GFT Retrospective #98: A Drink And A Tale

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

Like I said at the end of last week's post, this marks the end of my Volume Eleven reviews from the Trade Paperback issues, as there was no short story included. I'll be doing something special and Omnibusted for next week before getting back to the Grimm Universe with Volume Twelve.

The twist comes about because of a fairly recent movie, and because I got confused when I looked ahead into Volume Twelve and saw that today's issue up for review was also reprinted as the first issue there to fill out the Trade's page count.

The next order of business is to say that I once again did what I always do when an issue has a title so that I have more to talk about. In addition to the "it does what it says on the tin" definition of "A Drink and A Tale" that Gemini over-elaborated on for me because it's intelligence is artificial, I also found information on a semi-relevant Scottish fairy tale that I will talk more about in the review itself.

GFT #70: A Drink and A Tale

Covers: Fan Yang (The Little Mermaid), Ale Garza (Grimm Fairy Tales #64) & Sanju Nivangune (Lost Souls) & Jason Embury (Ever After), Mike DeBalfo (Jack the Giant Killer) & Ivan Nunes (Neverland One-Shot), Nei Ruffino (Inferno One-Shot).

You can see for yourselves below how consistently beautiful Yang's covers continue to be. The "bad ending" B cover has some credits discrepancy between the issue and the Trade's Cover Gallery print (hence the three names above), but it looks the most like Garza's previous work, and the color palette isn't warm enough to be Embury's, so I'm guessing it's Nivangune on colors. DeBalfo is back to Exclusives duty with a Sela/Baba Yaga wet t-shirt cover for Emerald City Comic Con that mixes fanservice with some decent background work. Ruffino is likewise on exclusive duty, pulling out a Sela photoshoot cover (not shown in the Cover Gallery but you can Google it easily enough) that reminds me of some of the early Wonderland interior art but also gives off "we're promoting The Jungle Book" vibes.

Art: Sheldon Goh (Sinbad Crossover, Alice In Wonderland), Sean Forney & Keith Garletts.

This issue's interior art is nostalgic for me. The line work and coloring seem strongly influenced by 90s Marvel animated series, particularly X-Men. There are a few pages near the end where the colors look flat and unfinished, but the penciling still carries it and everything is on model, even in the low-detail panels. My favorite interiors in these two Volumes so far.

Despite the title being 100% false advertising (no drinks are consumed and no tales are told) and there being more action than story in the issue itself, I can't hold either as a point against it because of how consistently good the art looks and the emotional stakes at play.

But to talk about the issue, I must first talk about "The Tale Of the Queen Who Sought A Drink From A Certain Well." It's the aforementioned Scottish fairy tale from 1548 (not collected until John Francis Campbell's Popular Tales Of the West Highlands in the late 1800s). It tells of an ailing queen who sends her three daughters in search of a well with healing waters (because fairy tales must follow the Rule Of Three). It's a Frog King/Prince kind of tale where the third and youngest daughter agrees to marry the creature in exchange for water from the well. When the princess heals her mother with the water and the frog follows her home, things get very stalker-y and Grimm, as the frog insists she honor her pledge of marriage...then has her cut off his head with a rusty sword! Because fairy tales, this turns the frog into a handsome prince, they get married, yada, yada, ever after. If the well has healing properties, why didn't any of the princesses think to throw the frog into the well? Why didn't the frog say it was a prince in the first place?

Those questions, valid as they are, don't matter.

What does matter is today's issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, which deals with Sela, Druanna, and Erik deciding which of them will get freed from Limbo (Spoilers: it's Sela), Jack reconciling his duty to Alicia and his desire for a proper combat challenge (which turns out to be way less of an internal conflict than would be considered interesting by good writing standards), and the usual Zenescope brand of last-minute magical bullshit that keeps everything from working out as perfectly or satisfying as it otherwise ought to.

Seeing as how Limbo only seems to have three locations (Alicia's throne room, the Arena, and a dungeon cell), our heroes begin the issue by escaping from the latter, hampering their own time-sensitive progress with indecision, witty banter, stupid questions, and unnecessarily wordy responses. That is, until Alicia reminds us that Erik's physical body still has an enchanted brain parasite that she has power over (because she can apparently just mimic the Piper's melody by whistling, as if he weren't already rendered narratively unnecessary in The Dream Eater Saga), causing Erik's soul form to go berserk with self-hatred. He engages Jack in a fight that would have been nice to see in print, but quickly loses and almost turns against Sela, if not for the Power Of Love.

Perhaps as a reference to the end of the Scottish fairy tale, Prince Erik instead smashes the Glass Coffin containing his physical form, aging it to death, killing the parasite within, and forfeiting his claim on the living world forever. Pledging his sacrificed freedom to Sela, Erik remains in Limbo.

But so does Druanna. And in addition to once again proving herself to be Sela's greatest mentor and most effective supporter, she leaves our heroine and us as readers with the tidbit that she also has a long-lost daughter, as well as the "we at Zenescope don't want to commit to anything just yet because we already have a triple-handful of plot points we may never address" copout line, "that is a story for another day, if we ever meet again" (to my knowledge, they never do).

In my research, I haven't found any mention of Druanna's daughter returning as a plot point, either, but considering that Druanna was once known as Gaia, real world Greek mythology offers a few...Titanic possibilities, chief among which is Rhea. I find this to be the most compelling possibility because Gaia/Gaea sided with the Olympians (Rhea's children) in the Titanomachia war, essentially betraying her own daughter.

But again (and I will say this over and over until I learn my lesson), speculation is disappointing and meaningless when facts show up to kill one's buzz, so in one final bit of nonsensical writing, the issue ends with a swerve that Jack was...acting?...as part of his and Alicia's plan to kick Sela out of Limbo and distract her mentor and true love from...something, something, Bad Girls stuff. Oh, and the lineup is revealed in full here as Alicia, Baba Yaga, the Goblin Queen, Venus, and...the Queen Of Spades!

My combined coverage of Grimm Fairy Tales Volumes Eleven and Twelve will continue in two weeks, so Stay Tuned! As for what's to come next week? That's all part of Death's design as I take a special, Omnibusted look at Zenescope's Final Destination comics!

In the meantime, 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 live comfortably in my own body, 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 Of Limbo.