Zenescope - Omnibusted #60: Grimm Fairy Tales Back to Work

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Omnibuster.

July is almost over, Ticketholders!

And for the third month in a row, we've crossed the ten-thousand-view threshold, all without the help of paid SEO, because algorithms can only be so helpful, and it's random strangers like you all that make the numbers bigger, so thank you!

A final view count for July will be included in the Time Drops calendar for August (which I have planned already except for the copy).

As you might be aware, I took a vacation from professional life for my own mental health, and it didn't exactly function as intended, but things lined up kind of perfectly with the issues of Grimm Fairy Tales that I would review next (compiled in this post as the Back To Work edition of Zenescope - Omnibusted), because in-Universe, Sela Mathers is back from an alternate Realm, Limbo, prison, and helping save the world at least three more times (The Dream Eater Saga, Bad Girls, and The Summoning) to continue her mentoring role in the first fairy tale adaptation that Zenescope's main title has done in quite some time.

But before I get into getting back to work, let's look at some one-off holidays from two Different Seasons of 2013.

If it's summer in your hemisphere right now, what you're feeling unfortunately isn't the fires of passion, but the fires of...actual fires, or maybe just a general feeling of heat and sweatiness because climate change (or global warming, or whatever politically correct language you want to boil it down to so you feel better) is real, and it's pet-cookingly hot right now for me as well. Not that I have pets to cook anymore, nor would I cook them if I did. I prefer to hunt dismembered livestock at the grocery store and cook it with sunlight and my glasses as the gods intended.

GFT Valentine's Day (2013)

The Wild Hunt

As can be gleaned from this banner, the first (and to date, only) Valentine's Day issue of Grimm Fairy Tales was collected in Different Seasons Volume Three, along with Christmas and Halloween 2010, and St. Patrick's Day 2013, with the Swimsuit Edition 2012 as "bonus" content.

Also, keep the following text from the end of the 2008 Annual issue in mind going forward...or don't; whichever perspective makes this story cooler for you is fine:

In the current story proper, Sela is "back from a forced vacation" (Myst, Limbo, and prison), wearing her GFT #75 cover outfit that has gone through some subtle design changes before settling back on the original here, and wielding her sword (shown now with colored gems embedded in the hilt, though we haven't been shown the origin of that just yet in Retrospective continuity because Sela hasn't met up with Druanna's blacksmith friend. She's helping Samantha (who still really sucks at her job) defeat a six-armed lizard monster that looks halfway between a Flesh Reaver and Alicia's Arena beast, when it pisses her off by crushing her glasses, hinting that they might be of some importance to Sela (or providing a convenient plot device to foreshadow the flashback of forced exposition that is to come? Yeah; that one seems right...).

Back at the Inner Sanctum, we see that Sela has moved in (never mind that Britney, Hook, and Baba Yaga can pop in and out at any time now) and just has her own jewelry drawer of backup glasses there, because it's not their utility or the object itself that's important (or the pair she scooped up while the Titanic was sinking), but the reminder they represent.

Cue flashback to a time before Sela was the Guardian Of the Nexus, when Shang mentored her by sending her away to Japan to be mentored by someone else and providing little to no contextual information (because Shang will always Shang) to keep her secluded from the threat of the Dark Horde. Cue also the retconfusion of Sela remembering this incredibly vividly despite having endured centuries of mind-wipes, Sela only having been made aware of her powers as a young adult despite receiving the Book Of Provenance from Shang's girlfriend as a child (see Baba Yaga and Legacy) after watching her father die and spending yet more centuries in stasis bonding with it, the issues upon issues of "I've never used magic to fight before, but I'm really good at it without thinking," and anything else I forgot on short notice. But Sela has a strong instinctive will, which is why the Horde kept having to brainwash her over and over again, so I guess it can all fit?

Whatever the case shall be, Sela winds up in the care of Kyoto, the all-seeing leader of the Japan faction of the Michi No, where she trains in combat with the Highborn and Falseblood monks, including three characters who will be incredibly important for this particular story: Gideon (the supposed most powerful and skilled Highborn warrior of his time), Genevieve (a.k.a. Gen, who is ostracized by some for being a woman and suspected Lowborn, because eugenic supremacy commentary was a theme for Zenescope in 2013, probably, and she wears glasses like Sela's...and Allexa's...and whatever visually-challenged person had to die on the Titanic so an Easter egg could happen), and Sato (the arrogant, bigoted skinflint prick who exists in every story about a utopian sanctuary so bad things can happen to good people). Because this is the Valentine's Day Edition, Gideon (a Mystic Highborn) and Gen (a Lowborn/Falseblood from Earth) are romantically involved (a cute but tragic take on the society-repressed, star-crossed couple trope that's common in Japanese romance media), and the bulk of the issue is devoted to trying to keep them alive when Sato leaks the temple's location (it's never shown or stated in the issue because the story is presented from Sela's point of view, but media literacy fills in the blanks pretty obviously) and most of the Order are slaughtered by an army of Bishamon-alikes. Kyoto, Gideon, Gen, and Sela (wearing a sexy but stereotypically Asian, red, white, and blue outfit) manage to escape, but not before Gideon is blasted with a brand and the army blows a Gjallarhorn-looking...horn that sends the Wild Hunt after him.

