Zenescope - Omnibusted #37: Wonderland Volume Two
a.k.a. The Festive Omnibuster.
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.
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.
Omnibuster's Note: I didn't get to reviewing the film in November like I wanted because I was still bingeing X-Men at the time, and it's been awhile since I included any truly special new content in an Omnibusted post, so at this point, I'm going to make up for missed opportunities, starting with the Lovecraft story that inspired the movie's title.
Cover Charge #11: At the Mountains Of Madness
Basically, if you haven't seen Aliens Vs Predator, a 1930s melange of scientists and explorers from Miskatonic University (where the Re-Animator is an alumnus and they have the book from Evil Dead in the library) in Arkham, Pennsylvania (near the farming town where Colour Out Of Space took place) go mineral harvesting in Antarctica where they discover preserved specimens of Precambrian (because of course Tremors was inspired by Lovecraft, too) extraterrestrial amphibious life and evidence that Roland Emmerich and the guy from Ancient Aliens were right about humanity evolving from alien jizz. And in between roughly four hours of repetitive prose, ignorant geometry, words-only tentacle porn, and basketball player-sized penguin monsters, Lovecraft manages to work in lore about how slavery is good in a pacifist society actually because war between three-plus cosmic horror factions led to the slaves (the Shoggoth) evolving and ruining art and culture...somehow. At some point, the explorers discover the Lovecraftian Fortress Of Solitude and the dark wasteland of mountains behind it (because Antarctica hadn't been accurately mapped yet in the thirties and flat-earthers wouldn't invent their government ice wall bullshit for another ninety years), and one of the scientists starts babbling references to other Lovecraft stories like he's a modern pop culture screenwriter on mushrooms and cocaine. The End. So far, it's the least bluntly offensive if your eyes don't glaze over while trying to slog through the lore dumps, but also the least scary...because you have to slog through the lore dumps.
D+
Now comes my special make-up review of the final entry in John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy." You apparently don't have to have seen The Thing or Prince Of Darkness to understand it; they're just a director-defined anthology with a common, "end of the world" theme.
Just the Ticket #198: In the Mouth Of Madness
In the Mouth Of Madness stars Sam Neill (Event Horizon & Jurassic Park) as an insurance fraud investigator hired by Arcane Publishing (because no one suspects conveniently evilly-named corporations of financially supporting supervillains in-Universe if it's fiction) to locate their missing golden goose of an author, Sutter Cane (a means of tributing Lovecraft and taking the piss out of Stephen King with a single character, played by Das Boot's Jürgen Prochnow), only for him and his sexy sidekickpiece (Fright Night: Part 2's Julie Carmen) to find themselves in Cane's fictional town of Hobb's End (possibly a nod to Lovecraft's Dunwich, given the eponymous Horrors) as the stars of his new book...that ends with Cane attaining godhood by freeing the Great Old Ones and plunging the world into viral insanity...and that is literally this movie. It's pretty much all jumpscares, nested dream sequences, flashbacks and foreshadowing, meta-horror, and all manner of psychological thriller bullshit as far as the plot goes, but the "Enter Sandman"-inspired theme music by Carpenter, Nickelodeon composer Jim Lang, and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies goes hard,
the creature and makeup effects by Industrial Light & Magic and KNB EFX Group are ambitious and unsettlingly cool, the minor appearances by John Glover (Smallville), Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore), Charleton Heston (Planet Of the Apes), and a debuting Hayden Christensen (Ahsoka) were fun, and Neill's campy performance of a descent into madness (it's in the title) sold me on a kind of film I don't typically enjoy subjecting myself to.
A- for...
Getting back to the Wonderland #6 review, 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 ended. But Omnibusted means no waiting, and this next issue gave me plenty to talk about.
Wonderland #7
Things to talk about like the cover art, starting with the Sean Chen and Sanju Nivangune cover (and not just because the line artist has the same first name as me). It's a whimsical take on The Birth Of Venus with Spades and Hearts doting over Violet, mixing Zenescope's usual brand of fanservice with expressive comedy and industry faux-shadowing, and I like it. Skipping to the convention exclusive for the sake of a competent transition, Anthony Spay and Ula Moś take us to London Supercon (archive site, MCM ComicCon) with a basic, "female characters do the sexy with city-relevant person or landmark in the background" cover. Anonymous Blonde Syndrome got me for a minute before I realized the two women were supposed to be Salome and Julia, pre-fusion. It exists. Urszula Moś also did the coloring on the Alfredo Reyes cover used in the Trade Volume here, and it's the best kind of disturbing, on top of being immediately relevant to the plot (or at least, it spoils the opening scene of Psychological Thriller Bullshit We've Seen Before With A Different Face).
