GFT Retrospective #100: Curse Of the Winter Witch
a.k.a. The Summer Ticketmaster
I've been a busy blogger, Ticketholders!
Or that's what I would say if I hadn't discovered Balatro this past week. For those who don't yet know, Balatro is Poker if it was a Roguelike, with thousands of special Joker and playing card enhancements that come to you at random (which can make meeting the high-end achievement criteria incredibly frustrating), all without the financial stigma of predatory gacha mechanics. The only financial investment is the initial $9.99 purchase price (which I didn't have to pay thanks to Google Play's points and survey rewards systems). It's addictive and you can hit a difficulty wall pretty quickly, making it a satisfying, financially neutral (if you save up for it on Play like I did), but cursed experience.
Speaking of curses, I am cursed with a lack of anything new to say about the Winter Witch after last week's issue and my review of the terrible, British, "horror" movie. But I clearly have no shortage of ways to reference curses. They're the demon-like antagonists of the Jujutsu Kaisen media franchise. Romani and voodoo priestesses in horror movies like Drag Me to Hell and Thinner use them to afflict any morally compromised fools who dare cross them. Much like the ubiquitous nature of the Bloodlines subtitle, "Curse" is a common word in movie and Goosebumps book titles. There's The Mummy's Curse from 1944, the Curse Of the Mummy's Tomb movie from 1964 and the unrelated Goosebumps book of the same name from 1993, The Curse Of Michael Meyers Halloween sequel, the Curse Of the Pink Panther sequel, Curse Of Chucky, and the four to five unconnected Curse movies from the late 80s that I'll probably have to review starting next week now that I know they exist, and that's just what I could find with a surface-level search. There are likely hundreds more in the low-budget video and streaming markets alone.
But I only have so much time in my "busy" off day schedule, and that opening wasn't just to promote a new game I discovered or provide a segue into talking about Curse movies; I genuinely have been busy with new content this week, as well. Friday's Uncle Sam review is nearly finished, I've compromised my sleep a bit to re-watch the first two My Hero Academia movies and most of Season Six (I'm at the anti-hero Deku part where my favorite new villainess tries to assassinate him, so I'm really restraining myself from putting off editing this review to finish the season right now because Studio Bones cooks with the fight animation and Horikoshi is an absolute chef of character writing). I have other projects in mind for the near future as well, but I think it makes more sense to devote a portion of Saturday's Time Drops to laying all of that out. For now, I have a comic book to review!
GFT # 72: Curse Of the Winter Witch
The interior work is more consistent (and consistently good) than in last week's issue, but I'm disappointed Zenescope couldn't get the artists back to continue the amazing flashback aesthetic that began there. It makes some of the continuity jumps and location establishment boxes even more confusing than they would be on their own, with three locations and two time periods to keep track of. There is the Nexus Gate in the Myst of the past, where Thane and Delmont have gone to protect the Gate's guard from Dark Horde fodder monsters, the Realm Knight training temple of the past where the majority of the issue takes place, the Limbo of the present (indicated as "Elsewhere in Limbo," as if the opening flashback at the Nexus Gate were happening in the Limbo of the present instead of being a flashback and also not in Limbo) where the Bad Girls continue to feed souls to their uncontrollable monster army and Venus and the Goblin Queen demonstrate a magic crown that controls them and definitely will not backfire or cause the villainous allies to turn on each other later, and the run-down village bar of the present where the barkeep finishes telling Sela the flashback story.
I was right but also a little wrong about the fate of Duela the horse-boy because once the flashback resumes, it's less a case of typical Grimm Fairy Tales soul-bargaining and more along the lines of what Snow Queen Belinda did to Timmy, or what a Stephen King villain would do to spread chaos: drive the pawn insane with a hypnotic suggestion so they kill or help the Winter Witch infect everyone else until paradise is reduced to a bloody, fiery hellscape. Thane manages to magically seal the training grounds somehow (in a time barrier, I think?) before the Curse Of the Winter Witch (it's in the title!) can spread any further, and this is revealed to be the inciting incident for the Council closing off all of the gateways between Realms (except for Esmeralda's ring, Sela's book, any number of other Provenance artifacts that were never mentioned or I forgot about, and two entire Provenance-born races—fairies and water nymphs).
Back in the bar, Sela makes it her mission to get to the Nexus Gate beyond the "haunted swamps" of the sealed lands (that shouldn't be sealed anymore because Thane sacrificed himself to free the Dream Eater and magic seals usually work like that across fiction), and she seems weirdly proud of the fact that she technically came back from the dead twice even though she was ugly crying at the beginning of the last issue about having to leave Erik and Druanna behind to do so.
The big swerve comes as Sela departs the bar to Neverending Story her way home: the bar was an illusion maybe, and the barkeep and mysterious blonde were Corruption and the Innocent in disguise!
Things are getting real cosmic real quick now, so Stay Tuned because I don't remember in detail what happens next, 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 don't feel cursed, 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.
Comments
Post a Comment