GFT Retrospective #102: Winter's End

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.

Sadly, today marks the end of Winter In Summer, Ticketholders!
I sincerely hope that I have in some small way helped distract you from the triple-digit heat over this past month, and I'm looking forward to the summer fun that is to come in the near future of the Retrospective because there is some real deus-ass-crackina writing in this week's issue up for review. I promise to make an attempt at being kind on a sliding scale because I'm currently too sweaty and exhausted to be the peak savage that dwells in my heart.

GFT #74: Winter's End
Starting off, we have a rare treat in a Stjepan Šejić cover that doesn't feature bondage or choking. And it beautifully captures Sela tapping into her powers, which she does a few times this issue, so bonus points for being relevant to the plot. Then we have the Rich Bonk cover with Ramon Ignacio Bunge on colors as well as interior colors. It probably fits the previous issue better in terms of plot relevance, and Elden's hair color is wrong, but it's a good cover with a trippy visual. As for fanservice, there's Anthony Spay's Wizard World Philly Exclusive with Sela spilling melted ice cream in her cleavage, colored by Urszula "Ula" Moś. And for some early patriotic flare (this issue was from late June 2012), there's Billy Tucci and Ivan Nunes with a scantily clad Sela desecrating an American flag, and Monte Moore with a Naughty/Nice/Black & White triptych of Belinda (who is dead and will definitely never be seen again...🙄) in a camouflage bikini holding a really big gun.
Allan Otero is back from last issue, bringing even more bizarre, uncanny facial expressions, but thankfully (or not?) sharing interior pencils with Carlos Paul and Joyce Maureira, so the art quality varies from page to page and panel to panel. Speaking of drastic variations in quality and things that feel like they belong in the previous issue, Winter's End opens with Sela and Elden (whose name I keep forgetting, and who seems only to exist here as a witness to Sela's awesomeness—a word that I use with strong reservation) encountering the Winter Witch and her cursed thralls, who have somehow been waiting specifically for Sela's blood to help them escape Thane's time seal even though she wasn't born yet when he did that...I think. There's also some stuff later about how the Winter Witch can sense that Sela is a member of the Council Of the Realms (which, Sela can't be a member of something that doesn't currently exist, and her late father was never stated or shown to be a Council member if her blood is what matters, so that's wrong, too). This intro is two pages of "be alert for anything evil." "Like what?" "Like that!" cliché writing that feels like it should have been the previous issue's cliffhanger ending or not used at all because it's an overused cliché, and we immediately hard cut to Limbo. Thankfully (and I mean it this time), the "Elsewhere in Limbo" text box has been left burning in the gutter where it belongs, in favor of a simple, "- Limbo -" establisher. The Bad Girls (with Venus wearing the control crown and claiming the Nexus for herself because overly presumptuous sex deity and that's where all the hot beta males live) praise Elon in the name of revenge and send their pack of insatiable Wrath beasts to Earth, to be continued in GFT Presents: Bad Girls; please buy our comics, senpai.
With that four-page ad behind us, we take a dose of Ritalin and return to the regularly-scheduled battle that is already in progress. Surrounded and overwhelmed by the Winter Witch's generic monster forces (including, like, one or two of those Thanos-chinned guys from the Bonk cover), Elden can only offer stupid suggestions and false claims of victory (like a supporting Dragon Ball character) and ask for mid-battle exposition while Sela taps into Wonderland's Red for an AOE attack with an inconveniently terrible cooldown effect that leaves our duo worse off than before because now, Sela can't move.
Which means it's the perfect time for the aforementioned godly ass-pull. Literally. Despite being trapped in Limbo, Druanna somehow pulls Sela into the mind-garden to teach her a new color because the writers just figured out what they want the Gold of Myst to be able to do: purify evil and fix everything. So naturally, it's never mentioned in the series again because the series needs to happen.
With the Realm Knights' temple restored and a purified Winter Witch at her side, Elden plans to finally do something (offscreen) to clear her reputation, rebuild the Council, and spread hope across Myst until Blake and Bolder (who have the same mission for their Quest) inevitably show up in a future issue. Meanwhile, Sela uses the portal near the temple to get back to Earth and rescue her daughter.

How well that goes remains to be seen in next week's big milestone issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, but for now, I have to keep focus on this issue because it clearly couldn't hold its own focus long enough for a satisfactory resolution to a four-part story arc, which itself couldn't maintain focus with the multiple time periods and locations in play. Between the frontloaded appendix of a cliffhanger, the commercial for another comic book, the contrived plot device dimension that interrupted the flow of what little action there was, the nonsense dialogue, the useless side character, and the one-off power that deprives the audience of satisfying combat and conveniently solves everything (making it a literal Golden Age comic book ability), Winter's End is decidedly not good.

There; I said I would be relatively kind, and I was. Now, if you would 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 because gold is rare and non-standard these days, 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, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Ticketmaster,
Out Of the Myst.

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