As she does more often than is necessary for a well-written character, Calie Liddle is having a dream where she spills her darkest fears to a departed loved one (with Johnny "dead" now, it's her late boyfriend—and Violet's father—Brandon the Lizard King) who is revealed to be the Jabberwocky in disguise. I guess the only mildly intriguing thing about this is that Calie doesn't bolt awake screaming like she supposedly had been for the past Stephen King number of years, meaning that either she finally made peace with the fact that the Jabberwocky will always be in her thoughts and she thinks she's ready to take him on if he ever becomes more than a thought again, or that she didn't notice him pulling the same old shit again inside her own dream because wishful thinking and static character writing.
Or it could also be the sudden arrival of Harmony at their front door, looking considerably less like a flirty, panty-flashing, exhibitionist club-girl than in the previous issue, and despite Harmony being a dead ringer (puns!) for Calie's "I hope his dick falls off!" best friend from Beyond Wonderland (right down to the quippy dialogue, purple hair, musically-derived first name—which was Melody before she got mauled by Cheshire offscreen...maybe—and that series being the last time it was such a sarcastic-fantastic idea to hide from Wonderland in a big city), and despite everyone else who has tried to get close to Violet so far having been a magically corrupted serial killer or an eldritch dream god in disguise, Calie doesn't bat an eye, and is even receptive and happy to suddenly learn that her twice-kidnapped daughter has made a new friend behind her back.
This makes sense, and will not end tragically for anyone in any way, just like my sarcasm.
Okay; rant over, because it's movie night at the Liddle residence, which means it's time for some Zenescope cross-brand self-promotion. As of the first Wonderland Annual from 2009, it has become a coincidence bordering on confirmation that Zenescope titles outside of the Grimm Universe exist in-Universe as movies (recall how in that issue, one of the Russells was watching The Chronicles Of Dr. Herbert West—which I shined on at the time, but will be reviewing in April along with the Lovecraft story and the first Re-Animator movie). Here, Violet and Harmony are watching Irresistible (complete with a "totally natural" explanation of the plot so readers will rush out to buy the four-issue series).
I skimmed through the TPB for my own knowledge and the context of this review, and...it's fine. As Cliff's Noted by Violet, the Irresistible miniseries follows Allen Keeg (because backwards or anagrammed surnames are subtle), an awkward, love-numb incel whose life sucks so bad that he can't enjoy a strip club, gets beaten up by a three-man improv group, and is subjected to a stereotypical Romani curse (back when it was still okay to say "Gypsy") by the actual, Biblical Delilah. Said curse makes any woman who sees him (except for the one who dumped him and "ruined his life") instantly want to fuck him, hence the title. As expected, he quickly learns the "too much of a good thing" moral (plus the curse gets stronger all the time, turning the women into violently jealous lust zombies)
and goes to felonious lengths to (ineffectively) end the curse, only to willingly subject himself to the ending of Maniac to get his shitty life, and the stock narrative of Irresistible, over with.
The first issue of Irresistible name-drops a ton of comic books (Allen geeks out with a stripper dressed like Emma Frost), including both Grimm and non-Grimm Zenescope titles. This, taking the "Zenescope comics are movies in their flagship Universe" thing into account and assuming the dialogue is similar in the "movie," gave me strong, "Burt and Vicky have Night Shift on their dashboard" vibes.
Also, Allen is said in today's issue of Wonderland to be played by Jared Leto (this issue released in January 2013, the year after Irresistible concluded, four months before the fourth Thirty Seconds To Mars album, and ten months before Dallas Buyers' Club would cement him as an overrated method actor, but a full four years after any previous musical or film success, so he seems like an odd choice of reference to make here; Violet also floats the idea of Channing Tatum as Allen—who would have just starred in 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike, with a G.I. Joe sequel on the way in a few months at the time, and would have been a more contemporary choice for the writers).
