Zenescope - Omnibusted #34: Limbo, Winter, & The Return

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

Today, Ticketholders and Retrospective fans, I bring you a Giant-Sized, two Volume collection in the Zenescope - Omnibusted series, which I would not have done if not for ongoing issues (comic book puns intended) with the ComiXology editions of Zenescope's Trade Paperback compilations. While some, such as the Dream Eater Volumes and the Alice In Wonderland Trade Paperback were faithful translations to digital form on the part of the Amazon platform, with decent efforts made to make these books feel a bit more special than their individual issue releases, the majority fell victim to the "only have the Trade version for the first issue's cover, then just smash the other five-ish issues on there verbatim because we're overworked, tightly budgeted, in a time crunch, and prima facie lazy" method.
Volume Eleven was where the first signs of a possible disparity between Zenescope's Trade Paperback compilation efforts and the ComiXology edition became glaringly evident, though. So for the longest time, I have falsely and savagely criticized Zenescope for "efforts" that were in reality (or the digital approximation thereof because I often doubt the present physical truth of the once-great country I live in) ComiXology-borne problems. Granted, Zenescope themselves had long been on an uncreative streak with regard to Short Story inclusions in their Trade collections, only recently in Retrospective and Omnibusted continuity doing away with them altogether. But I would still like to formally apologize to the Zenescope team for my repeated jabs at their Trade compilation efforts (no sarcastic quotation marks this time). 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 that includes my own effort herein to replace the assets from the Volume Eleven reviews with their respective title pages out of respect and consistency.
On top of there being something wrong with the ComiXology edition of Volume Eleven that prevents the TPB's cover from loading properly (the Jack the Giant Killer cover loads instead), A Drink and A Tale appears in the ComiXology version of both Volume Eleven and Twelve despite 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. This massive discrepancy led me to seek out scanned versions of both Volumes through less mainstream channels, and sure enough, Volume Twelve in its printed/scanned form begins with The Winter Witch, not A Drink and A Tale.
So, using this error as an excuse to go big and stick it to The Man,
I chose to combine these two Volumes of reviews (and a few annual special issues as they seem contemporary) into this massive post the likes of which you haven't seen since my Wonderland Omnibus.

For some context on this first review, you can check out my thoughts on the Jack and the Beanstalk issue FROM August 19, 2017 (GFT Retrospective #7: Jack and the Beanstalk), or link to my original Jack the Giant Killer review above for a more updated context.
As you read on, you will notice some plot points in this issue up for review that echo the Jack character in Zenescope's eighth issue, just with some variation in detail. It's never suggested that the Jack character there is the same as the Giant Killer, especially not on Sela's part, though this can be waved away by her frequent instances of magically-induced amnesia at the time.

It's also important to know for later in the review and analysis that Jack the Giant Killer is the first Zenescope comic that I've talked about in some time to have a folk/fairytale source (this one a Cornish tale from 1711 that was adapted much later—1962—into a film, and then re-adapted in 2013 along with Jack and the Beanstalk into Jack the Giant Slayer, which received an Asylum mockbuster companion titled Jack the Giant Killer in the same year. I haven't seen any of the films or read the original fairytale, so as any good informative writer does in a crunch, any details I mention regarding these source materials will be straight from Wikipedia. Now, onto the newer issue!

Grimm Fairy Tales #65
Jack the Giant Killer
The same, detailed, expressive work we've come to expect from the duo, just with a noticeably darker palette to offset the drawing style and match the issue's tone.
Five covers for this one, with DeBalfo once again on Exclusives duty and Basaldua providing the two retail covers. Nivangune colored the chosen EBas cover, and the beast Nei Ruffino colored the other four. Even if you consider that DeBalfo's covers are duplicates, it's all good, quality art. EBas gets bonus points for the chosen cover looking different from his usual work (like the B Cover), and Ruffino is impressively prolific and talented as both an inker and a colorist.
This is the first issue of Grimm Fairy Tales since the defeat of the Dream Eater, and while it does almost nothing to move the plot forward, it serves its purpose of establishing a clear point of continuity and setting up a future threat.
Following a cold opening where Sela has buried Belinda and finished paying her respects (Belinda died in her arms at the end of the Dream Eater Saga) and Druanna reveals that Blake and Bolder have already set out on their Quest to re-form the Council Of the Realms, the issue awkwardly and forcefully segues into the titular story.
How did Druanna know that some random old man would be telling some random children the exact story she wanted Sela to hear? Why didn't Druanna just tell Sela the story herself? Does it matter and do I care? I mean, I care that it's bad, unnecessary writing because writing quality matters, but I don't really care to know the in-Universe reason why such redundant contrivances happened.
I don't really even care about the contents of the Jack the Giant Killer origin tale because it's your basic Horde fodder story about a guy named Jack who's related to the queen of some corrupt asshole's kingdom from a time before the Dark One began his Universal domination schemes, when royalty had the power to command giants. And because this evil king cared more about wealth than he did society, he used his giant to force his people into agricultural slavery to harvest the benefits of some ambiguously undefined "magic seeds." So when Jack drives the farmers to revolt because of a travel ban that would prevent him from fetching a mage from Tallus to cure his wife's illness, the king sends the giant to smash Jack's home and family to pieces. Thus Jack becomes the first and only human to ever kill a giant, making himself both a figure of legend and a fugitive of the Council (who set up the king/giant hierarchy in the first place...maybe to help develop the land of Myst in the wake of the dragon calamity?).
So because giant racism (I mean that both in the sense of racism against giants and that racism itself is a problem of colossal proportions) and both Jack and the Council lacking pertinent information that should have been brought to their respective attentions yesterday,
but also communication being conveniently impossible so the matter is never cleared up, the Council hunts Jack, the giants flee into the mountains because they fear Jack, the kings of Myst are left defenseless, and Jack is found by the Dark One, who (say it with me!) promises Jack the power to take revenge on the giants in exchange for his eternal service in the Dark Horde (even though he already killed the giant who turned his home and family into bloodstained debris, so if you thought it would've made more sense for the Dark One to have Morrigan or his apprentice or Charon or Doc Carou or Acacia restore Jack's family instead of giving him giant strength so he could commit gianticide, you'd be right...kind of).
As incompetent as the Dark One often is with his choice of subordinates (just look at Pinocchio, the Piper, Erica's foster family, Gruel, Sela and Belinda, Orcus, Pan, Baba Yaga, and even Cindy and Fenton, all of whom were either too fixated on their own vices to survive, too loyal to survive, too stupid to be more than mildly situationally effective, too overpowered to be narratively compelling, or just straight up betrayed him), he is also brilliant at using certain of his people to eliminate threats to his conquest. If Jack's family were restored, he would have ended up as one of those who focus more on their reward for their loyalty than the loyalty itself, and the Dark One would have had to manipulate someone else into killing him, which would have been a waste of resources. As a powerful tool of genocide, Jack was easier to manipulate, even with the inevitably that he would one day have no more giants to kill, and therefore have no purpose. It's basic cult psychology that those who feel they are without purpose are easier to manipulate than those who are fulfilled on a deeper, more consistent level, and giving someone the illusion of purpose (or a group of people a shared but subjective purpose like getting into Heaven or Making America Great Again) is even "better." Like the old song says, "Edroh Krad eht Nioj," people!
I'm joking, of course; but as much as I've crapped on this issue for its contrived writing and for being another boilerplate Zenescope villain origin story, it's kind of made me...appreciate?...the Dark One and his Horde as a study in cult behavior. Yes, Grimm Fairy Tales is a comic book franchise where public domain folk characters in shiny bodysuits, bikini armor, lingerie, and booty shorts throw magic at each other, but as cringe as it can be, the subtext (and sometimes just the text) is more fascinating than you'd expect.
I also understand that "we drew attention to how predictable our story is, so the self-awareness makes the bad go away" has become a much-derided writing tactic in recent years, particularly in the movie industry, but Sela's newly discovered (and tragically ended too soon) connection to Belinda informing her understanding of the Giant Killer's origin was another highlight for me.
As was the ending, because remember how I said Jack was easy to manipulate and I rattled off a list of Death characters who could have revived Jack's family? Well, the whole point of this issue was to introduce Jack as a threat (ignoring all the usual, in-Universe, non-meta questions like why Jack only became relevant now if he is that powerful), and to drop the bomb that he is specifically a threat to Sela because he has pledged himself to the service of the Limbo Queen. Never mind how contrived this all is (because I've harped on that enough for one day, and I'm trying to be objective here), I love how much this lets me read between the lines. Like, it kind of seems like the Dark One is trying to edge Morrigan out because of his ties to the Ebony Blade. We've seen that it can kill the unkillable in Wonderland (why no one thought to use it against the Dream Eater is beyond me, since we also saw that the Dream Eater was incapable of killing Morrigan), including the Jabberwocky, who was stated to have been installed as a puppet ruler of Wonderland by the Dark One (like Pan in Neverland) before Alice In Wonderland retconned it. And whenever the Blade is used, Morrigan is duty-bound to usher the killed soul(s) to the Final Death. So possibly because Morrigan had an indirect hand in the Jabberwocky's death and his loyalty is divided by his duty to the natural order (a variation on one of the reasons that villains die or are marginalized in Zenescope comics circa 2012), one can speculate that the Dark One manipulated Jack into lending his might to Alicia to push Morrigan out of Limbo so she could take his throne on the Horde's behalf, on the false promise that she would resurrect Jack's family.
I love speculating, especially when I think I know exactly how much the eventual reality will or won't disappoint me.
And I'm not done yet because it's time to talk about the 1711 original tale! 
The Cornish tale of "Jack the Giant Killer" follows a farmer's son named Jack as he roams the Arthurian countryside, tricking and slaying evil giants in a manner similar to how Odysseus helped his crew escape the Cyclops in the Odyssey, but with a tone more like the Grimm brothers' "Good Bowling and Card Playing" (the inspiration for Fear Not), being juvenile and nonchalant with its heroic presentation of criminal activity and gory violence, and rewarding Jack with fame, glory, magical items, and women for his actions. The setting of the tale (in the same time period, and featuring some of the same characters, as the Arthurian legends) is interesting because in Zenescope's adaptation, the greedy king addresses one of his knights by name as Percival, suggesting that the king may be King Arthur (though he is never named in the issue), and possibly connecting Jack the Giant Killer to Wonderland via the White Knight Tale.
Getting back to the comics, I'd like to note the Giant Killer issue's similarities to Jack and the Beanstalk.
Both issues feature a main character named Jack whose home and family are crushed by a giant as a result of his actions (acting on his own greed in the older story, as opposed to protesting the king's greed and selfishness here), and Jack the Giant Killer makes reference to magic seeds rather than beans (not stating what the seeds will bear, but perhaps relying on the reader's familiarity with Jack and the Beanstalk to fill in the gaps for themselves). We know from multiple points of reference throughout Grimm Fairy Tales that Sela's book held stories that were attuned to particular people with Falseblood origins in Myst or past lives as Highborns from Myst, allowing the characters to experience those connections and learn from them (or die horribly if they could not). We also know that the Yaga Order created the book (and others, including the Book Of the Lost) to chronicle tales of moral and historical importance from across the Realms Of Power. And we know from real world history and quotations that history is often made by the victor. So which is the truth? The Yagas could see all, so is it Sela's version from issue #8 and Jack was meant to be a villain from the start? Is it the old man's version and the king presented what would become Sela's version as a revisionist history that painted Jack as the villain? Does the truth lie somewhere in the middle, or did there just happen to be two different guys in Myst named Jack who got their families crushed to death by a giant because of greed and magic plants? The world may never lick its way to the center of that particular Tootsie Pop because comic book retcons also exist, but I like talking about these things.

