GFT Retrospective #125: Jack Frost
a.k.a. The Retrospectre.
I said last week that the first half of Grimm Fairy Tales Volume Fourteen is where Sela goes back to work. And that's true in the sense that she was returned to her mentor role (with an...unfavorable outcome because her assigned charge was a self-important Highborn with no desire to listen to the advice of a failed Falseblood Guardian). But in the two-parter I'm looking at this week, the "back to work" theme literally applies. Let's remind myself how that went....
Grimm Fairy Tales #83 & 84:
Jack Frost
From page one, we find out that Sela has been given a teaching position offer by the mysterious dean of a prestigious Boston prep school, which, Sela and prep school deans have gone together like torches and napalm up to this point, so she accepts the offer like it's totally normal.
Flip the page, and Shang is the dean (though the glass door and later dialogue suggest there is another dean, with the last name of Cameron, so Shang is either a Provost, an Assistant Dean, or...)
and also not dead (and also the mysterious sender of the file on Melena), and Sela's criminal record is expunged because Shang and Warden Garland are friends, I guess.
The banter between Shang and Sela is bright and quippy and sarcastic, and I like that about their dynamic here, but I still take their relationship with a bag of rock salt and equally heavy air quotes because we've seen how little it takes to qualify as "best mentor and closest friend ever" in the Grimm Universe (except for Ming; I like Ming...). And the density and speed with which this issue wraps up and glosses over all of the important plot points and complications that it does feels like a longer-form instance of a problem that has cropped up in dozens of Zenescope miniseries in the past: using the penultimate issue of an ongoing narrative to explain and resolve all mysteries, motivations, side plots, and conflicts as simply and efficiently as possible so the story can focus on good and evil hitting and blasting each other really hard until it's time to stop for hints at the next arc because final battles have almost never had the impact they should in Zenescope comics. This isn't even the first such lore speedrun in the main series, either, and fittingly, that honor also involved Shang trying to be the answer to everything, which he did a lot, particularly in the lead-up to Hard Choices.
The pacing doesn't slow down in checking the romance box, either, as almost immediately, it's time for Sela to literally run into lacrosse coach, art teacher, and replacement winter-themed love interest #3 after Vanilla Ice and the Nutcracker, Warren Cranor (I looked up his name to see if it has any winter-like language origins because Zenescope, and no; in various European etymologies, it translates to "champion" or "strong defender" of an animal enclosure or game preserve, so it fits kind of well with him being lacrosse coach to a bunch of entitled preppie assholes. Also, I learned that "fear" is the Gaelic word for "man," which is appropriate for 2026...).
And if you don’t have Future Knowledge like me and can't interpret written spoilers, it just so happens that as soon as Sela investigates a hate crime suicide on campus (a nerdy guy with legally distinct, out-of-focus DC and Star Wars memorabilia in his room, named Walton Cruz—name meaning "fortified forest town" and "cross") and tells Warren about it, Jack Frost shows up to freeze one of the players solid, ending Part One. I find it kind of stupid that, in a world where everyone watched two fire elementals burn China to the ground on live TV (not to mention the army of cannibalistic scorpion men, Caredean Prep, Neverland appearing on Earth, the Arizona school that came back to life after being slaughtered by a purple cat-monster, the god of war killing the Greek Parliament and declaring his namesake on the country with an army of giants and harpies, and anything else I forgot since the last time an Irish cop suspected fairies might be real), the campus cops don't believe in monsters, but again, I shouldn't be surprised because I know what the real world has become since this issue came out.
Not much happens in this second part by comparison to everything that was crammed into Part One.
Jack Frost shows up to torment another bully and Sela comes to the rescue, now armed with a campus urban legend about him that she heard from a student named Timmy (because of course he is...). After emerging victorious against the icy vigilante (a pale, cold-blooded boy of Highborn or Falseblood lineage who was a victim of bullying himself in the long-ago, and has used his powers to...take corrective action ever since), Sela continues her romance with Warren, completely blind to his true identity despite him having similar views on bullying and making subtle ice puns. Speaking of puns, there was also that panel in the first part where he said prep school academics have a stick up their ass...while holding a lacrosse stick. Just thought I'd mention it, and I'm glad he didn't whack Sela in the head with it.
But without anything else to say about the "plot" of this issue, there's plenty of time for real-world folklore discussion here, because of Jack Frost.
Almost every kid who grew up in the age of Blockbuster Video knows the confusion of the 1997 and 1998 Jack Frost movies sharing rental space, and the reference to the character in Nat "King" Cole's "Christmas Song" is timeless as part of a holiday classic. Other takes on the character have appeared in The Santa Clause 3 and Rise Of the Guardians.
But as with many mythical characters, Jack Frost was originally conceived as an anthropomorphic explanation of natural phenomena; in his case, the cause of the intense sensation of cold (frostbite, "it's nippy outside," the "biting cold," "Jack Frost nipping at your nose," etc.), the crystalline frost pattern that was "drawn" on windows in the winter before insulation technology improved, and the "painting" of autumn leaves (like he's a Wonderland card soldier or something). He's an English invention as named, and a variation on Old Man Winter, but has parallels across European and Asian cultures, many of which draw from the Nordic Jotun (Jack Frost in Zenescope’s version even has a giant-like appearance), and as is reflected in his many pop culture iterations, his morality varies from hero to trickster to villain across traditional lore. Nowhere near as interesting or convoluted as parsing Zenescope’s depictions of Greco-Roman deities proved to be in past months, but at least I don't need an ice pack for any resulting headaches.
Next week, Zenescope gives us a unique take on Valentine's Day now that the main series is kind of on hold, and I belatedly celebrate Bastille Day with a look at last year's Superman. Stay Tuned for that, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming 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 afford to chill, 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.
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Retrospectre,
Out.
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