GFT Retrospective #114: Wonderland #6

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospective Ticketmaster.

Much like with Volume One, Volume Two of the Wonderland Ongoing series has no obvious discrepancies between the ComiXology version and the...version I downloaded One Piece at a time, so to speak.

The reason for this is likely because the "patched" version is a peg-legged instance of the digital/ComiXology edition, rather than a meticulous scan of the physical trade. And seeing as how I don't have a physical copy or the time or money to acquire one in the next two days, I cannot speak to any difference in effort between the physical and digital editions. One thing of note, however, is that, around the time of the original release of Wonderland #8 (the third part of this five-issue Volume), Zenescope began using Digital Edition covers for their...digital editions of individual comics (which were just randomly selected Common retail covers with a Digital Edition mark in place of the "Cover" [letter] identifier that physical variants typically had. This, coupled with the miniaturized cover art shown on the issues' credits pages (and the increasingly prevalent practice of not listing or showing every available variant or including them in the Trade's Cover Gallery—which is commercially and legally understandable once you take certain "Z-Rated" or "Naughty" covers into account because they're basically topless pornography) is a differentiation tactic to keep physical media and the collectibles market viable in an era where digital media is the standard of convenience.

Also throw in Zenescope's (and other comics publishers', particularly their fellow indie imprints') openly stated legal and financial struggles with then-fledgling platforms like ComiXology (before it became a subsidiary of one of the biggest, most shameless multimedia corporations in the world), and suddenly, we begin to see parallels to the more modern issue of Artificial Intelligence and its detrimental financial and psychological effects on human content creators.

Please support us so humanity's efforts are recognized and rewarded fairly, help ignore AI slop so that big corporations have to pay their clients as they deserve, and because I'm a human who can't think of a better segue but can still out-write the average chatbot, let's get into the review!

Wonderland #6

Wonderland Goes Hollywood

First of all, great Stjepan Šejić cover here that works on multiple levels, foreshadowing the return of some underrated Wonderland villains this Volume, symbolizing the alluring but cannibalistic nature of Hollywood (and the more literal expression of those ideas in the issue itself), and being a punny nod to John Carpenter's In the Mouth Of Madness (which I will try to fit in for the end of the month if I get all of my December affairs in order).

The three-location structure this Volume is as follows: the Earthly madness unfolding at the "subtly" named Club Excess in Hollywood, the Liddles trying to sort through their own inner madness at an apartment complex in Culver City (because, as Calie herself points out, hiding from Wonderland in a big city worked out so well last time, so why not do my sarcasm again with the middle finger crooked slightly different), and a suspenseful journey through Wonderland itself with my favorite supporting heroine.

At Club Excess (which, no surprise given the interior establishing panel, is a front for the Flower Girls to do Wonderland stuff on Earth), Travis (who will be dead soon, but names are mildly important) introduces his girlfriend, Erika, to Dream, a lingual rave drug that gives the user localized reality-warping powers and a brain-meltingly intense level of euphoria and hunger, reducing her to a sentient animal and quickly answering the question of how Travis is going to die because I mentioned cannibalism earlier.

Nothing terribly interesting is happening with the Liddles that we haven't seen already. Calie is still trying to ignore the mental conversations she has with herself by immersing herself in domesticity. Violet is the slightly more compelling character here, in that we learn she's still hearing the call of The Hat and chooses to occupy her time by people-watching and amusing herself with their madness to distract from her own.

This includes kinky pixie dream girl Harmony, who frequents Club Excess and is strongly foreshadowed and suggested to be a plant (puns!) for Wonderland and the whole, "in a Universe where women get turned into flowers, don't name your daughter Violet" thing I mentioned many years ago.

But it's also borderline yuri fanservice (because Zenescope) that isn't paneled to make a ton of chronological sense or be totally clear about where reality ends and dreams begin (because Wonderland), and as such, it's far from the most interesting part of the issue.

That honor goes to the final location of the issue, Wonderland itself.

or however time works, the Queen Of Spades, plus Grey Knight, sans Queen Of Hearts and army, is on the trail of someone who could pose a threat to her plans of being the next Jabberwocky.

Following a cut back to the Culver City apartments for a gratuitous panty shot and some one-sided verbal intercourse with Harmony and Violet,

we learn that said threat is the Red Queen, now the Nerfiiest Nerf-herder to ever herd Nerf (because being such a badass that you can mow down an entire Realm Of Power by creating whatever the fuck you want out of thin air and willpower is just too cool to be interesting anymore, I guess), who is on the run with her son, and in search of the Temple Of Purity so that they may drink from its legendary fountain and cure themselves of madness before Spades catches them and burns it to the ground. The cool part? The Temple Of Purity is revealed in flashback

to be Shady Acres, the asylum where the Red Queen (as Elizabeth Allen) was committed following her children's disappearances into Wonderland, and where Charles Dodgson brought the Allen mirror in The Arrangement Short Story. Wonderland apparently liked its concentration of crazy so much that the mirror pulled an "ending of Poltergeist" and sucked in the entire building. But because nonsense makes sense and Wonderland is a living Realm that abhors a vacuum and delights in poetic irony to a sadistic degree, it turned the asylum into a sanctuary of hyper-sanity. Which actually does make some sense.

Unfortunately for weekly or monthly readers at the time, the discovery of the Temple is where this issue ends. 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, 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 (including tomorrow's TBT '25 push of another HeroMachine villain character), because engagement matters in the war against the greedy corporate madness of AI exploitation slop.

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

• 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

Ticketmaster,

Out.