The pop culture references continue with the girls arguing a Death Battle street fight between Joss Whedon and Ron Howard, referencing Cabin In the Woods and The Avengers in the bargain (I had to throw that in because I happen to have reviewed them both), as focus shifts to Wonderland, where I get to make unconventional use of this
because the Red Queen and Suicide King (a.k.a. the Short King, because that's a thing people say now, I guess, and my forty-something ass is one of your fellow kids...)
have reached the front gates of the Temple Of Purity, home of numerous blue, glowy-eyed monk types who can read minds and souls, freeze people in place, and open a pit to Ominously But Generically Named Fate Worse Than Death Sub-Realm #69,420 anywhere they want. So of course, they completely miss the White Rabbit spying on them for Spades even though they can later sense her and her army from deep inside the Temple, and any hope of my favorite Wonderland duo getting the happy ending they deserve is dashed by contrived writing at the last possible second...next time!
Meanwhile, at the Culver City Apartment Of Wishful Thinking and Bad Decisions, Dodgson's money is running low (good on Calie for making a profani-ton of money last nineteen years; with everything else she's done wrong in her life so the story can happen, at least she's been financially savvy up to now), so as she runs out of a potential job interview at a diner (more gory Wonderland hallucinations), Harmony and Violet plot to sneak out and go clubbing the following night...next time!
I also think it's important to note that, despite everything that has ever happened to her, and every gory visual that occupies her mind on a secondly basis, Calie is shown that evening reading Horns by Joe Hill (which had been out for three years by then, and would receive a film adaptation later that year). I suppose PTSD doesn't always make sense in real life, either, but I still found it odd that she would be reading a horror novel here.
Wonderland #8
As I mentioned in my Wonderland #6 review, this issue marks the beginning of Zenescope using Digital Edition covers, starting with the comically expressive bait cover on the left by Alfredo Reyes and Juan Fernandez. I also snapped the preview page from last week's issue to draw attention to how the font (which is available in one of the apps I use to make my banner images) makes the plot synopsis hard to parse because its punctuation is illegible, and because the cover art looks cool and I don't think I've mentioned the artists (Giuseppe Cafaro and Alessia Nocera) before.
After they knocked out Calie with some drugged ice cream in the previous issue, Violet and Harmony attempt to talk their way past the bouncer at Club Excess (who looks kind of like Malec's Legionnaire henchman, Volac, but it's probably not him because he gets eaten later), where the newest Flower Girl (presumably Erika from the beginning of issue six?) is being turned and...enjoying the process, prompting me into premature meme-jaculation because...
The scene transitions come fast and hard from there,
so I won't be using my Superfriends memes this time around. But just know that while the issue is switching focus every page or two, Spades and the Red Queen fight for the fate of the Temple Of Purity in Wonderland (only for the Suicide King to become a liability even though Red should keep fighting because Wonderland entities can regenerate from everything but inconsistent writing, magic Death knives, and D&D memes).
Justice for Lena the Cheshire Queen!
Maybe we're supposed to infer that, because of the symbolic connection to the Ebony Blade, Spades can nullify Wonderland's regeneration? Anyway, what's cool is how the issue explores her powers: apparently, even hyper-sane reality-warping monks have dark thoughts, and if darkness exists,
and, well...Scanners.
Yeah, I'm getting super topical and contemporary with the references (and my sarcasm) today because while the paneling and "editing" makes it look like there's a lot happening, there really isn't anything of substance here. We get small insights into Harmony's home life (hoarder chic decor, a self-medicating mother—like Sammy's—and deceased Marine father, completing the picture painted by her previously displayed exhibitionism and promiscuity) that barely matter because she took Dream (and shared it with Violet via a kiss that would have titilated Eric Bischoff in the early 2000s—topical references, remember?), and will shortly devolve into a mindless sex cannibal amidst a club-full of mindless sex cannibals, confirming that the hints to her being a Wonderland entity (a Flower Girl, a corrupted Melody, a Hat thrall, etc.) were all red herrings and her existence in the story was basically disposable and pointless. Thankfully, though, the issue ends with Calie at her best: arriving to save the day with gun in hand and a Ripley-worthy one-liner on her lips, ready to seemingly end this arc of the Wonderland Ongoing series in the next issue.
This clearly wasn't my favorite issue to read or talk about, but things got better over the next two issues, including a wonderful, Retrospective reminder that I'm still working toward my goal of reaching ten thousand monthly views before the end of 2025, and an apology for my forgetful cynicism in the previous issue review.
