GFT Retrospective #99: The Winter Witch

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Summer Ticketmaster.

Yeah, this isn't really the appropriate season to be reviewing a comic book titled The Winter Witch (let alone a movie with that title, which I will be eviscerating on Friday), but it's also maybe the perfect season for it because we modern humans are such wimps about temperatures that summer heat makes us beg for winter and the winter chill makes us pray for an early thaw. So to any of my Ticketholders who are living with triple-digit heat right now, you're welcome for the next four weeks of making you think about winter; I hope the power of suggestion will help you cool off when air conditioning fails.

As you can see from the above and right images, the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective is now officially into Volume Twelve, and I discovered something amiss with the ComiXology edition that I mentioned in my review of A Drink and A Tale from a few weeks ago. Said issue not being mentioned in the Table Of Contents for Volume Twelve, and the page numbering for The Winter Witch and future issues there being sequenced as if there is no duplicate printing of the Limbo arc's finale issue, led me to seek out scanned versions of both Volumes. Sure enough, Volume Twelve in its printed/scanned form begins with The Winter Witch, not A Drink and A Tale.

Furthermore, I would like to formally apologize to the Zenescope team for my repeated jabs at their Trade compilation efforts because it turns out that the whole, "do something special for the first issue's cover, then just smash the other issues in verbatim and call it a day" thing is actually a ComiXology problem. Zenescope's specially redesigned title pages are works of art, and every issue in these Trade Paperbacks gets one. I'm unsure of how far back this wonderful level of effort goes, but I apologize and will make the effort to highlight these title pages going forward, and to include the Volume Eleven ones when I get to the next Zenescope - Omnibusted (which I have already begun editing).

Now for the usual research portion of the review, which led me to the Winter Witch movie from 2022 that I will be reviewing on Friday, as well as a bit of what I was really looking for.

While there is no specific fairy tale from any region with the Winter Witch title, I did come across this article that details many Winter Witch, Snow Queen, and Snow Child characters from Italian, Norse, Japanese, and Slavic folklore. Typically, they are written (or in their original form, spoken) as also-rans for the Three Wise Men or gender-swaps for Santa Claus and Krampus, but there are a few anthropomorphic forces of nature (winter goddesses) and "good child gets wealth curse, bad child gets physically mutilated" tales out there as well (like Diamonds & Toads with a seasonal twist).

More modern literature and media presents variations on the "woman with cold magic" archetype, such as Elsa from the Frozen films and the White Witch of Narnia.

The title character from today's issue up for review falls more on the White Witch end of the morality spectrum.

GFT #71: The Winter Witch

I liked what I ended up doing with my Final Destination: Spring Break review, so I'm continuing that here.

The covers are great this issue. The "Prometheus Unbound" feel of Rich Bonk's cover (what a name!), Anthony Spay's throwback to the pulpy camp of Zenescope's early covers and the cool Winter Witch exclusive (yes, puns!), and Nei Ruffino's "let's promote The Jungle Book!" Naughty & Nice variants all look amazing.

I hate how the interior looks, though. Granted, Sela's emotions are on full display as she mourns her third loss of Erik (his kidnapping by the Horde, death in Hard Choices, and now having to leave him and Druanna behind in Limbo after he destroyed his own body) and vows to rescue her daughter from Venus, but everything is cast in this overwhelming green glow, and the orange text boxes with white print made my eyes want to rage-quit my face.

Things get slightly better as Alicia, Jack, and the Bad Girls take brief focus. The bluish backgrounds, deep shadows, and green glow enhance the drained hopelessness of many a lost soul as they are led and fed to the creatures that hatched from the Seeds Of Wrath. We get a little promotional Editor's Note for the then-upcoming Bad Girls miniseries out of this, too.

But then, it's back to Sela, and I've got to say that I like her better as a tiger-mom than as a simp, and I will never walk back from the hill that Druanna was her truest mentor. Because Snow White can talk to animals, Sela uses her connection to the Green power of Oz (and the Sacred Child of Neverland; I stand by this theory) to summon a horse and ride to a distant Mystic village. This would have come off as Mary Sue writing if we hadn't seen Druanna show her how to do it, so big points in Zenescope's favor there, even if it is a little Golden Age and cheesy that she can do this now.

In the village, Sela learns that it used to be the Realm Knights' training ground via a flashback with early Sinbad-esque penciling and a beautiful pastel color palette. While training an ambitious little horse-boy named Duela (who is obviously being set up as the sympathetic downfall pawn of the story that the villain offers a quick path to power so they can more easily ruin nice things), Thane and a red minotaur named Delmont end up offering asylum to a pale-skinned blonde woman whose true motives are pretty obvious from the title, especially if you sprung for Anthony Spay's C Cover back in the day. Back in the village, we also saw a blonde woman observing Sela from afar as the local barkeep told her the flashback. It doesn't appear to be Samantha Darren, so we'll find out next time if this present day blonde is the Winter Witch in disguise or a new character.

And that's it. The Realm of Myst gets slightly expanded and Sela has a new goal, but much of the issue is spent looking to the past and the future rather than actually moving the plot forward, and the first few pages felt like I was being visually negged into reading instead of attracted naturally. It did improve once the village tavern and the flashback took focus, though, and the cliffhanger ending leads me to believe that the sequel issue I'll review next week (it's literally titled like a Halloween movie or Goosebumps book sequel: Curse Of the Winter Witch) will continue where the flashback and the art quality left off.

Until then, I have a TBT '25 push of a fun, raunchy 2010s movie and a Just the Ticket on the 2022 Winter Witch movie waiting in the pipeline, so Stay Tuned 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 chill, 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 Cold.