Zenescope - Omnibusted #56: Angel & Gods
a.k.a. The Omnibuster.
As of this writing, Just the Ticket is roughly 1,000 views away from my monthly goal of ten thousand, which I haven't hit, let alone surpassed, in two years. But whether or not guardian angels and magic get involved, I think we can totally pull it off, so I'm bringing back the doubled call to action in hopes that you Stay Tuned and 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 onward, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see, receive the latest news on my content, and get me closer to that goal.
Getting into today's content, I'd also like to preface this review/summary/Retrospective thing by noting that there is no such collection of Zenescope comics from the 2012 era titled "Angel & Gods." My banner for this post is an "original" construction using the cropped A Cover for the Angel One-Shot (retroactively termed Grimm Universe #0 for Trade compilation purposes) by Mike DeBalfo and Milen Parvanov, the Grimm Universe title logo, and an "arc" title of my own devising (similar to the Redemption and Song Of Ice & Snow titles I came up with in the past when revisiting stretches of Zenescope's existing narrative). I will not talk at length here about the Grimm Universe Trade in terms of quality or version differences (I intend to save that for a future post), and instead take on each of the two relevant issues one at a time, including my Critical Quickie takes from my first Grimm Fairy Tales-related post, which I will be giving a TBT '26 push tomorrow.
Grimm Fairy Tales Annual #5 (2012)
Cover Charge Quickie: "Focus[es] on the machinations of Venus, Zeus, Neptune, Hades, and Ares. Prequel to the Angel One-Shot and the Godstorm mini-series."
Yeah; that's all I had to say about it, apparently.
So far as I could tell, this Annual wasn't collected anywhere, so besides the extraneous ads that would appear in a physical edition or a scan thereof (or alternate covers with decent resolution), there's nothing special you'd be missing out on by sticking with ComiXology or a similar digital version. But if you choose not to read the issue at all, just know you're missing out on more of Pat Shand's writing.
The timing of this issue is kind of in question because the opening dialogue between Venus and Ares seems to contradict their established relationship as introduced in The Grateful Beasts (where he helped kidnap Ilys for her), suggesting their conversation here might predate those events. It might also be bad writing that Venus seems to be more competent in the art of war than the literal god of that concept, but I choose to err on the side of intentional irony. It's a pretty clever throughline for the issue that Zenescope's take the Greco-Roman deities is a dichotomy of immortality and growth, like, godhood was their literal Greek Life as a bunch of emotional, debauched, edgelord assholes who tortured their pledges for their own amusement, slept around, and got drunk. Now that the world has moved on from "the old ways," most of them have grown up, assimilated, realized they've gotten socially or physically rusty, and learned to look for the small wonders of Nexus living. I like that Ares is a washed-up, vicarious war jock. I like that Neptune is a beach bum who collects shells and talks to birds. I like that Zeus' canonical promiscuity and infidelity have matured into the plot of Delivery Man. And I like that Hades is a cocky goth with a heart of gold even though Venus shackled him to a giant rock in Tartarus. Seriously, what Zenescope (and Shand, specifically, because he pretty much had creative control of the street-level side of the Grimm Universe from 2014 on) does with Hades down the line is some of my favorite character development that they've ever done. Emphatic punctuation!
And then there's Venus, for whom too much is never enough, and everything she's put together in her life in the Nexus (a fashion empire, an adoring fanbase, her own prep school, a loving daughter, an endless supply of men to fuck to death without opposition, etc.) is just a means to achieving her own personal M. Bison meme
As an epilogue to Venus using various tactics to gain power and allies in an as-yet-unspecified war to reclaim Earth (and the prime authority of her eternal youth when she was basically Cindy with a brain and sex powers), the 2012 Annual switches to the Realm of...Epilogue (that's not what it's really called; I just decided to call it that because of a pedantic production goof in the Dream Eater Saga, and it kind of fits), where the Keepers are debating over whether to interfere against their own code and save humanity, or let the gods burn everything to the ground. There isn't anything of note or interest about this last section of the Annual, and the Keepers suck, so let's move on to....
Grimm Fairy Tales
Angel: One-Shot
Grimm Universe #0
Cover Charge Quickie: "I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but it didn't have that "gotta read it!" factor that even The Library had going for it. A decent set-up for the Unleashed cycle."