When I began writing the Grimm Fairy Tales (GFT) Retrospective, it was a journey of comparison between my memory of my first readthrough, things I noticed on this re-read, and searching out the original source materials (folk and fairy tales, classic literature, etc.). There comes a certain point in any literary journey (like with my One Piece Multi-Piece series) where the little details shift from foreshadowing that hits different to things you have to remember as a means of better appreciating a coming resolution. There also must come (especially at the age of forty-something) a point where memory quietly recuses itself from the equation, morphing retrospective content into a brand new experience. Said experience comes with a certain amount of moment-to-moment cynicism that begins to feel disingenuous as each moment passes, like, I wouldn't have anything to complain about if I just kept reading.
However, there's kind of a point to these weekly one-issue reviews, even if they are sometimes cynical and soulless; that being that the feeling of the criticism is reflexive of the issue's...issues. Does it make good commercial or creative sense to put out a frenetic piece of content with the barest hint of a story, make people pay for it, and expect them to come back for more in the hopes that things get better? No. That's why I offer my content for free as a supplement or alternative. And it's a creative style that lends itself more to long-form content like Trade Paperback compilations, where you can read a complete story or arc all the way through if you prefer.
All this to say again that this next issue is where things get better; a conclusion that re-frames the faults of the previous issue into competent foreshadowing and new threads of a story that was yet to be finished.
Wonderland #9
Starting things off with a pun, this is a wonderful Stjepan Šejić cover. The beautiful autumn floral flourishes, the artistic identity of the posing and costuming (which is a proper way to say it looks like a Šejić cover because of Calie's Leather Mommy outfit and the vine bondage),
and the mouth of the plant kaiju in the background that literally bookends the arc with a callback to his cover for Wonderland #6, all make it clear why this cover was chosen for the Digital Edition and the Trade compilation.
For some plot relevance to the Wonderland B plot (which has been the more interesting plot of the two so far), also look to the Ale Garza cover (which was colored by Quest Giant-Size colorist Linda Šejić).
As for the issue itself, events pick up right where they last left off, with Calie holding the Flower Girls at gunpoint while Harmony and the rest of the cannibalistic lust zombies do what it says on the tin and Violet struggles against the effects of Dream that are turning her "stark raving mad" (as Calie's inner logue puts it).
I've mentioned this phrase before in a previous post, and I got curious enough after encountering it again here that I decided to do some etymology research. That's word origins, not insects. Also not incest. Don't confuse etymology with entomology, and definitely don't confuse insects with incest. Your life will be a lot simpler that way. Anyway, "stark raving mad" originated in the late 1400s as just "stark mad," obviously combining "stark" (Old English and Germanic origin, meaning strong, utter, or complete) and "mad" (no explanation necessary because this is 2025). The "raving" part came centuries later (from Old French meaning "to speak or move irrationally," so of course that's what we call EDM parties now), and there is a "stark staring mad" variation that highlights the wild, bug-eyed look of the insane (like Jack Nicholson in Batman, The Shining, and Cuckoo's Nest, Nicolas Cage memes, or Survivor 49 contestants Savannah and Sage).
Getting back to the review, I said above that Harmony's presence in the story was rendered pointless by her exposure to Dream, and that was one of the criticisms that I am glad to be proven wrong about in this issue. I am still disappointed that she only existed as red herring nostalgia bait and "protagonist's new friend who dies," but brilliant foreshadowing is brilliant foreshadowing, and in a scene reminiscent of the finale of Children Of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (a bit of the first one, too), Violet shrugs off her Dream symptoms and starts chucking the club's entire bar supply at the villains before sending them up in flames with the lighter Harmony gave her in the previous issue. When Calie later asks how she was able to clear her mind and fight back so easily, Violet cites a sudden feeling of empowerment similar to what Calie experienced in Escape From Wonderland. This is further elaborated on in one of the issue's two epilogues, where (as mother and daughter once more go on the run—but "off the grid" this time, so it'll totally make a difference and hitchhiking is safer than hiding from Wonderland in New York or LA, just like my sarcasm) the Innocent and Love (the latter shown to be Alice in her bikini armor outfit from Alice In Wonderland) mention that, possibly as a result of her exposure to Dream and the Hatter’s Hat, Violet can channel Wonderland energy while in the Nexus.
 |
| a.k.a. the Temple Of Purity.... |
I come to another retroactive correction of my opinions on the previous issue. I said there (because of its hyperactive editing and convenient cliffhanger writing) that William Allen the Suicide King was a liability that hindered my favorite Wonderland character's ability to go all-out against the Queen Of Spades. That situation is immediately rectified here by him giving into his Wonderland persona and giving the Grey Knight a round of full-body invasive surgery with a dagger and no anesthesia while the Red Queen cuts her way through the Spade army to carry her actually stark raving son to safety, and to the Font Of Sanity (it wasn't given a name, but that's what I'm calling it).
