Zenescope - Omnibusted #43: Neverland - Hook
a.k.a. The Hooked Omnibuster.
If I had more time, energy, and forethought, I would have queued up a LibriVox reading of Peter Pan and had a Cover Charge review ready to release yesterday so I could end Hook & Book January with a truly Neverland-themed week (I'm still reviewing Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare on Friday). Like with The Second Jungle Book, I do plan on giving it my time in March to coincide with my Neverland Complete Omnibus review collection. But for now, I've seen the 1953 animated movie, the Mary Martin stage film, Hook, and Once Upon A Time Season Three, so I'm content to not have the reading experience just yet, and I (mostly) enjoy this miniseries just fine without it.
Neverland Volume Two
Hook
This beautiful cover by Artgerm is also the A Cover for the first issue, and the Table Of Contents' background is cropped and red-toned from the B Cover by Ale Garza and Sanju Nivangune. The bonus content for this Volume is a full reprint of Alice In Wonderland #1, followed by an ad for the now-defunct Zenescope app (in a software licensing deal with ComiXology before it was absorbed by Amazon like the power of a youthful soul).
I'd normally put the Decker Shado "But it was all just a dream!" gif here, and then complain at length about the writers and artists baiting and confusing the audience with psychological thriller bullshit by having it look like Pan is still alive (if reading order and continuity hold up, this is set after his death in the Dream Eater Saga). But that would devalue the solid character writing of Nathan Cross, and make little sense in a story where one of the main characters is a literal psychologist.
Cross is having a recurring nightmare (a Pan-related Neverland Nightmare, if you will) that gives him the sense that his Lost brother, Timmy, might still be alive in the Third Realm Of Power, and Wendy Darling and her two nephew-sons are a GOATed support system for him. Like, before the expected magic superhero stuff starts to happen for real, the little fun, romantic beats this story starts with (Wendy and Cross being a healthy—relative to their shared trauma of saving John and Michael from a soul-eating, manipulative egomaniac from a parallel fairytale dimension—loving couple, Harlow having moved on to a job as a federal consultant between Volumes, Wendy and the kids enjoying a day at the zoo, etc.) are a great reintroduction to the characters. My only real criticism is the part where Cross sneaks into Harlow's office and lies on his couch to surprise him. The scene is only there to give Cross some unnecessary (and in vain) cool points for doing and saying stuff that would get him killed in a horror movie (or 2026, but I repeat myself...), and the transition to the next panel is so abrupt and nonsensical that I felt like I skipped over something.
Meanwhile, the Pan bait keeps chumming the waters because the police (two detectives named McDougal and Walsh) are on the case of a series of murders where the victims appear to have had their life sucked out of them, leaving aged husks behind (like what happened to the town in the Salem's Daughter One-Shot). The detectives even make mention of several of the victims being homeless (like in the Neverland One-Shot).
But later, Cross thinks he sees Belle and his prosthetic arm starts burning with phantom pain and transforms like it would in Neverland. And at roughly the same time, Wendy and the boys are attacked by a sharp-toothed, hulking monster who's looking for Cross, and Belle (who, I guess, was there keeping an eye on them) is injured in the fight (hence the hyperbolic B Cover).
While I'm on the subject of covers, Zenescope chose the sexy A Cover by Ale Garza and Ivan Nunes for the TPB and digital versions of the second issue, but the B Cover by Marat Mychaels and Nunes is really cool, too, so I'm including that here from the preview page.
Getting back to the story, the fanged hulk certainly finds Cross...HookBustering him into another county with a massive laser beam and a crisp one-liner, but not before getting confirmation that Timmy might be alive. This leads him to the sewer (because Neverland portals always seem to be in the sewer) where he solos three or four crocodiles and dives into a glowing whirlpool like he's the kid from Warriors Of Virtue or something. On the other side (and wearing pirate cosplay again because the Realm Of Wonder And Imagination does that, remember?), he finds Neverland on fire and littered with the bodies of native warriors and what look like knights from Wonderland, but before he can get any answers, he is ambushed by Nob, who is accompanied by Pan's old mercenary goons.
Meanwhile, Detectives McDougal and Walsh (whose first name turns out to be Kate, so she's probably going to quit the force and start some sort of Umbrella Academy at some point) speculate that the rapid aging symptoms of the homeless victims, the dead family, and those present in the fanged hulk's subway attack are the work of a terrorist organization testing a new chemical agent, but when Walsh gets a call from Dr. Harlow and he lets her in on the Darlings' experience with Neverland (plus Belle is recovering at Wendy's, so there's some living, empirical proof to help speed the believability along), she may just have a different lead to follow up on.
This Ale Garza and Ivan Nunes cover begs to be talked about because the physics of Belle's clothing staying on don't make sense (they forgot to draw a few strips of fabric, so her thong looks like it's growing directly out of her ass) and Wendy's fingers (not to be confused with Wendy's Chili) are drawn so blocky that it looks like she fisted a Porygon. That is not how you catch 'em all, people! Unless we're talking about Serious Technical Difficulties, that is....