After several pages of running and fighting back against the summoned Super-Saiyan 3 oni-ghost and its pack of immortal wolves, giant insects, dragon-men, and demonic horses, the couple's love finally gives Gen reason enough to reveal her Falseblood power to...be Rogue and Mystique combined, essentially, and she becomes Gideon, sacrificing herself to the Wild Hunt to save him (to never be important again, probably), and Sela kind of inherits her glasses as a reminder that all lives are important regardless of bloodline or strength (but also less important because she wears them, knowing they'll get broken, and has a drawer full of copies that she keeps in someone else's house that a semi-omnipotent, evil witch has access to). This story was fun for what it was and full of dynamic, expressive art, but derivative and dumb. At least I get to talk about the Wild Hunt, though.

While here, it was given an Asiatic flair in keeping with the issue's setting, the Wild Hunt is a folklore motif of mainly European origin (fittingly popularized by Jacob Grimm's narrow identification of "Wilde Jagd" stories as remnants of Germanic pagan beliefs, though there are versions across numerous other European cultures, as identified by later scholars).

It typically involves a chase between a supernatural procession of hunters (spirits of the sleeping or dead, ghost-hounds, fairies, valkyries, elves, etc.) led by a mythological or biblical figure (most commonly Odin, but there are versions with King Arthur, the Devil, Frau Perchta, Baba Yaga, Santa Claus, and given the common interpretation of the Wild Hunt as a bad omen, things like Death's passage through Egypt in Exodus or the witnessing of the Four Horsemen in Revelations could be considered as fitting the Hunt motif as well). Sources (Google and Wikipedia) are vague as to what "leading the Hunt" means (being the Hunt-master vs. being the prey), but a slightly deeper dive suggests at least four purposes among the various versions of the Wild Hunt motif: a religious scare tactic against sinners (transgress, and Death or the Devil or whoever will literally hunt down your soul), an anthropomorphic pagan scare tactic to keep people from doing stupid things like going outside in a storm or walking in the woods at night (because telling children every fairy tale ever just wasn't good enough), a myth of daring feats (Odin or King Arthur hunting a formidable supernatural creature for sport), or a perpetual phenomenon that grows with each unfortunate witness or successful capture (an interpretation that can blur with the other three, considering damned souls and supernatural creatures can be counted among both the entourage and prey). Gamers might recognize "Wild Hunt" as the subtitle of The Witcher III, and though most know composer Franz Liszt for his "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" from a couple of famous Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry cartoons, he also did a piece based on the Wild Hunt that uses Grimm's coinage as a title. Like the Rhapsody, it's intense and sounds absolutely insane to execute:

And that's it for me on this issue and its inspirations.

In the meantime, 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) 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 above, 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 even though they're all wearing masks) 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, supposedly sparing him from death by doubloon diarrhea.

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 Rich (subtle) for dibs on a supposedly cursed inheritance, which leads to his wife's death via a car accident, Chekov's 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 from it, 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.

Let's get back to work.

Grimm Fairy Tales

Volume 14 TPB (Part One)

As you can see from the above text and (way above) banner image, the Volume Fourteen Trade Paperback is where collection of the main Grimm Fairy Tales series' issues starts to get a little wonky.

We've seen numbered GFT and Myths & Legends issues show up in an event before (The Dream Eater Saga), but the Trades around them ended prior to the event and resumed numbering after its conclusion. With Volume Fourteen, the first three issues take place before the Unleashed cycle and the last three are set sometime afterward, into the Age Of Darkness era.

Volume Fourteen is also the first (digitally, at least; the Omnibus trilogy—collecting the first seventy-five issues in twenty-five-issue increments—did this, too) to have this style of cover, with a white background and single-character art, here by Anthony Spay & Ivan Nunes. The backgrounds of the Table Of Contents page are cropped and sepiatoned from GFT #84 Cover A by Alfredo Reyes & Sanju Nivangune, and GFT #87 Cover A by Emilio Laiso & Alessia Nocera. It should go without saying by now, but there's no bonus content to speak of.