Once I set aside my impulse to joke about the "Save Martha" vibes here,
this pair of pages hit me in the feels like a truck,
with the Red Queen (Elizabeth Allen) ultimately doing for her son what "Lacie" did for Calie near the end of Return To Wonderland (with the added benefit of purified sanity in William's case), the light of his freedom disintegrating the Spade Queen's army in one shot as my Queen walks off, sad but victorious for now. I don't immediately recall if William's fate is ever followed up on, but we get a good explanation for why Red didn't end up corrupted like Hearts was (her love for her son left no quarter in her heart or mind for dark thoughts, so Spades' powers wouldn't work on her). Seriously, the writing this issue is peak and Sheldon Goh brings his A-game with the facial expressions (I mean, just look at them, right?). The second artist (E.J. Morges) is hit or miss with the Club Excess scenes, but Raven Gregory carries with the writing, like I said. That is, until the issue's second epilogue....
We see that, in Chicago, a new crop of Flower Girls (led by that blue-haired one we saw...enjoying her own fertilization in the previous issue, who is actually not Erika from Wonderland #6) have established Club Decadence (so, they're not the most original with naming things) on the Spade Queen's behalf, and the issue ends with the revelation that Erika is still human...oid?..., has her sanity back (?), and has given birth to a baby girl she names Dahlia Ivy. Watch out, Jay-Z; Beyonce could be a Wonderland flower monster in disguise! Joking aside, this "plant nursery" concept of the Flower Girls infecting women with Dream and getting them pregnant on a national scale for...reasons? (behind the Queen's back no less) is certainly an interesting writing choice. But I have to invoke my forty-something cynicism clause here and call bullshit because I don't remember it ever being followed up on.
That said, I had fun, and the tenth issue is going to be special. It's also perfect for this time of year (the most wonderful time, some would say) and for the other content I'm reviewing this month. Much like several of the X-Men multi-parters, and certain arcs of the Rascal Does Not Dream franchise, it is a time travel story.
Wonderland #10
To begin at the beginning, as all stories should regardless of whether or not time travel is involved (and to avoid me saying "First of all" for the millionth time, and we all know what the Wonderland books have to say about beginnings, so I'm not going there again, either), I have some words about the cover and the preview text (hence why I put the issue #9 preview page here and not just the cover). It's busy, but I like the Mike Krome and Ula Moś cover. It's jammed with referential imagery and a little foreshadowing, and everyone's basically on-model. Where I take issue (more puns!) is with the final statement in the preview copy: "Featuring the long-awaited rebirth of the Cheshire Cat!" It's "technically correct" deceptive fan-bait of the kind that the comics industry has been engaging in for a century at this point, in that the Cheshire Cat is sort of a character in this issue (relegated to his usual sidekick role once again). But there's no promised rebirth; Cheshire is just here, albeit in a different enough role (he's good now, morally!) for it to qualify as a rebirth of identity or purpose, like reincarnation, but the promise is that we will see his rebirth, which we do not (at least, not here, and not yet).
So, with the Hollywood arc having ended in a blaze of morning glory last time, what did Zenescope do for their big, tenth issue of Wonderland? Something pretty damned cool and thought-provoking, actually, if not entirely original.
Having discovered the discarded sands of Father Time's hourglass (after the Red Knight killed him in Call Of Wonderland, according to an Editor's Note, because I don't think he was named in that series and Wonderland's sense of time and clarity of writing are what they are), a future Violet (wearing her Hatter costume as we have seen it on many covers and in dream sequences so far) and Cheshire have gotten permission to travel back in time and prevent Alice from being sacrificed to Wonderland (and thereby preventing the events of the franchise so far), which involves Cheshire slaughtering and eating Pappy Dodgson, so already there are points in the issue's favor.
