GFT Retrospective #127: St. Patrick's Day 2013

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Lucky Retrospectre?

Said "luck" is more like a fifty-fifty occurrence. Or rather, twenty-five percent and slowly rising. See, because of how Facebook and Instagram work, my promotions for these blog articles get pushed on Threads, too, and when a Thread gets popular enough (like my push of last Friday's Superman review), I see notifications as it passes fifty or a hundred views (the last notification I received). That particular thread also got nine likes and a comment written in emojis.

But can you guess how many views the actual review itself got in that time? Less than thirty. No likes. No comments. I appreciate the blind social media engagement, but maybe click the link to the post before you react to it? I don't even think you have to read anything of mine (but I hope you do) for the views to count. The internet (and the world) could do with a bit more literacy, reality, and truth.

So let's talk about a fairy tale-inspired Wonder Woman facsimile fighting leprechauns and getting drunk to escape her problems.

GFT St. Patrick's Day (2013)

Stories In A Pub

A few things before we get into the stories proper (because it's called "Stories In A Pub," it's obviously an anthology special, right?).

First, if you recognize the art style of the chosen cover (for both the Digital Edition and the special title page in Different Seasons Volume Three—which also contains Christmas and Halloween 2010 and Valentine's Day 2013) it's by Stjepan Šejić, even though the tone is a bit humorous for his...usual tastes. Second, you'll notice that, since Trade Paperbacks like Different Seasons Volume Three typically use the title pages as credits pages, the original credits page is absent, and so each story, which was titled in nice, big, green-outlined font in the individual issue versions, features smaller, less noticeable titles and writer and artist credits per story in the Trade version. I would have preferred they kept the green outline and slightly larger title size, but that's just a nitpick. And segueing into the issue's story content, this is the first Grimm Fairy Tales holiday edition in quite some time to have direct, clear, and immediate continuity with mainline events. Yes, Annuals, Giant-Sizes, and Special Editions often tie into the current storyline or provide fun bits of lore (the Valentine's Day Edition did that, too), but when it comes to things like Christmas and Halloween, they often seem to be in their own canon, or at the very least, no effort is made to anchor their events to a particular point in time.

This makes the first and only Saint Patrick's Day issue a different case among its kind, having an anthology vibe akin to those recent Christmas and Halloween specials, but referencing The Gathering, The Summoning, and possibly Bad Girls and the pantheon-focused issues of Grimm Universe, suggesting this is set before the events of early Volume Fourteen (The Seal Skin and Jack Frost). So, yeah; as hinted in my intro, Sela heads to an Irish pub (probably in Ireland, because Sela can fly now, and anyone can get anywhere in fiction as long as it isn't explicitly shown or stated how they got there) to escape into a bottle of Irish whiskey (which made my caffeinated mind wonder if there are genie-type beings in Irish folklore because I couldn't help picturing an ethereal Warwick Davis poofing out of a bottle of Jameson, so I Googled Irish genies, and nope; that's specifically a Middle-Eastern thing, and they're more likely to incinerate everything you hold dear than grant any straightforward wishes for wealth and fame). Unfortunately, Sela radiates "I'm the Guardian Of the Nexus Kinda, so tell me your Falseblood woes in fairy tale form" energy, so she ends up hearing the story of Dan (O' the pipes are callin') and the complications of taking "Candy From A Baby."

Danny and his crew of easily identified criminal associates (because it's three men and two women, one of whom has a thick, stereotypical Franco-Soviet accent, and no one makes any effort to conceal their hair color) rob an Irish bank and wind up in possession of a bag of ancient-looking gold coins, at which point they begin dying bizarre, supernatural deaths straight out of a Final Destination or Leprechaun film, until only Danny is left to tell the tale...and pass the stolen gold to Sela.

Next, she's approached by a weepy blonde, who tells her about the "Marriages Of Jenna Normandy." That's her name. And I ain't sayin' she a golddigger...because I'd rather say "nay" to 'ye. Anyway, she keeps getting married to rich, gross-looking older men, and by her fourth marriage (an Elvis-looking guy named Seamus, because Irish), she actually finds true love (ironically, after seven years) and a curse kicks in where anyone she says "I love you" to immediately drops dead, including her parents. Sela advises Jenna to donate her cursed wealth to charity (which is apparently supposed to dispel the curse by offscreen logic instead of causing widespread deaths because in this context, the donation would be another selfish expression of love, but we're trying for happy endings here...I think) and sends her on her way just in time for the next tale of Irish greed and misfortune, "The Will."

It's the simplest story of all, with a guy named Tristan (seriously? Jenna and Tristan? Zenescope really love re-using character names, don't they?) lying to his dying uncle for dibs on a supposedly cursed inheritance, which leads to his wife's death via a car accident, a faulty seatbelt, and a rainbow. Yes, really.

And as it turns out, there's been a leprechaun hiding in the background of the "Stories In A Pub" wraparound the whole time (a nice, but easily figured out bit of twisty foreshadowing if you know what, and who, to look for).

Despite his appearance, the leprechaun claims to only be a passive, Keeper-like figure who bears witness to the financial choices of those who cross his path, saying that it is Greed that kills (which, along with the previously established Seeds Of Wrath that bore the Flesh Reavers, suggests that anthropomorphic representations of the Seven Deadly Sins exist in Zenescope’s mythology). I would have liked to see more thematic depth to this issue, such as Sela having a battle of morals and redemption with the leprechaun as a cleansing, proving transition back into her mentoring role in Volume Fourteen. But instead, the issue ends with an abrupt scene transition where Tristan gives into his greed and Sela and the incredibly Irish bartender (seriously, he has a stereotypical, "me Lucky Charms" accent and everything) have to watch him get crushed and disemboweled to death by an armored car full of gold, at which point Sela tells the bartender to take a day off (because that worked out so well for her just now).

If anyone this month knows what a bullshit concept a "day off" is, it's me. I may not be a bartender or a magic-powered literature professor with the fate of the Universe in my hands, but I took eight "days off," and it didn't do anyone a damned bit of good. Not my employer, not my family, not me. Vacation is like being Donald Trump: you get paid more than you deserve to make things worse through entitlement, pretense, willful ignorance, and inaction. Don't take a vacation. Don't take a "day off." Ever. You may hate what's going on enough to want an escape, but you'll hate it even more once you decide it's time to start paying attention again and you find out the world is a flaming cesspool of gutless, vomiting idiots being deformed under the accursed weight of other people's wealth.

And for fortune's sake, read my blog posts! I've got my next Goj-Year-ra review coming out on Friday, a Fire Force Season Three update planned for Monday, and even more in mind for August. Stay Tuned for all of that, and continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (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'm not damned to live off of volatile meme currency like a fool, 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.

35

Retrospectre,

Out Of Luck?