Next, let's talk about The Gates Of Limbo.
I Googled "gates of limbo" to see if there were any fairy tales or folklore with that as a title or plot point. The top five results were Doom-related (fitting, considering what the majority of Dark Horde fodder combatants look like), with the Gemini summary and subsequent results pointing to Dante Allighieri's The Inferno (where Dante designates Limbo as the first circle of Hell, a fairly nice circle that is Heaven-ish but not actual Heaven, assigned to non-Christians and the unbaptized, which is probably the nicest that any non-Papal Christian in history not named Jesus has ever been to such a population). Another particularly interesting result was J.T. McIntosh's Six Gates From Limbo, a religious-themed science-fiction novel from the 60s that turns the Adam & Eve story into a human guinea pig bottle episode kind of thing.
So, not much to the comparative analysis this week aside from more of Zenescope redefining their cosmic architecture (which I will get to shortly), but I enjoy finding this stuff and sharing it with you all.

GFT #66: The Gates Of Limbo
Ross' cameo-esque, heavily shadowed but simple style looks so beautiful and epic, and Giles-Rivera brings menace and detail to the villain-focused panels, both artists' work further enhanced by Embury and Swan's coloring. The use of the artists' distinct styles to literally illustrate hero and villain perspective theming is brilliant.
I'm not a big fan of the covers this week despite the names behind them. It's a case of the art being ugly (Yang's cover makes Sela look like a drag queen who doesn't know how to put on makeup, and the Qualano/Parvanov art is really over-defined) or fanservice (Moore's Naughty/Nice Christmas exclusives look good for multiple reasons, but are just empty smut otherwise). Surprisingly, Mike DeBalfo is the positive standout here, with his cover of Sela waiting for a train. It's up to his usual drawing standard but doesn't entirely look like his style and is more tasteful than his other work, and Nivangune's colors bring it to life.
Getting into the story, this issue follows Sela, Druanna, and a small handful of nondescript knight extras as they escort The Glass Coffin holding Prince Erik's soulless body to The Gates Of Limbo. Along the way, they come into conflict with the forces of the Limbo Queen, ultimately coming face-to-face with Jack the Giant Killer (who looks like an amalgamation of Ralf Jones from King Of Fighters, the Hero-Killer Stain from My Hero Academia, and an evil Ninja Turtle) in the final panel.
That's the basic plot of the issue, but there's much more to delve into regarding the series' worldbuilding, cosmology, and foreshadowing of future events.
On departing, Sela and Druanna share farewells with the newly crowned King Of Tallus, Jorgan, the greedy, sleepy-eyed cousin of the late King Wilhelm (whom Orcus killed at the end of Volume Ten). And because no country is ever allowed stability for long (in fiction, of course) and the writers can't decide if Sela is a righteous heroine driven to action at the merest mention of suffering or a selfish, hyper-focused simp who will do anything to save her man, she decides that the plight of Tallus (a strategically positioned kingdom that was almost subjugated and stripped of its resources by an army of monsters before their greatest king ever was assassinated and succeeded by his greedy cousin) is no longer her problem. I swear she was the voice of reason in a previous issue where a peasant woman in Myst said the Dark One should just take Earth and leave her Realm alone, but whatever motivates our "heroine," I guess....
After bitch-slapping Sela with a taste of the Uncle Ben speech, Druanna also lets slip that Limbo is a Realm, or more properly (because adding hierarchy is the best, or at least, the most Dragon Ball, way to retcon your cosmology without contradicting it) a sub-Realm. So that explains why places like the Inner Sanctum Of the Nexus, the Inferno, and Epilogue exist separately from the Nexus and the Realms Of Power. Each of the five Realms has its own Limbo, and it's unclear which goes by what name, if the Inferno is a Limbo, or if the terminology is interchangeable, but Druanna mentions Hell and Hades (which connects back to the Greco-Roman pantheon that we've seen so far with Venus and Ares, and will be important for a long time going forward), and that each Limbo sub-Realm operates according to the whim of its ruler.
This segues into talk of Alicia, the current Limbo Queen, that I will take as light confirmation of her being Acacia from the Sinbad Crossover (plus the scantily clad design, pale skin, and dark 80s hair).
But my memory and speculation skills are far from perfect, because we also learn here that Alicia did not encounter Jack until after she had already usurped the throne from Morrigan, and that Jack became her lieutenant after she somehow freed him from his obligation to the Horde, potentially meaning that Alicia is not in league with the Dark One and never was.
Who she is in league with, though, has a ton of cool implications because in addition to the Goblin Queen and Jack, we learn here that Baba Yaga has aligned with her, too. Now calling herself Malice, Baba Yaga mentions that they met mere weeks ago...but a millennium has passed from Alicia's perspective. And Baba Yaga stole something from her at the time. That sounds like another Acacia confirmation to me!
Also, while Alicia sends Jack and a manageable contingent of small, dragon-like monsters to test the main duo, she incentivizes Baba Yaga to join a "party" that, if I remember correctly, will turn out to be the titular Bad Girls of a future miniseries.
Before Sela and Druanna are attacked, though, it's time to draw attention to Sela's sword that she's apparently been carrying around since Nyssa forged it in Hard Choices, and to the fact that Sela's power (which had been growing uncontrollably during her time trapped in Myst) is comprised of different types of energy. We've seen the variety of things she can do and the different colors of her energy in past issues, so it's kind of easy to figure out if you've been paying attention, but if you haven't, it will come up again later, whether or not they end up visiting the master blacksmith who works at the exposition dump.