Story-wise, I find this to be the densest, but also the weakest and most derivative issue. The new fairy, Nyx, is just another take on Volume One Belle: manipulated by a power-glutton because of her jealousy and fear over being forgotten, but with the added nuance that she hates Belle for joining Pan and helping perpetuate the Dark One's fairy genocide. So she's more justifiable in her motivations than Belle, who was shown to be considerably more childish. Without any regard for pacing and subtlety, Cross almost immediately drops that he knows the fanged hulk is Barr (the deposed former ruler of Neverland who built Cross' HookBuster and helped him mount a vain assault on Pan's fortress so they could rescue John and Michael in the first Volume). And Barr here really is just a mix of the Dark One (evil former ruler with strategic acumen who desires power and conquest above all else), Pan (the same life-draining powers, stealing the Sacred Child again, control of the Lost Boys, leadership over Nob and the mercenaries, and a fairy general), and Morrigan (the HookBuster was built with a motor control failsafe just like Morrigan's shield bracer that he gave to Sela, and Barr's plan involves using his human pawn to grant him access to the Nexus, just like Morrigan). Belle, Wendy (in her Spirit Halloween pirate wench outfit again) and Walsh (now in a suit of armor because being a cop translates into being a knight with The Power Of Wonder And Imagination, I guess?) coming to Tiger Lily's rescue was pretty cool. But more importance was placed on Barr reiterating his backstory in rushed but bloated exposition and glazing himself about how ackshully he knew Cross was a Falseblood and had been orchestrating his life since Timmy's abduction to draw out the maximum potential of Cross' powers so the Sacred Child could be turned into an MCU skybeam between Neverland and the Nexus so that Barr could eat New York and out-power-scale Cthulhu (he says "the Ancient Ones," but we know who he's talking about) and....
Speaking of derivative characters, I previously referred to Barr as the fanged hulk, no cap (sorry). But now that he's rampaging in New York and Belle comments on how his anger is making him stronger..., yeah; Barr is just the Hulk now.
The setpieces look epic as they should for a final battle sequence with the fate of the Realms in the balance, but aside from that, the art style this issue doesn't lend itself to coherence or emotional stakes, and the pacing is rushed and erratic. McDougal (remember him from three issues ago‽) feels like an extraneous NPC, the creatives seemingly don't know what to do with Walsh, Wendy gets fridged so Cross can get a rage boost and kill Barr (and so Nyx can have something to do but still not get an opportunity to be her own character even though there are hints in the wind-down that Belle is willing and possibly able to help her make that happen), Tiger Lily just decides out of nowhere to use the Sacred Child (the source of healing magic, reproduction, and natural energy among the tribal natives of Neverland) to revive Wendy (which not only neuters and cheapens the emotional stakes of the previous scene, it destroys the Sacred Child in the process, putting Neverland's ecosystem in jeopardy—remember this for a future event—to appease the emotional state of one man). If I were of a certain internet ilk, I might overanalyze this as a romanticizing of whites exploiting indigenous populations, but in context, neither Cross nor anyone else asks or forces Tiger Lily to make the decision she does, and if the perceived allegories are intentional on Brusha's part, Pan and Barr (and ye olde Darkhorde at large) have always been the real colonial force in the Realm of Neverland.
That said, there are a few more moments of strangeness that bear discussion. First is that Belle says she would be able to use her powers as a Provenance being (in conjunction with Cross shooting his Buster at the Sacred Child again to power it up) to trap Barr in Limbo. Yeah; she specifically says Limbo (Myst's afterlife sub-Realm), not Earth's Inferno (which would make more sense given the Realms involved here) or Wonderland's Place Between Dreams and Dying (which has its own set of plot inconsistencies that I will address when we reconvene at a...later...juncture).
I don't know if this was a power flex or if Belle was just using "limbo" in the colloquial sense, but I don't think it would definitively turn out to be the "fate worse than death" she was imagining because Barr probably would have a sweet gig as a second piece of muscle for Alicia. Since she only takes pity on great warriors, though, he's more likely to get crushed by Jack or Erik and wind up as an entertaining toy in her dungeon until he eats one too many of her souls and gets fed to the Chaos Beasts (a.k.a. the Flesh Reavers) when he gets too strong for his own good.
Second is the exchange between Harlow and Belle before she sends him, Cross, and Wendy back home. It's almost like there was supposed to be something more between them that we didn't get to see on the page. In fact, Neverland: Hook has a general sense of "we're not sure if we're going to do anything else with Neverland, so there are some things we're going to skip over or avoid committing to for now, just in case." Like, it would have been cool to explore the dynamics of the characters more in their downtime (the Pat Shand approach, essentially) or have a side miniseries about Belle going on some kind of journey to purify Nyx, or even build more of a promotional connection to the upcoming Unleashed event by bringing her face-to-face with The First Master (The Maker) to answer for her past and plead for a new future.
Which brings me to the third talking point and final stinger of the series: Pan is back‽ I'm confused because the fan wiki reading order places Neverland: Hook in canon as part of the Unleashed era (meaning the Dream Eater had already killed Pan at this point) and the Grimm Fairy Tales Wikipedia page (publication order) shows its first issue debuting the month after the finale of The Dream Eater Saga. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised because the Wikipedia article doesn't acknowledge that The Jungle Book was ever collected into Trade Volumes, but the only way to reconcile Pan's sudden return on the last page (with a "The End For Now!" qualifier) is that the fan wiki is wrong. The earlier mention of the drained homeless people, coupled with the sewer background behind Pan on the final page, suggests that this predates his activities in The Dream Eater Saga, so an Editor's Note pointing there would have been good back-promotion and served the continuity better, rather than giving the in-the-moment impression that Zenescope were maybe going to Rise Of Skywalker one of their most hateworthy villains (well before that movie was a thing, obviously).
I've already talked about the covers more than I normally would at this point in the Retrospective's lifespan and mentioned the bonus Alice reprint (referred to as an "Exclusive Reprint" on its cover page even though it's included in widely purchasable physical Trades as well as a non-fungible digital version and the reprinted issue likewise has multiple physical and digital ways of consuming it, so I digress), so Stay Tuned for when I make full sense of the Neverland timeline in March, tune in for a return to Myths & Legends next week, 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 because a selfish rage monster is turning my country into a soulless, shriveled husk, 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, like tomorrow's TBT '26 throwback to better times.
113
Omnibuster,
Second Star To the Right,
Straight On 'Til Morning,
Out, But Never Landing.
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