GFT Retrospective #112: Wonderland #4

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospective Ticketmaster.

This is the kind of issue I like reviewing, Ticketholders!

I said in a previous review that Wonderland issues have a three-location structure that bounces between Wonderland with the Queen Of Spades, the new Liddle house with Calie and Violet, and the town at large (literally), and that I would probably be using the two Superfriends memes a lot going forward.

But since then (almost immediately into the next issue), this structure has begun to blur and waver with the encroaching madness. There's a lot to get into this week, so let's...get into it!

Wonderland #4

Though I don't much talk about cover art anymore, the Chen/Nunes cover featured here is kind of plot-relevant, as it's a bait/foreshadowing image of what would happen if Johnny successfully overtakes Violet's body (he doesn't) and what will become of Violet following a future miniseries.

Also, we get pseudo-confirmation on the credits page that Dansbury was a typo and that the town was meant to be called Daresbury as a reference to the English town in Cheshire County where Lewis Carroll (the namesake of Calie, her late adulterous father, and her loathsome Pappy) was born.

The issue itself picks up right where we left off, with Calie and Violet on the run; not once more into the great, wide open, but right back to their house...where Violet was just abducted from...and where the Hatter Collective knows they live. Why?

Well, if two final showdowns to the death weren't enough, the third time is guaranteed to end with a charm or a serial killer, right?

The story plays with our expectations a bit (family barricaded in a building with a single-minded horde clawing at the walls outside, bringing to mind George Romero's Dead films or the recent blues horror masterpiece, Sinners) before hitting us with the revelation that one of the Collective (a young man Violet was briefly smitten with in a previous issue, named Harold because that's such a sexy name) is already inside, waiting with a mirror. Which means it's time for the bullshit to ensue because after going to all the trouble of kidnapping Violet, taking her to the House Of Mirrors, and binding her to a mirror to stab her like it was some kind of necessary ritual, all it takes for Violet to be possessed here is for her to touch Harold while he's wearing the hat. And because plot armor suddenly exists, all it takes for Violet to not be possessed anymore is Calie smacking her and knocking the hat off her head (even though we saw several people stay mad without the hat on and watched a man stay mad after cooking and severing his own hand, which certainly would hurt more than a slap upside the head). Yes, Violet says she can still hear Johnny in her head, but this is conveniently bad writing.

Less bad, though, is that the writers finally made good use of the "Calie has been insane for nineteen years" plot point by making her immune to the Hatter infection because of Joker logic (the "horseshoe principle of hyper-sanity" thing, not the "there's a scientist in another dimension making clown-themed supervillains across the multiverse" thing), and she puts on the hat herself to try putting an end to Johnny's mad Collective because he'll execute Order 66 on them if she just burns the hat.

What begins as a reenactment of the last issue of Return To Wonderland quickly evolves into a psychological battle in "the place between dreams and dying" (so possibly Wonderland's afterlife sub-Realm, like Limbo or the Inferno?). The subtle transformation between panels (from Carroll-Anne to the Sexy Goth Alice outfit to Black Berserker to White Queen for Calie, and from Johnny to the Hatter to the self-proclaimed Nightmare King for her brother) hits hard once you see it, and the means by which Calie uses her worst nightmare (we saw this near the end of the 2012 Annual, as well) to put Johnny to rest is an emotionally effective but manipulative swerve that promises that even the worst of the dead can return.

Enter the Queen Of Spades and her Grey Knight, the former of whom is there to retrieve the hat and send Calie home after burying her in exposition about the Hatter's history (including that Drake was the Hatter before Johnny, which I thought she already knew...?) and the catastrophic consequences of destroying the hat (a global wave of madness resulting in instant, chaotic depopulation of the Nexus). Also, the end of Call Of Wonderland happens, and Julie and Salome come falling through the mirror at the Spade Queen's feet as we head into the final issue of Volume One, to be reviewed next week.

I'm not going to put the preview page here because I'll have something to say about the cover when I review Wonderland #5, so for now, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't get consumed by the madness of the modern world, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my wonderful content.

Here again is the release calendar for the rest of 2025, presented for your benefit, as well as my SMART-ness and sanity:

• October 29: GFT Retrospective #113: Wonderland #5
• November 5: Zenescope - Omnibusted #36: Wonderland Volume One (with One-Shot and Annual)
• November 12: GFT Retrospective #114: Wonderland #6
• November 19: GFT Retrospective #115: Wonderland #7
• November 26: GFT Retrospective #116: Wonderland #8
• December 3: GFT Retrospective #117: Wonderland #9
• December 10: GFT Retrospective #118: Wonderland #10
• December 17: Zenescope - Omnibusted #37: Wonderland Volume Two
• December 24: Zenescope - Omnibusted #38: Madness Of Wonderland
• December 31: Zenescope - Omnibusted #39: Down the Rabbit Hole (plus annual address)

Ticketmaster,

Out.