This next reviewed issue of Grimm Fairy Tales also has a title (Lost Souls) so, I did what I do to see if there are any obscure fairy tales or other media with that title.
The most known (I'm assuming, because I keep seeing YouTube videos about movies I watched—that exist, and are not Mandela Effects—that "nobody saw," so I'm starting to call my own knowledge of film popularity into question) is probably the 2000 "stop the AntiChrist" drama with Winona Rider, Lost Souls (because apparently the Y2K scare and the year of "the number of the Beast, but upside-down" were perfect reasons to make an industry bubble's worth of "The Omen, but [insert movie genre here], and it sucks" projects like that).
But there's also 1992's Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite's debut novel about yaoi vampire incest where the main human character is a rapist named Steve.
On the lighter side of literature, there's last year's Lost Souls: A Faerie Tale by T.R. Sharrow. Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited and ComiXology Unlimited are still two different subscriptions because Bezos likes money, so I don't know much about it beyond the synopsis of a smart-mouthed girl doing the opposite of what's supposed to keep her alive so that she can help a lost shadow return home in a parallel dimension.
Finally, there is a metal band called Lost Soul, an upcoming JRPG called Lost Soul Aside, the Lost Souls enemies from Undertale, and Google insisted on showing me YouTube videos of Fairy Tail Roblox gameplay for reasons that I have no interest in investigating.
So with that said, let's talk about the issue itself, which has nothing to do with the AntiChrist, vampire sex crimes, heavy metal, or random video games, but does have two women going to another Realm to save someone, only to get way in over their heads.
GFT #67: Lost Souls
I like Abrams' style. Feathery shadows without the image looking blurry, detailed texture, paper-thin outlines that look sketch-like without being rough, and dynamic posing unlike anything I can recall seeing before in a Zenescope comic. And Colwell's coloring is just as detailed, complementing Abrams' art perfectly. It's a shame this would be the penciler's only Zenescope credit, but Colwell would be back to color some Wonderland titles in the near future.
Some better covers here compared to the previous issue, and some new names join the crew. DeBalfo moves up to the A Cover of Alicia with Rodriguez on colors, making the scantily clad Queen Of Limbo look fittingly menacing. Qualano and Nivangune show with the Trade's chosen cover that they are better at drawing men and action stills than they are with female characters. Tyndall's intricate, bold style is unmistakable and he will be featured a lot more in future issues. The same goes for Chatzoudis and his retro watercolor style, though his two exclusive "Ski Girl" covers here are not featured in the Cover Gallery, so you'll have to squint and zoom to see them properly.
Moving on to the story, we're right back where we left off, with Sela and Druanna facing down Jack the Giant Killer at the Gates Of Limbo. Despite knowing who they are up against, and ignoring Sela's Willy Wonka attempts at warning them, the three remaining fodder knights in the duo's company are quickly bisected at the waist with a single swing of Middle-Aged Highborn Giant Killer's sword, he no-sell's Druanna's magic, and Sela only manages to keep her arm because, conveniently, she never figured out how to remove Death's bracer.
Inside Limbo, we get a glimpse of Alicia talking to a woman who I'm guessing is Venus because Belinda’s dead and the mystery woman expresses a lack of personal experience with Sela. So, add another Bad Girl to the ranks of Alicia, the Goblin Queen, and Baba Yaga?
That's fine and cool, but then Sela wakes up and the writing goes to shit for a moment (to say nothing of the punctuation mistakes and ignorance of character voice I noticed, but that could be on the letterer, and it doesn't stand out as much as the writing itself) with Alicia saying she couldn't remove the ring Sela is wearing (not even by cutting it off, apparently) because it's a Gateway Ring and "must be given freely." Maybe this is a rule specific to Limbo (because each afterlife sub-Realm operates according to its ruler's will, remember?), but I'm still calling bullshit on this because we saw that Belinda was able to just yank it off of one of Esmeralda's tentacles during the Dream Eater Saga. The Sea Witch even protested! Maybe the logic still works because she technically wasn't wearing the ring?
Anyway, Alicia threatens to feed Druanna to a giant, red octopus/spider monster that's one of the coolest, most terrifying things I've ever seen, and Sela hands over the ring. Note also that Alicia couldn't remove Death's bracer from Sela, either (though her sword—which was given sudden focus in the previous issue—and Druanna's staff are conspicuously absent for the rest of the issue, if not the arc, for obvious but incongruous reasons). I hope that ends up being important later....
In the meantime, Sela and Druanna are thrown into a Limbo dungeon, which means it's the perfect time (I'm not sure how sarcastic I'm being here) for Druanna to teach Sela more about her powers. Last issue, Sela blew up some pillars and made a Yamcha crater by thinking about the color red; now, we learn that blue energy makes her fly...until she loses focus and crashes on her ass. I don't think these little training sessions are integrated particularly well with the story, but I like that Druanna is actually being an effective mentor (which Sela hasn't had before, to keep being brutally honest about the dead Asian horse in the room).
Before she can teach Sela how to fall with style instead of a fractured tailbone, Alicia shows up to give Sela a surprise: the last hour with Erik she may ever get! Of course, the Bad Girls are voyeuristic, so the issue ends with them watching Sela and Erik in a magic mirror. Alicia herself, the Goblin Queen, and Baba Yaga are fully visible, but the fourth is kept in shadow even though a discerning reader (especially one with shaky Future Knowledge like me) may already know who they are.
It also might be important to note that Druanna thinks Alicia never intended for the octo-spider to eat her because she wants something from her. Again, I hope this is important later because of the plots I do remember getting dropped.
This issue, as I mentioned in the Art section, is a joy to look at because of the style and all of the dynamic poses Sela gets drawn in. The energy effects look especially good in Abrams and Colwell's style, too. But as for the story, there isn't much going on, and what is going on is very "and then suddenly this happened." I do like what the story gives us (aside from the logical inconsistencies I mentioned), but it isn't strung together very well and moves along too quickly, like the issue was being padded with things that needed to happen to make other things happen, whether it makes sense or not.

We'll see if things improve in the next issue, right after these words about immortality: Fall Out Boy has a song called "Immortals" that was featured on their American Beauty/American Psycho album. Because I seldom watch Disney movies anymore, I was unaware (until I started writing this post) that the song was first written for Big Hero 6.
More fitting to the bulk of the plot in today's issue up for review, and staying on the topic of movies, Mirror, Mirror director Tarsem Singh brought us the 300- and Clash Of the Titans-alike Greek myth epic, Immortals (bolstered slightly by its 11/11/11 release date campaign).
Speaking of 300 (a graphic novel/film sensationalization of the battle of Thermopylae), Immortals was a term coined by Greek historians to describe the 10,000-man Persian army who were said to be present at that battle and others at their time. Many died, of course, but their battle tactics and rapid replenishment of their numbers gave their opponents the impression of immortality.
There are plenty of other songs, movies, bands, video games, books, and other media that I could list here, but I'd just be copying and paraphrasing entire sections of the internet, and I don't have that kind of time, so Google, Wikipedia, and let's move on to the review.

GFT #68: The Immortals
After the slightly off look of the Gates Of Limbo cover, Fan Yang is back to form with the beautiful cover below. Qualano's Druanna cover with Nunes on colors is his best female-focused cover so far, and Nei Ruffino handles colors for the Naughty/Nice St. Patrick's Day exclusives by a "new" pinup-style Zenescope collaborator that I neglected to mention in my Alice In Wonderland coverage (but he's done covers for Zenescope before that, from a time when I wasn't mentioning artists by name in the Retrospective yet), Francesco! (that's how he signs his art, but I'm also kind of excited).
I can't identify with complete confidence which artist did what, but I'm assuming that the art in the first half of the issue (and maybe some of the last few pages) is Smith's. There are some cool, anatomy-defying visuals that stand out, but it's mostly square-jawed faces that are all chin, with expressions that are either so low on detail that they look Asiatic, or bug-eyed and screaming like the "badly drawn pointing guy" meme. On the other end, Cosentino's art for Erik's lore dump to Sela is much more on model. Swan's coloring is all over the place, making Venus a brunette (she's supposed to be blonde, which she is later in the issue, and was in previous appearances) and washing everything that isn't purple or red in these muted, muddy tones and stock, Photoshop-looking lighting gradients. It's boring and sometimes downright ugly to look at.
As for the story, the issue opens with a middle finger to continuity as we're shown "The Long Ago," when Alicia had already usurped the throne of Limbo (which I thought had happened more recently, according to Morrigan in a previous issue). She brings the Dark One a box containing a mind-controlling starfish (so, legally distinct Starro because different size and color) that is a relative of the Jabberwocky and was enchanted by the Pied Piper (marking this sequence as a lead-up to the Horde using Erik to slaughter the Council in GFT #49 and Hard Choices, so this is fairly recent in the timeline). In exchange, the Dark One just gives Jack to her (which I found disappointing because my speculation was objectively cooler). I may have been wrong about the circumstances, but my cult behavior analysis was spot on because Alicia freeing Jack from servitude and purpose was what secured his loyalty.
We quickly learn that the Dark One has already captured Prince Erik and that Venus is in possession of his and Sela's infant daughter (who is blonde here despite having dark hair like Sela's the next time we see her much, much later). After a cool, Wonderland-esque visual of Erik getting Starro'd so hard his skull explodes,
things return to present day, where Sela is simping so bad that she cuts off Erik's attempts at giving her important information and forgets that his body and soul are able to be in different places at the same time so that said time can be wasted with stupid questions because exposition needs to happen.
Then the art gets good as Erik tells Sela of a group of evil Mystics who predate the Dark One and derive their strength from human worship: the Olympic pantheon.
Yep, Zeus, Ares, Venus (because the Greek and Roman gods are basically interchangeable), and the rest invaded the Nexus and grew in power from humanity revering them as gods, "mingled" with the Lowborn to create demigods (some of the first Falsebloods), and then all of the famous Greco-Roman myths happened, culminating in a war between Venus' demigod army, humanity, and the rest of the pantheon, which she lost. We learn that Venus went into hiding and wound up training the Dark One to surpass her and succeed where she failed.
This issue confirms what I remember about the Dark One having the Jabberwocky installed as ruler of Wonderland, contradicting what was told to us in Alice In Wonderland. The Dark One says that at this point, Oz remains unconquered, and the Emerald City holds something of great power that he wants.
Erik's exposition flashback then jumps to a prelude, alternate perspective, and continuation for Sela's dream in The Grateful Beasts and her NSFW nightmare from Grimm Fairy Tales #59 (where Ares abducted Sela so a pack of goblins could strip her naked and pull out her baby).
Now, I'm not going to outright spoil anything for those of you who haven't read ahead yet, but this is where I had a major, "how did I miss that the first time‽" moment because when Erik breaks into the Dark One's Vegas stronghold and gets ambushed by Orcus, the Dark One says not to worry about him because the Horde have "Sela's daughter and the Warlord Of Oz in our grasp."
I've dunked on Zenescope many times for their lack of attention to continuity, but it's moments like this, and the final page of Rumpelstiltzkin, that remind me how impressively long of a game they're capable of playing when it counts, and how subtle but powerful it can be when you discover little things like this. We won't learn the identity of the Warlord Of Oz for another fifty-plus numbered GFT issues, or three to four years of publication time, but if you think about this quote hard enough, you can probably figure it out for yourselves.
With that bombshell dropped, the happy couple's hour of togetherness is up, and Alicia takes Sela to another part of Limbo to make her watch as she uses Sela's ring to...bring Venus to Limbo‽
Wait; I thought Venus was already in Limbo! Then who was the mysterious shadowy figure from last issue?
Whoever it turns out to be, I'm sure we'll learn the answer soon enough, but the issue ends here.

