GFT Retrospective #108: 2012 Wonderland Annual
a.k.a. The Retrospective Ticketmaster.
Remember, Ticketholders: the people and things in our immediate lives, and in the larger world, can only affect us (for good or ill) if we grant them the power to do so.
I know that I'm attributing a metaphysical philosophy to real, tangible things and that it sounds like I'm boiling broad, complex global issues down to "ignore it and it will go away," but what I'm really speaking to is our rights as people to reinforce what makes us happy, to make choices that benefit ourselves and those we love, and to withhold support from that which means us harm. Evil triumphs where good men do nothing, and the most insidious trick of evil is convincing the world that it doesn't exist.
The means by which my country came to be what it was may not have been the most noble, but the intent behind looking at the rest of the world and saying, "we don't want to be that because we've been on the bad end of it" was a thing to be admired at one time when I was growing up. Now, the leader of the country I admired until 2016 (and had briefly renewed hope for beginning in 2021 after his departure, despite a riot and his repeated evasions of justice marring the intervening administration's tenure) speaks of enacting a revisionist history while using the First Amendment as toilet paper, and we're not even out of his first year in office yet. People are being shot. People are losing their jobs for speaking their minds. People are being falsely deported. This isn't my America anymore, and I'm willing to bet it isn't your America anymore, either. Let's all do what we can to get our America back; otherwise, the madness will only get worse over the next three years, and take us all with it into a world that once only existed in fiction and nightmares.
And with that said, on to the review.
Wonderland Annual #4 (2012)
Perhaps the worst thing I can say about the 2012 Wonderland Annual is that there isn't much to say about it plotwise.
Following canonically from the Dream Eater Saga One-Shot, it's more of a bridge between the original trilogy and the ongoing series that was to come (which I will review starting next week and continue through the end of the year), rather than a story (or a collection of stories) in its own right like the first three Annuals were.
This fourth Annual continues the inner dialogue-heavy recap narration style that the One-Shot used so masterfully in between the horror homages, feline carnage, and school-set action. But here, the focus is almost exclusively on the surreal; what I lovingly call the Little Miss Muffet-ass Psychological Thriller Bullshit. Yes, the art depicting said bullshit (drawn by Mike Krome—misspelled as Crome on the credits page—and Dawn Schwartz—known professionally by her maiden name, Dawn McTeigue—with colors by Sabine Rich) is bursting with detailed, beautiful, gory imagery, but imagery is ultimately all that it amounts to. It is a literally graphic novel interpretation of every worst-case scenario that Calie Liddle can envision for herself and Violet (extradimensional kidnapping, murder, surrender to and corruption by Wonderland, the return of every horror she had previously overcome, thereby rendering her efforts pointless,...), and in serving that purpose, it is effective. The pointlessness of the illustration illustrates the point that I am using this post to make: that denial, deflection, and retreat are more damaging to reality and to one's own psyche than truth and action. I don't like that (within the Zene-scope and canon of a fictional work), almost nothing I am reading here is "real," but the message is one I can get behind, and I can appreciate the artistry of its delivery despite my biases.
Basically, the plot we get here is that, after fleeing from the Dream Eater and the soon-to-be-Dream-Eaten Cheshire Cat, Calie is putting off telling Violet about Wonderland as they drive through backgrounds that victims in road trip horror movies would drive through, and she almost runs their car off the road (twice) by falling asleep at the wheel, all the while recapping the trilogy for us in her mind and literally driving herself to the brink of madness, until she comes to the conclusion that she already came to at the beginning of Escape From Wonderland: that the best way to keep Violet safe and maintain her own sanity is to face everything like a badass momma and be true to what's real. I guess it's because she's traumatized and having to deal with the residual effects of Wonderland in a new, reality-based context with a daughter who is no longer the baby she was back then, and I have no real firsthand experience with raising children or suffering PTSD to be able to speak on the validity of what I'm about to say, but I find it annoying when characters are written to have to learn the same lesson more than once.
Again, the art in this Annual is beautiful, and the closing narration where Calie takes Violet to the ruins of her old house and has her first decent night of sleep in over a decade because she shared her burden and stopped letting her past fears define her present (until Wonderland does what Wonderland be doin' as of the new series) hits with a choking catharsis that makes the previous pages worth reading. But the repetitive moral was annoying, and the sheer deficit of any significant happenings beyond said conclusion was disappointing.
If you want to get into Wonderland, this and the One-Shot are decent recaps. I've even praised the One-Shot for its action and storytelling, and would say it is the superior issue of the two.
I'd also say you're better off setting aside the time to read the original trilogy and the Tales, if not also the previous Annuals, if you're more interested in a complete story than artistic sophistry with a TL;DR paint job.
Next week, as I said a few times here, I will begin reviewing the first Volume of the Wonderland Ongoing Series for Fall Of Wonderland and Wonderland Winter to close out the year. 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 face the madness in the world, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my wonderful content.
Here again is the release calendar for the rest of 2025, presented for your benefit, as well as my SMART-ness and sanity:
- October 1: GFT Retrospective #109: Wonderland #1
- October 8: GFT Retrospective #110: Wonderland #2
- October 15: GFT Retrospective #111: Wonderland #3
- October 22: GFT Retrospective #112: Wonderland #4
- October 29: GFT Retrospective #113: Wonderland #5
- November 5: Zenescope - Omnibusted #36: Wonderland Volume One (with One-Shot and Annual)
- November 12: GFT Retrospective #114: Wonderland #6
- November 19: GFT Retrospective #115: Wonderland #7
- November 26: GFT Retrospective #116: Wonderland #8
- December 3: GFT Retrospective #117: Wonderland #9
- December 10: GFT Retrospective #118: Wonderland #10
- December 17: Zenescope - Omnibusted #37: Wonderland Volume Two
- December 24: Zenescope - Omnibusted #38: Madness Of Wonderland
- December 31: Zenescope - Omnibusted #39: Down the Rabbit Hole (plus annual address)
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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