Grimm Fairy Tales #82

The Seal Skin

The most notable "Seal Skin" version is the Icelandic folk tale, "Selshamurinn" published by Jón Árnason, though it and other Nordic tellings are merely inspired by Scottish and Irish tales of the Selkie, a Seal-Woman (sort of a skin-walker-meets-mermaid, but with seals) who is discovered ashore by a human man who falls in love with her but comes to see her as a possession and binds her to himself and the land by coveting her pelt (sealing it—puns!—in a trunk in some versions, adding a bent on curiosity-themed fables like Bluebeard), so automatic red flag, ladies!

At their time, Selkie tales could be said to have several professional and chauvinistic purposes, such as a superstitious warning against the killing and skinning of seals or a moral condemnation of promiscuous women (keep her close in an unhappy union or she will ruin your family and move on to do the same to someone else!). However, through a modern lens, it could also read as telling women that it's healthier to be yourself than to metaphorically surrender your skin to please another. Yes, there are the abandoned children to consider in some versions of Selkie lore, but there are two ways to look at this that don't involve misogynistic fear-mongering. Firstly, even in an impoverished time like the 1800s (when the earliest documented Selkie legends can be traced), child abandonment was relatively low in Europe (plus, Icelandic culture values kinship, so efforts were often made to foster children who were abandoned, and it was common to conceive and raise children out of wedlock). And second, if the human characters in these stories (there are tales about male Selkies, too) weren't such horny, covetous simps that they'd bang a hot stranger on sight and commit false imprisonment in the name of possessive love, there wouldn't be any children to abandon in the first place. So let people be themselves, don't treat your privates like a divining rod for the gender you prefer, don't trap people against their will, and don't impose your will on a culture that already functions as it should. These are things that actually have to be explained to human beings in 2026 (the year of America's 250th Independence Day), except that it doesn't do any good because how dare I "virtue signal" in favor of human rights and "feminist propaganda," right? But if I could play Devil's Advocate for a moment,

at least I'm not committing any of the aforementioned offenses if I just go fuck myself and get on with the Retrospective....

As we saw in The Summoning, life in the Nexus has gotten complicated for Highborns and Falsebloods since Helios and Gina set the Great Wall Of China on fire, and despite being a convicted domestic terrorist and attempted kidnapper, Sela has embarked on her Kung-Fupernatural journey around the world to help guide powered individuals on a path that doesn't lead to evil or death (or both, as the case usually is in the Grimm Universe).

Guided by an annotated file she received from a mysterious source that we're supposed to assume is Shang (because he's alive again, because the Keepers always have great ideas, like inventing my sarcasm, but also because she destroyed the Book Of Provenance more than thirty issues ago), Sela heads to Rio de Janeiro in search of Melena, a Selkie Highborn who follows the call of the sea and whatever pleasures the land can provide for her temporary amusement regardless of the consequences to those she seduces because she sees humans (and Falsebloods like Sela, for that matter, despite knowing of her as the Guardian Of the Nexus and the "most famous" Falseblood ever) as lesser beings that exist at her whim. This is a unique dynamic for Sela because all of her past charges were Falsebloods like her who had yet to awaken to their true natures, and Melena is...someone we're not supposed to like. And yet, we're supposed to feel bad for her by comparison when she starts romancing a wealthy resort tycoon with daddy issues named Markos, a modern adaptation of the titular folk tale plays out between them, and he makes her "suffer the consequences of her actions" in a way that doesn't "go well" for her off-page because psychopathic domestic abuse is obviously worse than gold-digging and sociopathic promiscuity. Which makes it hard to care much about either of them as focus characters, as does the absence of a sensationally bloody and poetic ending that an issue like this would've had earlier in Zenescope’s publication history (seriously, I felt more for Jenna Normandy in the St. Patrick's Day issue).

To be blunt, this issue is weak in both the presentation and conviction of its message, whatever that may be, and shows that Sela is probably better off as a growing, developing character rather than a tool for pandering to her own nostalgia.

Unfortunately, that didn't change in the two-parter I looked at next. But the "back to work" theme literally applies, so that's something, at least. Let's remind myself how that went...again.

Grimm Fairy Tales #83 & 84:

Jack Frost

This two-part story wastes no time in getting things back to relative normalcy for Grimm Fairy Tales, and that's kind of a bad thing.

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 Druanna was a really effective magic teacher in the Limbo material, such that I literally called her Sela's best mentor ever, without irony or qualification). 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.

Speaking of headaches, I've committed myself to resuming the One Piece Multi-Piece next month, attempting to watch and review twenty-four Dressrosa episodes a week until I get all the way through the second-longest arc in the series. I have the Time Drops calendar drafted and everything! Also, there's Godzilla: Millennium to review for Goj-Year-ra on Friday, and I haven't written anything for my big milestone project in awhile, so I'd really like to fit in some work on that before September forces my hand. 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 can get my first paycheck from Google before I die, 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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Omnibuster,

Back to Work.