Wow; Bad Girls, a Quest, and now Greco-Roman gods! Things are heating up in the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective, but it's time to step into the arena, where it definitely helps to keep a positive, informed mindset so that one can be effective in their savagery when the moment literally strikes.
So of course, I went about researching my savagery-worthy opponent by Googling "arena" (as I do), and discovered the following: First, Google insisted on suggesting the name Aren (which is gender-neutral, but can probably be feminized by affixing an A to the end, taking us back to Arena). It is primarily stated to be of Scandinavian origin, but derives a variety of meanings from German (eagle), Hebrew (exalted/holy mountain), Egyptian (warrior lion), and Gaelic (Ireland) influences.
When Google wasn't auto-incorrecting my search terms, I learned that in addition to the basic definition of "arena" (an indoor sports venue that you'd find in most every major city), there is also an Arena swimwear company, an Arena human resources company that specializes in training, recruiting, and placing campaign staff, and ArenaNet, the development studio behind the Guild Wars games.
But all that matters to this review is the traditional definition, and it's time for me to get back into the thumbs-up/thumbs-down mindset of a Roman dictator...dictating the life or death of his warrior subjects for his own amusement.

GFT #69 (NICE!): The Arena
All of these are great! Yang's work is beautiful, Qualano balances his muscular style well with a Dark One/Sela cover, Tyndall's style is unique and identifiable and he gets the chosen cover here, and Ruffino gets an opportunity at a risquƩ Sela/Belinda exclusive with apparent EBas and DeBalfo influences that still looks like her work. No complaints...on the covers.
No disrespect to the artists because I've seen how good their other work is, but the interior art for this issue truly is the height of bunge. My first impression upon seeing it was, "what the fuck am I looking at‽" And the answer: you know how sometimes when you want to print out a picture in really good quality, it takes a ton of ink, and just in handling it, you make the image smear into a blurry children's drawing so you wad it up and throw it away, but then you realize that you don't have any more ink or paper to do a reprint, so you pull the first one out of the trash, smudge it even more while trying to smooth it out, and then hang it on your wall anyway? Yeah, that's what every page of this issue looks like. Well, unless they're drawing Alicia or the octo-spider; they look amazing. The character poses and fight paneling even look kind of good. But Sela and Druanna? The fucking main characters of the Limbo arc‽ They're melted, smeared, "baby's first hieroglyphic" monstrosities that give my heart a migraine and my eyes an anal aneurysm.
Okay; I'm done being savage for now because the writing that accompanies these wonderful covers and this mess of an interior has a ton to offer.
First and foremost, I like that Druanna is still being more of a mentor to Sela than Shang ever was. Granted, to have these little training sessions, the story must get repetitive, as the two are once again thrown into a dungeon. But the image training that follows (Druanna helps Sela visualize her powers as a rose garden) introduces several concepts that will be important going forward. Rather than Sela's original, retconned reason for being special (the only Lowborn Guardian in history), Druanna reveals that Sela may be the only powered individual who can draw on the energy of all four Realms, which makes way more sense than the former. Red (Sela's pew-pew offensive power) is derived from Wonderland. Blue (the power to fly) comes from Neverland. I kind of take issue with this because of what we know about the Sacred Child's healing power and connection to nature, but I'll get to why I don't think it's that big of a deal shortly. Sela then asks about the Green and Gold roses, which Druanna is "cryptic" about. I take this to mean that Zenescope weren't ready to commit to that information just yet, but we've seen Sela use healing magic before, which is green. What else is green? Emeralds! Therefore, I think her Green power comes from Oz, and the Gold is from Myst. Now, getting back to the Sacred Child of Neverland, it has most commonly been depicted as a baby preserved in what looks like a giant emerald. Its power to heal and sustain fertile land is likewise shown to be Green. Also, we've seen powerful child figures be transplanted between Realms before (like the Jabberwocky), so it's possible that the Sacred Child of Neverland is actually from Oz!
I can't remember if this point is ever addressed, but one that will play a huge part in a few future events is the existence of a fifth color of rose in Sela's mind-garden: Black.
There's plenty of talk from Druanna about Alicia wanting Sela "unbalanced" by rage and emotional attachments, suggesting that this fifth, Dark power is what she's after. But nope! Instead, it's time for more repetitive scenery and plot as our heroines are thrown back into the titular Arena for another death match against the octo-spider, resulting in Druanna channeling Sela's Green through her staff to defeat it...and giving Alicia and the rest of the Bad Girls exactly what they do want: enough life energy to awaken something called the Seeds Of Wrath (which will be important in a future arc).
For one last stinger, though, the issue ends with Alicia forcing Sela, Druanna, and Erik to choose which one of the three of them to free from Limbo.

There's one more issue of Grimm Fairy Tales left in the Volume Eleven Paperback, but for the ComiXology reasons I mentioned way up at the top, it is also the unofficially glitchy beginning of Volume Twelve that, at the time, I thought was meant to pad out its length. Though I didn't think to research this occurrence back then, I did still do 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
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.
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 the issue of Grimm Fairy Tales that it was loosely adapted into, 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 remembrance, 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!

It was at this time that I took a break from the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective (a Spring Break, if you will) because the new Final Destination: Bloodlines entry was out and I wanted to give Zenescope's Final Destination comics a special, Omnibusted look. But my cinematic digressions didn't stop there, as I watched and reviewed the absolute masterpiece known as Sinners that same week, and was compelled by the first actual entry in Volume Twelve to watch the boring, idiotic, low-budget, British garbage fire of a "horror movie," The Winter Witch.

As you can see from the image to the right, the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective is now officially into Volume Twelve, which, unlike Volume Eleven before it, is not devoted to a single story arc. You may recall that I titled this post as "Limbo, Winter, and The Return," and that is because of said story arcs (and because "Volumes 11 and 12" wouldn't have been very interesting). In the previous Volume, Sela and her party (running the gamut from a literal nature goddess and disposable bodyguards to a parasite-infected Nutcracker corpse in a glass box) journeyed to, got trapped in, and partly escaped from Limbo (only Sela was allowed to do the latter). Now, with Sela on her own (for the moment), Volume Twelve begins in the Winter arc. And it wouldn't be a Retrospective or Omnibusted review without a little Google research, which led me to the Winter Witch movie from 2022 that I linked to above, 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 this next issue 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.

Omnibuster's Note: We would not, in fact, learn the mysterious blonde's identity for another two issues, and the flashback art team didn't return for the sequel issue.

But speaking of the clichĆ© nature of the next issue's title, my research left me with 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 only reviewed three of because bad writing and racism (not including that of cosmic horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft) temporarily broke me, 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. For now, I have a comic book to review!