As a result, things play out less like A Christmas Carol or It's A Wonderful Life (heh; Carol, Wonderful...), and more like Flashpoint (or rather, the shitty Flash movie that was going to be called Flashpoint before the DCEU—and more importantly, the world at large—imploded under the weight of circumstance and its own dark realism, where the moral of the story was to let bad things happen to good people because the alternative could be worse than the status quo). See, without Dodgson doing his semi-annual child sacrifice thing, the Liddle-Caroll Family do have a happy life for awhile...until we are reminded that without Alice committing suicide and without Dodgson (or Lewis, who remained faithful in the new timeline and died of cancer) there to keep Uncle Drake's Acrobatic impulses in check, he...well...becomes the reason Johnny is the one to commit suicide in this "happier" timeline, Alice gets committed after murdering Drake with a piece of mirror (fitting), and Calie becomes a delinquent before falling into Wonderland, where the Jabberwocky corrupts her into the Dark Queen we last saw imagery of in the 2012 Wonderland Annual.
Putting my cynical hat back on for a minute, Zenescope could have just as easily advertised that this issue featured the long-awaited rebirth of the Jabberwocky, considering that he, like Cheshire, is also technically back from the dead suddenly in a time travel story. I should be sorry that this review features the rebirth of me torturing and pulverizing the dead horse known as Comic McLieFace, but I'm not because I can be more petty than a racecar driver named Richard. Which, I guess, makes me a Dick. An ascerbic, obsessive, unapologetic Dick who only has one comic book pun in his arsenal, because I also take issue (that's the one!) with the interior art. I do kind of like Francesco di Pastena's expressive, uncanny valley style. But there are two colorists (the more complimentary style of Francesca Zambon, and the flatter, simpler style of Ben Sawyer), which makes the work of one line artist look like the work of two, in a bad way (not that di Pastena drawing Dark Queen Calie with two different designs in the same issue helped with the visual consistency).
Another gripe I have is with the repeated inclusion of "Antigonish" by William Hughes Mearns (that creepy poem about John Cena annoying people on the stairs that I referenced in my review of Identity last year). What is it about Wonderland titles having characters take comfort from nightmarish or socially questionable literature‽
Getting back to positivity because I took Michael Jordan's advice, in addition to the story being both heartfelt and unabashedly disturbing (I especially like the slow reveal of how and why things went wrong—despite the "dejected time traveling heroes decide to give up and leave right before the source of critical information arrives" trope—and the clear and immediate establishment of the nature of Violet and Cheshire's relationship), issue #10 also has its share of pop culture references (Violet's Supernatural-inspired rambling of nerdcore pseudonyms, the "here's Johnny!" nod to the Hatter's Shining homage covers, and of course, the poetry). The final panel even includes some poetry about the butterfly effect that Raven Gregory composed for the issue (I can't confirm this on such short notice, aside from Google having never heard of it before, with or without the pluralization typo).
Anyway, Violet and Cheshire (following some dialogue and paneling that really makes their relationship clear) ultimately decide that the only event they need to stop now is their own actions, so they talk themselves out of the beginning of the issue with one last journey through time, and the two Violets shrink off into the sunset, returning to their possible future(s?) where Calie is in charge of Wonderland as the White Queen. We also get a panel suggesting that little Alice saw the four time travelers as she was being led away to her necessary doom, adding to the emotional punch of the issue.
With no further cause to complain or praise without repeating myself like a time loop, I thought I'd close out this post with some words on the Dark Queen. It's a name that has been used in comics before (Jean Grey's brief turn in the Hellfire Club comes to mind immediately because of my recent holiday viewing), and Calie's Wonderland appearances as the Dark Queen have been limited to the 2012 Annual (where the form went unnamed) and this issue. Calie would not be the last, however, as some years later, a new, older Dark Queen (inspired in appearance by Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, but with a Zenescope flair to her design) would be introduced as an event-level threat for the massive Age Of Darkness and Realm War storylines. She had no connection to Calie or Wonderland, and can best be described as a gender-swapped amalgamation of Lord Zedd and Thanos in a Love After World Domination cosplay. But I will get to those events...in time, so stay punned and 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 keep myself on the right track and get one step closer to my year-end goal, 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 review push of a Tom Cruise movie...and your internal organs).
With just two weeks left in the year, I think you all know by now that the last Wednesday reviews are going to be Zenescope - Omnibusted posts on Madness Of Wonderland and Down the Rabbit Hole, so I'm going to leave the seasonal release calendar out of these now that I feel pretty SMART about making it through 2025 relatively sane.
Omnibuster,
On the Road To 10k.
Comments
Post a Comment