Lowborn Guardian in history), Druanna reveals that Sela may be the only powered individual who can draw on the energy of all four Realms, which makes way more sense than the former. Red (Sela's pew-pew offensive power) is derived from Wonderland. Blue (the power to fly) comes from Neverland. I kind of take issue with this because of what we know about the Sacred Child's healing power and connection to nature, but I'll get to why I don't think it's that big of a deal shortly. Sela then asks about the Green and Gold roses, which Druanna is "cryptic" about. I take this to mean that Zenescope weren't ready to commit to that information just yet, but we've seen Sela use healing magic before, which is green. What else is green? Emeralds! Therefore, I think her Green power comes from Oz, and the Gold is from Myst. Now, getting back to the Sacred Child of Neverland, it has most commonly been depicted as a baby preserved in what looks like a giant emerald. Its power to heal and sustain fertile land is likewise shown to be Green. Also, we've seen powerful child figures be transplanted between Realms before (like the Jabberwocky), so it's possible that the Sacred Child of Neverland is actually from Oz!
I can't remember if this point is ever addressed, but one that will play a huge part in a few future events is the existence of a fifth color of rose in Sela's mind-garden: Black.
There's plenty of talk from Druanna about Alicia wanting Sela "unbalanced" by rage and emotional attachments, suggesting that this fifth, Dark power is what she's after. But nope! Instead, it's time for more repetitive scenery and plot as our heroines are thrown back into the titular Arena for another death match against the octo-spider, resulting in Druanna channeling Sela's Green through her staff to defeat it...and giving Alicia and the rest of the Bad Girls exactly what they do want: enough life energy to awaken something called the Seeds Of Wrath (which will be important in a future arc).
For one last stinger, though, the issue ends with Alicia forcing Sela, Druanna, and Erik to choose which one of the three of them to free from Limbo.
There is one more issue of Grimm Fairy Tales left in the Volume Eleven Paperback, so Stay Tuned until next week, look forward to a surprise break (puns!) from the Universe in the week to follow, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to stop and smell the roses, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
Comments
Post a Comment