GFT # 72: Curse Of the Winter Witch
Again, the regular covers are amazing, but there's more of a focus on fanservice exclusives this time because another big Grimm Fairy Tales milestone issue is on the horizon and it's convention season. The chosen cover by Mike Capprotti is beautiful (if a bit weird as character models go) with some Stjepan Å ejić vibes to it, and the team of Qualano and Nivangune bring it with one of the most aura-farming covers to ever farm aura. Then we have fanservice from Dave Nestler (who clearly likes Marylin Monroe movies and old Coppertone ads), Elias Chatzoudis (topless Sela in lingerie with a stuffed rabbit because Wonderland and wild cottontails in Boston, I guess), and Monte Moore (the most morbid wet T-shirt carwash ever—because Belinda is dead—but twice, and with the shirts rolled slightly different to turn Naughty into Nice).
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 why not lighten the mood (before devolving back into angry, ascerbically sarcastic commentary) with a discussion of puns. I love puns, which playwright John Dennis once called "the lowest form of humor," and which the modern generation refers to as "Dad Jokes." But perhaps more cringeworthy than the pun itself is the teller's subsequent need for someone to "see what I did there," as if the thought behind, and telling of, a pun, is an accomplishment as worthy of witness and documentation as a billionaire's wedding or the approval of a bloated, economically cancerous bill by a bloated, economically cancerous approximation of a human being.

But on a lighter note, did you hear who won the footrace in Bangkok?
It was a Thai (tie)!
SEE WHAT I DID THERE‽ (I am particularly proud of that one, though, so please clap).

I bring up this scathing commentary on what can only be Donald Trump trying to fatigue Congress with a litigious paper burial only because the One Big Butt-full of Billshit To Screw Us Alll affects me personally. And I bring up the comedy stylings of Mitch Hedberg and Jay London only because the title of today's issue up for review is a pun on the ethereal nature of spiritual entities (or unseen eldritch horrors in Stephen King stories), and also the title of a recent song by power metal band, Unleash the Archers.

GFT #73: Ghosts In the Myst
Yes, that is a Stjepan Šejić cover you're seeing, and if you've been wondering what's up with all of the elves on the covers in Volume Twelve so far, this issue holds the answer. But first, let's talk about the other covers. Nivangune and Qualano are split up this time, with the former benefitting from Falk's boundary-defying coloring, and Qualano helping enhance Zenescope's "Grimm and Disney, but with pinup girls" aesthetic in Anthony Spay's Free Comic Book Day cover with his vibrant coloring. Rounding out the collection solo is Nei Ruffino with Sela in sexy aviator cosplay for the Mile High Comics retailer exclusive because aviation in Denver, I guess, plus cute animals because Sela got Snow White and Pocahontas powers from Oz. The fanservice exclusives have nothing to do with the story (as is to be expected) and the animals on Ruffino's cover seem like an afterthought, but it's all good work otherwise.
The interior work by Allan Otero (The Piper One-Shot) and his two colorists (including the previously maligned Ramon Ignacio Bunge) is reminiscent of early Zenescope issues, strong on detail, and expressive to the point of ugliness (which I mostly mean as a good thing).
What isn't a good thing is how confusing the paneling and establishment text have gotten since last week's issue. And because someone has to try making sense in this world (not that I'm a paragon of coherence most of the time in real life, but at least I try), let's go in logical order instead of according to what annoys me most.
So, remember how I said in The Winter Witch review that there was a mysterious blonde watching Sela in the bar? And remember how I said at the end of my Curse Of the Winter Witch review that the bar was probably an illusion and the bartender and blonde were Corruption and the Innocent (two of the five cosmic concepts from the Epilogue Realm who were introduced in The Dream Eater Saga) in disguise? Well, the paneling kind of made it look that way, but it turns out that the mystery blonde was a new character, after all.
As Sela reenacts that one scene from The Neverending Story (journeying through a cursed swamp on horseback), we are at last introduced to Elden (who only ever appears in this arc, I think), an elven warrior sent into exile by the Council because her entire character is a mashup of Tinkerbellle and Tiger Lily, and Malec is hot, manipulative, and has magical plot armor in his pants.
In the midst of Sela and Elden battling the titular spectres of their past failures (where the coloring becomes flat and sickly, which I don't like except that it fits the context of this portion of the issue really well), featuring cameos by doppelgangers of Shang (kill it with fire!), Erik, and the Dark One, things cut away to something I didn't expect would happen so quickly, but I totally called it.
The "Elsewhere in Limbo" text box makes an unwelcome return (again, suggesting wrongly that Sela's journey and Elden's flashback are set in Limbo and that all events are happening concurrently when we know the opposite is true), directing us into a conversation between Baba Yaga and the Goblin Queen. Surprise! They plan on joining forces to betray Venus and take the crown (which the Goblin Queen has proprietary knowledge of) for themselves! Me could have seen that coming‽ I mean, who could have seen that coming‽
Anyway, elsewhere and not in Limbo, Sela figures out what the title is because "my Erik" (whom we've barely seen her spend any time with) "would never say something like that!" She and Elden manage to defeat the awesome-looking guardians of the swamp with the power of Heather Langenkamp and Macaulay Culkin (and maybe Sela terrifying the wraiths into submission with whatever this monstrosity of a facial expression is),
and our new duo make their way to the Tomb Of Death (which sounds equal parts redundant and metal AF) to put an end to the Winter Witch in the next issue.

Will the spatial continuity make any more sense? Will Zenescope be able to write a kickass chick without making her a victim of perceptual misogyny, an emotionally volatile simp, or tragic cuck fodder? Will I see the face of Hopeful Sela in my nightmares? I don't know, but there is some real deus-ass-crackina writing coming up in this next review. I promise to make an attempt at being kind on a sliding scale because I'm currently too tired 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 Å ejić 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...šŸ™„) 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!" clichĆ© writing that feels like it should have been the previous issue's cliffhanger ending or not used at all because it's an overused clichĆ©, 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. Also, Elden and the Winter Witch never meet Blake and Bolder. However, continuing from one of the worst-written, most oddly drawn, disconnected issues I can remember, the Zenescope team come into their seventy-fifth mainline issue in peak form, and it is a special one, folks!