Heather Angelos (so, even if you haven't read the issue before, it's obvious she's going to be Angel, right?) is a prosecutor in a class-action suit against a chemical plant CEO who looks like Richard Nixon with dialogue that begs to be read in a stereotypical mafioso voice. After winning her case by badgering him into hostility on the stand and assaulting him (granted, it was in self-defense, but does it count as self-defense if the attacker was provoked?) without suffering any state or federal repercussions (and being forced by opposing council into promoting the health benefits of the Nintendo Wii), Heather takes care of the remaining minutiae off-panel before being flown to Greece to meet with Gregor Brontios (Zeus' Nexus alias, because Greek and thunder).
Meanwhile, in the Greek Parliament (where everyone is at each other's throats over who is responsible for the 2009-2018—and beyond, arguably—financial crisis), Ares shows up to crush skulls, snap necks, and declare himself king (because Venus "gave" him Greece as a loyalty bonus in the 2012 Annual).
Heather's meeting with Zeus and reawakening of her past memories also opens up quite the can-basket of worm-spiders for any reader (like me) who is brave enough to look into all the references in her backstory. First, Heather is revealed to be Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft who stole from Zeus and drove humanity to the brink of pagan damnation...but also acted as a therapeutic companion to Demeter, suggesting she seek advice from Helios (who is a tortured soul trapped in the sun in Zenescope’s mythology) when Persephone is bound to Hades. Because Hecate prevented Demeter from burying the world in an apocalyptic winter and accompanied Persephone on her yearly journeys to and from the underworld, she became a more favored (but still minor as the Olympian hierarchy goes) goddess. In some obscure classical writings, Hecate is equated with Angelos (a daughter of Zeus and Hera, associated with the underworld, and the inspiration for Heather's last name here), and in later writings as "Mother of Angels." In addition to the classical Hecate and Angelos references, Zeus here also throws in that Heather was also known as Phospherous (who was a male deity in classical mythology—but why gender-shame in 2026, right?—the namesake of the similarly spelled periodic element, and because his name means light-bringer, he was considered the Greek parallel to Lucifer, so Heather's whole convoluted evil angel backstory comes full-circle to bite itself on the ass and keep chewing until it tastes corn).
So, yeah; I've made a point in the past of noting that as the Grimm Universe developed, Zenescope heroines started to fall into the mold of "gender-flipped and/or sexy, legally distinct Avengers/Justice League archetype." Now that she has her Realm Color powers, Sela Mathers is Wonder Woman. Robyn Hood is Green Arrow/Hawkeye. Britney Waters is part Wolverine, part Beast Boy, part Squirrel Girl. And with her convoluted, reincarnated goddess with repressed memories backstory, wings, and magical bludgeon, Heather Angelos is Zenescope's Hawkgirl. And she looks like a Victoria's Secret runway model in the low-detail panels, so while the action looks cool, it's hard to take "what if Heidi Klum was Thor?" seriously...but Heather acknowledges it later, so it's okay?
But we're not done with the issue (or the mythology references) yet, because now Heather has to stop Ares and his (or did he borrow it from Venus?) army of jet-slaying harpies and tank-crushing, cannibalistic Laestrygonians (who are much smaller here than classically described—mountain height—and originally appeared in Homer's Odyssey, where they used guerrilla tactics to sink all but one ship in Odysseus' fleet of twelve).
Also, I forgot to mention this above, but in the Annual, Venus mentions that in addition to her conventional Greek and Roman names, she was once known as Cytherea (an epithet of Aphrodite, based on the name of the island where she supposedly came ashore—take that however you wish, because sometimes, sea foam isn't just sea foam—after her birth).
Anyway, Heather manages to turn the tide in the battle against Ares' army and stalemate the war god himself before sealing him in the underworld (where Hades is chained up, so there's probably a short-lived teamup of War and Death coming, but I don't remember), accompanied by some more, "humans suck, so why fight for their survival when we could crush them and rule over what's left?" dialogue from him that feels incredibly stale by this point in our actual history (where even the leader of my Democratic haven of a country is a warmongering piece of shit with alleged ties to a network of depraved elites, to put it in the tamest, least unfounded terms possible).
The One-Shot ends with Zeus offering his assistance to Heather as it's suggested that she will be involved in the battle against the Flesh Reavers (the Wrath beasts that were awakened in the Limbo arc) in Bad Girls and beyond.
I had intended to cover Grimm Universe #1 here, as well, because Heather is on the cover, but a quick skim revealed references to Bad Girls and the final arc of Myths & Legends, so I'm saving the rest of the Grimm Universe coverage for a return to individual issue Retrospectives some time in mid-May.
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