Zenescope - Omnibusted #54: Myths & Legends - The Gathering
a.k.a. The Omnibuster.
Now that I've deviated from normalcy with looks at Zenescope's April Fools Editions and the canceled Chronicles Of Dr. Herbert West, it's time to get back into chronological order (puns?) by looking at something that’s been collected out of order.
I make sense!
So let's make sense of what I'm talking about with Myths & Legends: The Gathering.
To get caught up (something that I've started doing myself this week), Myths & Legends is a long, limited series that serves a two-fold purpose (at minimum) of being both a Samantha Darren-led title (in apology for the prematurely canceled Grimm Tales ongoing series we never got because Samantha is a lesser Sela) and a pseudo-anthology sequel series to some of Grimm Fairy Tales' most popular early issues, with its story arcs thus far collected as follows:
- Volume One collected the first five issues (the Red Riding Hood sequel).
- Issues six and seven (shut up!) were collected in separate Volumes of The Dream Eater Saga.
- Volume Two collected issues eight through eleven (The Little Mermaid sequel).
- Volume Three collected issues twelve through fifteen (the Beauty & The Beast sequel).
But the last two Volumes are where things get tricky if you're only reading from the Trade Paperbacks, because the two issues I'm reviewing today weren't collected until Volume Five (which also contains the final arc of the series, which takes place after the events of Volume Four—the Hansel & Gretel sequel...but not the funny, male stripper one).
Actually, I just checked and it turns out that ComiXology has a Myths & Legends Omnibus compilation of all five Volumes (with their issues in Volume order rather than how they are individually numbered, so it still takes some jumping around to read coherently, if that makes sense) with chapter title pages for each issue, so problem solved by parts, I guess?
The preview for the beginning of this short arc reminds us (kind of) that after the previous Myths & Legends (and Dream Eater Saga) events, Esmeralda has Erica the Siren under her control, the Beast is a rogue element because of his rage, and aside from Britney Waters (who gets a cover despite not being in this issue at all), Samantha and Baba Yaga are batting zero for nothing in the Falseblood sidekick department, and the Dark One is continuing to calmly assure his massive but rapidly dwindling network of expendable, selfish, cowardly, treacherous, greedy assholes that all of his failures are going exactly according to plan because he can beat Risk at chess by playing checkers on a Rubik's Cube.
Whatever the case, the sixteenth issue's B Cover (by Robert Atkins and Sanju Nivangune) was used for the fifth Volume's Table Of Contents background, and there is no bonus material to consider in any version.
Grimm Fairy Tales - Myths & Legends:
The Gathering
One of said failures occurs when Baba Yaga..."intercepts" an armored car delivery of a gargoyle statue he acquired, only to smash it and retrieve a green shard of...something that was hidden inside.
Thankfully (or however adverbs work), Samantha is a cop now because she has Legally Distinct Facsimile Of the Force, Do Not Sue magic and/or the plot demands it, and just when she's about to insert herself into the case and get answers (the preview says there will be those, but we in 2026 should all know better than to have expectations higher than the soles of our feet, so prepare not for resolution, but for vague, infuriating statements and dense, foreshadowing exposition; yay), The Innocent freezes time at the worst possible moment so she can annoy Samantha and the reading audience with vague, infuriating statements and a loose adaptation of Greek creation myths. It's that kind of thing where "even though I can stop time, I don't have the time or authority to tell the heroine I specifically singled out what the dangerous MacGuffin is or why it's important because there are already villains looking for it, but I do have time to give this longer, seemingly irrelevant exposition dump instead because the writers haven't thought that far ahead and the bad thing you're supposed to care about hasn't gotten dire enough yet." In any medium, as a writing tactic, it's fucking cheeks, and people need to stop doing it yesternow.
That said, the exposition dump is a cool adaptation of the myth (and legend!) of the sun Titan Helios into a Grimm/Æsop curiosity fable, incorporating his genealogy (though unnamed Highborns here, his parents are Hyperion and Theia) and a myth explanation of the day/night cycle (using some overlap with Norse mythology because Jotunheim is apparently in Myst, too) so he can be with the hot blonde he saw bathing once (again, unnamed, but Helios' only relationship in myth was with the water nymph Perse, so we can assume that's her for now, which means she's made of Provenance energy and doesn't have a soul) and not cook her to ash with his sun magic. Except she gets jealous and curious and stows away in Helios' chariot (they got the chariot right!), and the exposition dump cliffhangers on her maybe freezing to death in Jotunheim so the story can return to Samantha being too late to secure another shard (Esmeralda and Erica get to it first) because The Innocent sucks. Also, the Beast encounters Venus (because aside from the hints of actual parental love we saw in The Return, her chief character traits are vain, evil, jealous, and collects men).
The second part of The Gathering feels so much longer in a good way when compared to the first.
Yes, it relies on contrivances to explain away why The Innocent sucks (the Realms and the Nexus were screwed from the dawn of time, the stars were aligned against her, the sun was in her eyes, divine hax are illegal, etc.). And yes, the second half of Helios' story amounts to him going mad from solitude after he accidentally immolates Perse while they're sleeping (there's going to be a Phoenix character in the not-too-distant future, so don't feel too bad, but it is a sad turn in the story—kind of like the crap Pat Shand pulled with Will Scarlet—even if you know it’s coming) and getting sealed away by the Council Of the Realms (using an Egyptian amulet with a name that makes you want to read Stjepan Šejić comics and is inlaid with a ruby that looks enough like the Cyclops' Eye—with similar enough powers—to make me ponder calling all the bullshit on the chronology here). But for all the unsubtle promotion ("Unleashed" is emboldened in the dialogue, and the characters say "Sunstone" like someone told the writers that each utterance of the word would kill a member of the Trump family...not that I'm complaining) and heavy-handed exposition, I was genuinely awed at the retroactive context this issue places around the events of Baba Yaga and Legacy, Hard Choices, the Sinbad comics, Immortals, and The Dream Eater Saga.
Basically, it all boils down to Baba Yaga and Esmeralda working together on the former's incredibly long-term revenge scheme to collect the three shards of the Sunstone Of Ra (which may or may not also be the Sunfury Amulet that gave Wilhelm fire powers in the Sinbad series) and free Helios from the sun so they can use him to kill the Dark One (which is out of character considering Baba Yaga can see everything that will ever happen and just had a negative experience with trying to control someone more powerful than herself: the Beast). But how did Baba Yaga acquire the shards she has? By aging Allexa (spelled with one "L" here because the writers forgot) to near death to take hers, and being retconned into the death of Drago Mathers because he had a shard, too! Oh, and there's a map to the third shard drawn by Baba Yaga's mother (that's the implication I got, anyway) that was hidden in Samantha's Inner Sanctum (entry to which works on vampire rules, so Baba Yaga has full access because The Dream Eater Saga happened. Malec may think he's a master strategist, but Baba Yaga is the real deal as of right now; otherwise he wouldn't be sitting on his ass and watching reality TV versions of Hansel and Gretel hunt ghosts while Venus and the Beast murder their way to the third shard. We're shown there are three shards, but the intricate writing this issue (its one point of confusion for me) made it seem like there are more.
The pacing runs a bit uneven as the reveals and speculation keep piling up, but I feel like I appreciated this two-parter way more on my second reading because I didn't pay enough attention to its reference game or Baba Yaga as an important character the first time around. Amazing.
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72
Omnibuster,
Man,
Myth,
Legend,
Humble,
Out.
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