GFT #75: The Return
Zenescope isn't just bringing it with their writing (the usual executive team of Brusha, Tedesco, and Gregory, but they're on blast like I haven't seen or felt since Fear Not) and interiors this time (A Drink And A Tale penciler Sheldon Goh, and first-time Zenescope colorist Felipe Gaona, who would later contribute to an issue of the Wonderland Ongoing series), they're rocking ten covers for this one, as well.
Starting on the left, we have J. Scott Campbell and Nei Ruffino's milestone cover (with three variants, not counting the Volume Twelve TPB cover with the "75" removed), followed by Anthony Spay & Ivan Nunes with an awesome, plot-hyping cover of Sela appearing at the New York-New York in Las Vegas. Both also show off Sela's new costume that she will be wearing for pretty much the remainder of the series. It kind of says, "we're still Zenescope, but we're going to just make Sela into Wonder Woman now for reasons that will become apparent later," and I don't entirely mean that as cynically as it sounds because it does become an iconic look for her. Nunes also colors covers for The Dream Eater Saga's Marat Mychaels (The Dark One crushing Sela's glasses, which was used for the background of one of the Table Of Contents pages for Volume Twelve) and The Immortals' Franchesco! (another plot-relevant cover with Sela back in her teaching role, but with a large wooden stick because sexy detention because Franchesco!, and if Sela was my high school English teacher, I would commit every fairy tale detail to memory and stay after class every day for deep...philosophical conversations...because I like folklore and mythology, of course). That was for San Diego ComicCon that year, but Franchesco! also pulled a double on top of that
with some Steampunk Comic Shop retailer exclusive variants. Finally, there's Greg Horn's Kickstarter cover (with Sela in an Uncle Sam poster pose because July) and Stjepan Šejić's cover (with Venus choking Sela, because Stjepan Šejić).
The big issue begins in earnest with The Innocent and Corruption back in the Epilogue Realm following their interaction with Sela in the Winter Witch and Curse issues.
They and the other hooded figures discuss the rise of the Bad Girls, the tactical desperation of Malec, the failure of the Dream Eater, the coming of Helios (the Warlord Of Oz is shown, but this last mention—given my Future Knowledge—only serves to demonstrate how quickly Zenescope’s creative team had forgotten him amidst the Greco-Roman pantheon, the new IPs to come, and setting up the next major event, and how they would ultimately fail to get him over as a Universe-level threat according to his introduction. It's one of this issue's few...issues (sorry; it's hard not to make that pun at every available opportunity), but it's also worth mentioning because of how large-scale egregious it is. I promise I'm going to be positive about the story from now on, okay?
There's some apt commentary here with how these observer characters vacillate between scapegoats ("we sent out the Dream Eater because the Highborns and Falsebloods were destroying everything with their war, but now we think it's actually the humans who are making everything worse!") for complex issues based on their own, one-dimensional, elemental personalities. Basically, those with power and influence are disconnected from the societal intricacies of those they rule over and "protect from themselves." It's unfortunately a timeless allegory, but it works.
Corruption also introduces an interesting bit of lore that pays off sometime later (and which I hinted at in a previous review) when it mentions Love and Hate having "been through" something. But that is for another time, Ticketholders!
For now, it's time to catch up to Sela, who is on her way through the Nevada desert (where many snitches, pawns, and gingerbread men have tempted fate in the eyes of the Horde), so we all know where this is going and how cathartic it will be on and beyond the page. There's perhaps too much exposition (as though this is serving as a hard entry point for new readers who aren't interested in experiencing the previous seven years of continuity for themselves), my usual criticisms of Sela unduly glazing Shang's mentoring skills still stand, and there's some other bad retconning going on for those who have read previous issues, what with Sela recapping the framing device from Hard Choices, under the new context that her father, Drago, was a member of the Council operating undercover in the Horde. Now, just to make sure I wasn't misremembering anything like with the Serpent's Scepter, I went back and re-read Hard Choices, with particular focus on that framing narrative, and yeah, I was right. There was some mention that the Council would execute Drago if they knew he had left Myst and settled down in the Nexus (that "no travel" order, which begs the question of how Malec and Baba Yaga got there at the time), so I guess if you thought hard enough about it to give yourself a nosebleed, you could make the logic leap that he was a double-agent shirking his obligations to both sides and Sela actually does have Council blood after all, but Drago's affiliation is never explicitly stated in Hard Choices, so this recap exposition by Sela feels more like a retcon to explain the Winter Witch's nonsensical dialogue in the previous issue rather than an honest entry point for new readers. Yes, I know I said I would be positive, but repeating myself (even when it's necessary) doesn't count because I'm in charge here, and I said so. Following her return,
Sela easily blitzes and blasts her way through the Dark One's Vegas stronghold, putting down Cindy with a single punch, shrugging off the effects of Morrigan's bracer through sheer force of will, and multi-casting her Realm Colors to put Malec into a stalemate. It's one, continuous run of single-minded, action heroine badassery (ignoring the part where Sela threatens to show Malec a happy ending),
and the ensuing war of words between the two is masterfully written to highlight the contrasting personalities of the heroine and villain, and foreshadow the outcome of the second half of the issue without feeling like it's trying too hard to get us invested. I mean, if you're not locked in by now, you don't like awesome things and you don't have a soul. This first half (by the way, this issue is over forty pages) reminded me in the best way of my first time seeing one of those multi-parter event episodes from the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, like "Search For Splinter" or especially "Return To New York," or watching the Fake Straw Hats section of the Fishman Island arc, with the heroes on a mission against seemingly impossible odds and showing how much they've grown in terms of power and character.
In the second half, though, we learn that action hero badassery and big tiger-mom energy are only fun in context, as, after some time, Sela has undertaken oddly Horde-like measures to install herself as a substitute teacher at Caredean Prep School, where a girl named Ilys (with a familiar dark hairstyle and facial features) is a student. During an after-class conversation, Sela is about to drop the bombshell about who she is, but in walks Venus (the caring Dean of Caredean Prep, as it turns out), and when Ilys calls her "Mother," Sela absolutely snaps, almost collapsing the school in her hyper-focused wrath to put down the Goddess of Love and reclaim her stolen daughter. When I originally read this issue, I remember feeling that old sense of disappointment at the outcome, of being denied the satisfaction that I (and Sela) had been promised. But now, I see the brilliance and emotional weight and nuance of this part. We see here that, despite it all having begun with prenatal kidnapping, Venus genuinely loves Ilys as her own daughter now, not just a Falseblood tool. So although Sela feels (and rightly so) justified in her actions to achieve her goal, those means make Sela the villain in this context. She does still stop to evacuate students, and ultimately turns herself in to the police upon coming to her senses and acknowledging the carnage she has wrought (setting up for the events of the next Volume), but yeah, Sela is in the wrong this time, and it's incredibly emotional and compelling on my second read.
The issue ends with more conversation in the Epilogue Realm, where The Innocent continues to have faith in humanity, and in Sela, despite current events and the multiple threats that are to come. Love also lowers her hood in this final portion, revealing...a blonde. Thanks, Zenescope! There are, like, at least six important blondes in your comics that I can think of right now (Samantha, Britney, Cindy, Venus, Calie, Alice, Violet, Anna,...). But eagle-eyed readers might notice a literal hint of a blue-and-white half-bustier beneath her parted cloak that helps narrow things down.

Thus ends Volume Twelve of Grimm Fairy Tales, and I like how this issue looked and how it took me on an emotional journey through perspective morality. So if you've been following the lore thus far, prepare to feel the payoff in your soul, and if you're looking for a good entry point to reading Zenescope comics, this is the best I can think of; just know that a few of the minor details (as I mentioned above) aren't entirely accurate.

Speaking of enjoyable issues with inaccurate details, it's time to get into a few annual editions, starting with the 2012 Oversized Cosplay Special, which has no real bearing on the main story and isn't meant to be taken seriously, but is still worth the read.

Access and research proved difficult for this review, as the comic is unavailable through ComiXology (so I had to resort to other means of reading it on short notice...only to find it available on ComiXology two days before posting this), and most efforts to track down the real identities of the main characters ended in frustration because this is a thirteen-year-old comic book, obscure searches give Google a digital aneurysm, and Gemini/Lens is more artifice than intelligence. So big thanks up front to Reddit user u/heelsonholiday for coming in clutch where the technology bigshots failed (and even in copypasta print, this will be the last favorable thing I ever say about Reddit).

GFT Oversized Cosplay Special (2012)
Starting off, we have the instantly recognizable work of EBas with Nei Ruffino on colors, showing the five main characters of the issue in their cosplay outfits (Autumn Ivy as Druanna and Carita Ho as Calie Liddle were the only Zenescope characters I could identify, but Lessa Michelle is the one in red armor with a whip, Rosanna Rocha is the legally distinct Mortal Kombat ninja, and Jettie Monday is the cat-girl). This also received a sketch variant for Jesse James Comics (now High Score Comics) in Glendale, Arizona, and the ladies did a photoshoot cover in costume for a special booth signing event at Phoenix ComiCon that year. Speaking of photoshoot covers for the Con, Jessica Nigri as Britney Waters, anyone? Getting back to the artist covers, we also have Elias Chatzoudis with a fanservice convention exclusive of Lessa Michelle (I think?) deciding whether purple lingerie goes better with a Snow White cosplay or an Alice cosplay. Considering her hair color and that we soon find out that her first cosplay was Alice, I think we have our answer. And finally, in no particular order, we also have Alfredo Reyes and Ivan Nunes spoiling that Baba Yaga will be in this issue, as well.
The Oversized Cosplay Special starts out with your basic, unreliable ensemble narrative (think The Usual Suspects) with our five cosplayer leads telling an unseen interviewer about themselves and the sequence of strange, forgotten events that led to them murdering someone.
Having seen all of Supernatural and having not read this comic in quite some time, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that someone had cursed their cosplay outfits to make them act out of character because they were acting in character, if that makes any sense. But we quickly learn that each of the women has been acting strange (more honestly about the amount of shit they can take in their day jobs and toxic relationships, in particular, which is a sentiment that I can get behind, minus the blunt-force murder, of course) without being in costume. Add on the two-page spread of lesbian fanservice in a suddenly-appearing kiddie pool full of chocolate pudding, and it's clear something...odd is going on that is directed at these five, specifically.
Putting the bonkers start to this thing aside (and trust me, it gets even more insane later), next comes what I think is my only real complaint about the Special: how blatantly unsubtle it is about glazing Phoenix ComiCon. The ladies (when they're not reminding us that BeyoncĆ©'s "Single Ladies" was still kind of popular four years after its release, or doing weird stuff, or talking about how they can't remember why they did weird stuff) will not shut up about how great the Phoenix convention is, and it's the main setting for the issue. It's like the 40s and 50s when sitcoms, soap operas, and game shows were owned by the businesses that owned the television studios that aired them, so the writers were allowed (forced?) to make the characters stop the plot of the episode to pose with a can of soup or a pack of cigarettes, or spend extra time doing laundry so we could get a really good look at that new GE washer & dryer, now on sale at Macy's. It's unnatural, unnecessary, predatory, harmful to the quality of a given narrative, and cringeworthy down to the soul. So 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 maybe afford to attend a Con before I die, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.
But I did appreciate the little cosplay cameos of Zenescope characters and legally distinct facsimiles of other publishers' characters (blue dwarf Wolverine is a genuine treasure), and the story quality soon returns when Carita visits the Zenescope table and picks up...the Grimm Fairy Tales Oversized Cosplay Special‽
Yep, the walls between truth and fiction have been utterly smashed, and the issue abruptly turns into a meta-smoothie that's part In the Mouth Of Madness, part Duck Amuck, and part Final Destination (comics, Bloodlines), thanks to Baba Yaga giving Raven Gregory and Eric Basaldua reality-warping powers in exchange for Raven's necklace (a Gateway item like Esmeralda's ring) so that she can travel to the future and read Grimm Fairy Tales #100 (which looks like The Return, but with 100 on the J. Scott Campbell cover instead of 75) so she knows what to expect...except that she shouldn't need to do that because she was born with precognitive abilities and trained from birth on how to use them.
The events we've read in the issue so far could still happen, though, because Baba Yaga isn't the only character doing things out of...character. Samantha Darren (who had been dreaming the bulk of the issue so far because she's the precog now, apparently) ignores a sensation of Baba Yaga being nearby despite her Dream Eater Saga and Myths & Legends experiences thus far having twisted her into a perfectionist with a savior complex.
As a result of this, we get Samantha being distracted by children who want to have her boobs when they grow up, and Baba Yaga and Raven Gregory heading off for a date and fairytale discussion at Five Guys, which is definitely the better ending gag (despite it being more blatant product placement) because it's surreal and meta and it doesn't have single-digit-aged children obsessing over an adult stranger's mammal-bags. Trust me; I saw a mother who let her elementary school-aged son go out in public wearing a "TICE NITS" t-shirt last week, so I know creepy bullshit when I see it. And...I'm ducking fun talking about that for the rest of my life, so let's move on.
Spoilers for an over-ten-year-old comic, but there would later be a Grimm Fairy Tales #100 (that I will get to in due time) that was the first milestone issue to also lead into a major event miniseries. So if we are meant to take this reality-shattering comedy special seriously (and I don't think we are), Baba Yaga now knows about Zenescope ripping off Marvel's Infinity Gauntlet story.
But I digress, and I know that the Oversized Cosplay Special is pure, fun insanity, so I'm letting it slide on things like continuity, derivative structure, and inconsistent characterization because when it's not being a Phoenix ComiCon commercial, it is genuinely fun to think you know what's going on and be more wrong than you could have ever imagined.

I went back and forth this week about whether or not I would review the 2012 Swimsuit Edition individually first or save it for this post, and I decided there was enough to say that I would do it as its own review after all.

GFT Swimsuit Special #2 (2012):
The Game
I feel like over the past few months of reviews, I've gotten into a rut of listing off the cover artists and snarkily describing the art because it's mostly consistent. Look at enough covers, and barring a new artist, you can pretty much tell who's drawn what. You can expect Mike DeBalfo to draw his characters a little Asiatic and pouty with extra butt. You can expect Jamie Tyndall's art to be unnecessarily detailed in ways that don't entirely make sense (like a Disney-colored steampunk Tinkerbell helping Sela build a sand castle, for instance). You can expect Belinda to be on a cover even though she's dead. And you can expect two or more covers to feature Anonymous Blonde Syndrome in this era because there are enough blonde women in Zenescope's canon at this point that without a distinct facial marking or hairstyle, it's near impossible to tell Samantha, Alice, Britney, and Cindy apart (as I mentioned in my review of The Return). My point is, each returning artist's style is consistent (and consistently good, for the most part), and while that's an artistic positive, it's a critical negative because it doesn't leave me with anything new or interesting to say about it. It's promotional, mostly work-safe gooner material that also happens to be drawn and colored well. Enough said.
I could even say a lot of the same things as in my first Swimsuit Edition review because the talking points are basically the same (me riffing on the concept of comic book Swimsuit Issues for a length of time relative to your reading speed).
But I am not entirely disillusioned with my own efforts, Ticketholders, because there are a few things worth talking about here.
As with the previous Swimsuit Edition and its inclusion as the Volume Eight Short Story, the 2012 Swimsuit Special (yes, they vacillate between Edition and Special, and that's not granular or confusing at all) was included as a "Bonus Story" in Different Seasons Volume Three, minus its opening twenty-seven pages of original "Zenescope ladies in swimsuits" art and reprinted exclusive covers with characters in swimsuits, because Trade Cover Gallery confusion, production costs, and income-based redundancy. This could be a ComiXology problem, but the Different Seasons version of this issue doesn't even have a cover page!
Once you get past the aforementioned fanservice, it's time for a fun, dynamically paneled game of beach volleyball between the forces of good and evil, drawn by Marco Cosentino (The Immortals) and colored by Sean Forney (A Drink And A Tale). But what really stands out here is the GFT Retrospective writing debut of Patrick "Bolder" Shand (fire nickname, for obvious reasons), who is perhaps the biggest reason I came to love Zenescope's street-level heroines (like Robyn Hood, Britney, and Van Helsing) so much. Even in this short, single-location, almost-nothing story, he gives every character and character relationship its due on an "if this was the first Grimm Fairy Tales comic someone read, would they know who these people are?" level. Like, it's not deep or lore-heavy (Mercy Dante shoots things, Samantha is a Guardian because she says so, Sela is the leader, The Queen Of Spades is lazy, the villains all hate each other, etc.), but it gets the job done commendably well.
Even the justification for Sela, Samantha, Mercy, Britney, Blake, Bolder, Elden (?—Anonymous Blonde Syndrome because she barely contributes and only has one, generic line of dialogue), Malec, Jack, the Bad Girls, and Esmeralda to be Mario Partying it with some Dead Or Alive Beach Volleyball is kind of decent. It's one of those, "every century, Good and Evil stop trying to kill each other and agree on a way to test their strength in a mundane mortal contest" things (apparently, it was boxing last time, and the laws of neutrality got lost in the brutality of the sport...oops!). Of course, the male supporting cast are backgrounded immediately and the "no powers" rule goes out the window almost as quickly (just imagine the RWBY food fight, but less messy) before Esmeralda shows up to spite Venus by taking the ball and forcing the contest to end on a draw (because giving the heroines the victory according to the rules of the actual game they were playing is unthinkable to the villains, I guess). But wait; they kept playing after Mercy shot the ball on two separate occasions, one of them when powers weren't allowed, so it's not like they only had the one volleyball and someone repaired it with magic. So technically, they could have gotten another ball and kept playing, right?
Whatever; I can't be mad with Pat Shand writing, the interior art and paneling were good, and like the Cosplay Special, this isn't meant to be taken seriously. It's never mentioned in the main series and has that "harem anime filler episode status quo reset" vibe to it. Hell, the only thing it's missing is some blindfolded watermelon smashing. Fun is fun, and this was some surprisingly good fun.

 Now for some myths and urban legends as I jump to October for this next review, which was originally a Cover Charge crossover.

GFT Halloween #4 (2012):
Myths & Urban Legends
Collected in the elusive fourth and final Volume of Different Seasons (the only such Volume to not receive a digital edition on either ComiXology or through...other means), the 2012 Halloween Special is an anthology issue with four short stories and a wraparound, so one look at the amount of names in the image above should tell you how in-depth I'm going to be about the art and writing credits here. Just know that Pat Shand (the 2012 Swimsuit Edition) is one of the writers and count it as a point in favor.
The wraparound features three girls (gender-swapped Freddy, gender-swapped Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer—which she has to explain for our expense because otherwise, she could be anyone from Constantine to Sam Winchester for all we know—and generic mage/superheroine because I'm great at knowing comics), who skip out on a lame costume party to tell scary stories in a haunted cornfield because even though they're self-identified horror fans, they've never seen Children Of the Corn, Jeepers Creepers 2, Freddy VS Jason, Joy Ride, or the 90s Goosebumps episode, "The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight" (which, the latter is understandable because they seem to be Are You Afraid Of the Dark? fans).
First up is Rule 63 Spike Constantine Winchester (a.k.a. Vicky) with a story that was the whole reason for the original post being a crossover: "Island Of the Dolls." In 1950, divorcee Don Julian takes up residence in a remote region of Mexico as an island hermit. When his isolationist negligence leads to the drowning death of a little girl who dropped her doll in a nearby stream, Don Julian begins compulsively decorating his island home with dolls to appease his own guilt and the cries of the spirit who haunts him. But many years later, it is still not enough, and the girl's ghost drowns him as revenge for her death, turning him into a doll. Why she didn't drown him sooner is unclear, but in the Zene-scope of this version, it's easy to assume that the girl was a Falseblood (likely part water nymph) who was tricked into a power bargain by Morrigan so she could take revenge, perhaps with Belinda involved because of her "turning boys into puppets" thing from The Pinocchio Collection and The Devil's Gambit.
However, this is based on an actual Mexican urban legend, and the Island Of the Dolls (Isla de las MuƱecas) is a real, "dark tourism" location in Mexico.

Omnibuster's Note: If you'd like to read my thoughts on J.C. Martin's novella, The Doll, please check out my original post. This compilation is long enough as is, and I'd like to get back to the issue at hand.

It's now Rule 63 Freddy (a.k.a. Anne)'s turn to terrify with "Are You There?"
Naru (not that one) just moved from Japan, and she's in Professor Mathers' Urban Legends class (so nice to see Sela in her classic role even though she's currently on her way to prison in the main series, and I don't mean that to sound like I'm criticizing a continuity error; it genuinely is a nice, comfortable callback in a time when Sela is at her relative worst), where a boy bullies her for being a Sailor Moon fan with decent art skills (so he's automatically a piece of shit and I'm disappointed he didn't get GFT'd for it later), and had she kept quiet and done her reading homework on the toilet like a normal social outcast instead of trying to make some girl friends by sharing the Japanese urban legend of Hanako-san with them, she might have learned Sela's lesson and survived to see them (or the bully) get slaughtered by Bloody Mary instead of Naru herself getting dragged headfirst into a blood-filled toilet by the aforementioned porcelain-bound presence. Oops! (The first "p" is both silent and invisible). The legend goes that if you call out to Hanako-san in a bathroom, she answers with All-Might's catchphrase and appears to drag you to your unsanitary doom.
There is also an apparently somewhat popular anime called Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun (the suffix meaning the anime/manga version is a boy) that is now in its second season, but I haven't seen any of it yet. From what I've heard, I should probably fix that.
Next comes generic superheroine girl (who doesn't get a name until after she tells her story for some reason, and it's Erin) with "The Clown." It starts out seeming like a "whatever you do, don't go in there" kind of story, with Shawna (a twin-tailed babysitter and semi-pro HBO/Showtime influencer who speaks almost exclusively in pop culture references) watching the Zimmerman children for the night. But then they're all eaten (and the children's souls are taken to an evil torture dimension or Wonderland or something) by a shapeshifting leprechaun-looking creature disguised as a clown that would give It and the Poltergeist nightmares. That's it. This story is the least interesting and has the most confusing ending. It's apparently a Zenescope-ized take on the Clown Statue urban legend, which is a variation on the legend that inspired Black Christmas and When A Stranger Calls ("the calls are coming from inside the house!"), which reminds me of better things that I could be reading or watching because I don't think I've ever seen either of those, and I should probably fix that, too.
Now that we know Erin's name and we've been sufficiently disappointed by her story, the wraparound concludes with the origin of Jack the Lantern.
In 1786, a serial killer named Jack (who has a bad case of Resting Joker Venom Face and the same first name as a Ripper, a Giant Killer, and a Freak, and from what I could find, he's made up for this issue, unlike the other urban legends herein) made a deal with the Dark One for immortality. But because Malec is petty about being outwitted by mere Lowborn scum (remember that he's such a strategic mastermind that even his failures are intentional), he turns Jack into a pumpkin-headed scarecrow and curses him to only be able to kill once a year on Halloween. Back in the present day, it seems Jack has been using Anne to bring him victims, and she runs off screaming, leaving her friends to die as the issue ends. Anne sucks; happy Halloween in September.
I like how this issue introduces readers to international urban legends, its anthology movie format, the artwork, and for the most part, its writing. Even in the cases where the stories' endings don't make much sense or are predictably dark (so, like, everything in here), the dialogue is punchy and goes by quick, and a lot gets communicated about the characters in that short span. Unfortunately, that doesn't entirely extend to the three storytellers, who are just there to be slasher victims, and one of whom doesn't even get named until moments before her death.

I would like to be known by name to many people long before my death, and as I finally come to the end of editing this compilation megapost at six-thirty the morning of publication, therefore denying myself sufficient promotion time for something I intended to put more periodic effort into when I began putting it together several months ago, it now feels like an act of convoluted procrastination. Subconsciously, I dreaded revisiting what I remember as among my favorite Zenescope stories, for fear that I may not experience it as fondly as I received it the first time around.
But fears of this kind are rarely well-founded, and I'm back here, so I might as well eat that horse!

GFT Giant-Size #3
(2012): Quest
This special issue doesn't technically have a title, but as it was collected later in the Age Of Darkness Volume with that title, featuring a multi-issue story with a similar premise and character lineup, I often refer to the 2012 Giant-Size as Quest, even in the Retrospective series. It will get confusing as we get closer to that Volume and event, but that's a problem for Future Me, so Quest it is!
As you can see in the above image, convention season has most likely gone by the time of this issue's publication (perfect for the timing of my own publication, in mid-September 2025), as there aren't any sexy variants or limited edition comic shop covers; just the normal two-to-three cover selection with one New York ComicCon cover thrown in for the shiggles of it. The non-convention covers are pretty plot-relevant and the art team has a few familiar names, as well as a surprising, "new" name in webtoonist and Top Cow artist Linda Šejić (Stjepan's wife), who does the coloring on the selected cover.
I always have high hopes of quality writing when I see Pat Shand's name in the credits, so I can feel those stupid fears melting away already. But if I must get pedantic immediately, the "The Story So Far" blurb has an inaccuracy I feel compelled to address. It says that Bolder and Blake began their Quest to re-form the Council Of the Realms following the events of Hard Choices. Now, while they may have been motivated by the slaughter of the Council in that milestone issue, Bolder was not properly introduced until The Fairy And the Dwarf, Blake and Bolder didn't meet until Diamonds And Toads, and the duo didn't officially get sent on their Quest until Druanna paired them up in Grimm Fairy Tales #62. That's a twelve-issue inaccuracy, not counting all of the time they weren't focused on while Sela helped cage the Dream Eater, fought her way out of Limbo, and went on a misguided, one-woman ass-kicking spree to reverse-kidnap her missing daughter.
But I digress, and it's time to dive into some Shandian writing, accompanied by the thick-lined, blocky interior stylings of Adam Cleveland and colorist Juancho Velez!
The story begins with the bickering duo in a village of fairy worshippers, where they have heard rumors of items that may contain traces of Provenance energy that can help them traverse the Realms Of Power in search of new guardians to join the Council. At a temple guarded by a chimera, they encounter Aisling, a red-headed princess-turned-bandit whose sharp tongue meshes well with Blake and Bolder's established banter.
Unfortunately, as they head west, it becomes clear that they are being followed by a mysterious figure in a red cloak. And to top that off, Orcus is having them followed as well, in hopes that said fairy magic can be used to resurrect his beloved enchantress.
With a desire-sensing tiara and a portal-opening necklace in hand, the trio's first stop is the Limbo of Myst, where they escape from Jack the Giant Killer and the Bad Girls with Druanna in tow and expository assurances that we will never see Prince Erik again.
Their next stop is Neverland, where we're greeted with the surreal visual of Belle and Tiger Lilly being...friends? Yeah, apparently that's what happened when Pan got yanked out of Neverland, drowned, turned into a time-traveling hobo vampire, and eaten by a cosmic gluttony monster. His followers (the mercenary group from the first Neverland miniseries) don't seem to realize that, though, and they are quickly dispatched before Belle and Tiger Lilly (like Druanna before them) decline their appointment to the Council because of more pressing matters of local defense.
Next, the trio head to Wonderland, where they cross swords and exchange words with their fourth Realm Knight candidate...the Red Queen! It was exciting to see her again, even if only for a few pages, but like with the previous Council candidates, selfish reasons and social uncertainty prevent her from accepting.
Which leaves Oz; a Realm we have only seen referenced a few times but have yet to visit on-page...until now. And it's a land of bloody carnage, all wrought by a single man: the Council candidate from Oz, The Warlord. He can't be bargained with, he can't be reasoned with, he doesn't know pain or fear, and he absolutely will not stop.... So with their mission all but failed, Blake, Bolder, and Aisling return to Myst, where they fight off Orcus and his army at the expense of the necklace. Now unable to traverse the Realms Of Power again, they head to Tallus and regale Druanna with their tale of failure, only to be approached by The Innocent, who appoints the four of them as the new Council Of the Realms until those whom they encountered on their Quest have seen to more local matters. Also, for those who didn't catch the hooded figure's hint of a tan bustier in this early panel...
Belinda is alive! Somehow! I'm sure we'll learn what happened later. And that isn't sarcasm.
The writing this issue is as sharp as I remember, which is an ironically fitting statement because I'd been stuck looking for a way to elaborate on it and distracting myself with YouTube shorts, Vampire Survivors, and yard work for two days.
It was fun seeing "where are they now" snippets of characters we haven't seen for awhile and getting a bleak look at the present/future of Zenescope's unexplored Realm of Oz, and Future Knowledge once again puts new context on Belinda's presence here. The common thread of selfishness in times of insanity and adversity has a depressing timelessness about it as well, and gives the story (which I still like because of Shand's quippy, character-rich writing—something that would be derided as "Marvel humor" or "James Gunn humor" by modern cynics and grifters even though its earmarks predate the MCU and Gunn's involvement therein by decades) a feeling of "the real Council was the us we met along the way" pointlessness (which feels all the moreso because of the next two-plus concurrently apocalyptic events taking precedence over following through on any lingering story threads in any meaningful way, like doing something with the Warlord Of Oz, uniting Blake, Bolder, and Aisling with Elden and the Winter Witch, exploring Druanna's missing daughter, having Erik amount to anything—not that he's worth a damn—having Pinocchio amount to anything—not that he's worth a damn, either—revisiting the Council candidates, acknowledging that the Red Knight exists, doing more with Sinbad, revisiting Samantha's father, and anything else I forgot because Zenescope dropped a lot of plots and characters over the years).

Next week, I think I'll head back to Wonderland for another edition of Zenescope - Omnibusted, wrap up another Anime for the Spotlight, and see what else the whims of fate have in store for me in terms of content load, 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 go big and go home, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,
Out.

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