GFT Retrospective #129: Realm Knights One-Shot

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Retrospectre.

There's some sort of appropriate timing here, what with Doomsday coming out soon and the first Avengers having premiered to franchise-defining success a year before the comic I'm reviewing today hit shelves. It's not so perfectly "coincidental" as Supernatural's suspected influence on the Unleashed event, but the pieces are there to speculate that someone at Zenescope said, "this is a big pop culture thing right now; we should make our own team!" And it's not like it's an abrupt thing, either. Before Marvel's The Avengers was even a thought, Zenescope were dabbling with shared continuity when they shipped Belinda and Charles Dodgson. And had Belinda ruin Sinbad's life repeatedly. And dismantled the Council Of the Realms. And had the Dream Eater thin out their library (not that one). Robyn vs. Britney was one of the best things they ever put out. So was Quest. But the end of Myths & Legends was where the concept of a team on Earth was really put into words. By Samantha. Where is Samantha Darren, anyway?

Realm Knights One-Shot

Once upon a time, a bald man had an idea (that was Samantha's first, but whatever); an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people and see if they could become something more, work together, and fight the battles no one else can. To share the burden of Guardianship Of the Nexus better than the Council and the Hunters had before them, not just as soldiers in a war, but...as Realm Knights.

Prior to the events of Unleashed #1 (to be reviewed week after next), Cindy (who was just kidnapped and physically and psychologically tortured by the Being) attacks the U.N. headquarters in New York (because Avengers, and because villains attacking important government meeting places is now worth two nickels in the Grimm Universe), along with some kind of generic smoke witch (revealed later to be the Roman goddess Nox), a guy who could be Volac or that soul-swapping witch-doctor from the Christmas 2012 Special (and he is also there), and the Grendel from Beowulf. They have silly, stock ransom demands (money, a jet, safe travel, diplomatik immunitah, etc.) so they can get as far from the yet-to-be-Unleashed event as quickly as possible, and they're not going anywhere until they get the ability to go somewhere, dammit!

Which gives Shang (college dean and now government agent, apparently) plenty of time to send out agents to...collect...Sela Mathers (in the midst of a lecture on the evolution of Renaissance poetry, which I'd sign up for, Sela or not, but especially with Sela), Nathan Cross (at his brother's grave), Britney Waters (who just stabbed or mauled a guy that may or may not have his torso on backwards), Robyn Locksley (whom we never get to see how she got out of that cliffhanger between Wanted and Legend, but she's a runner, rebel and a stunner, on her merry way...), and Heather Angelos (who will probably miss out on one of Zeus' parties; oh, well...).

The banter between the five and Shang is absolutely perfect and informed by a richness of history that's felt rather than spoken to death, the shady implications of a government-sanctioned Highborn/Falseblood team are given their due (and given Future Knowledge, said shadiness hits darker than it did the first time around), the costumes pop, and the group's aliases and the Clark Kent glasses-level of effort put toward concealing their identities are hilarious. Those aliases being Agents Snow (Sela), Hook (Nathan), Red (Britney), Robyn Hood (Robyn, duh), Hecate (Heather), and Unknown (Shang). I used to think that because Shang was in charge, allegedly cool, and sarcastically amazing at sharing important information, this meant Shang has a codename that not even the reader is privy to. And it works that way from a lay perspective. But for the sake of curiosity, I ran "unknown" through Google Translate, and got "未知," or "michi," so Shang is actually honoring his monastic order, not just being a cryptic asshole for the lolz. Yay?

Except that when they're using codenames later, Sela just calls him Shang, so maybe she forgot her Asian studies over the past few centuries?

Either way, the heroes and villains pair off according to their respective dynamics (which goes much better than it has in the past), including a fun, reckless battle with the two Hood girls fighting Grendel, and a Shang & Sela vs Cindy rematch that reveals the Being threat to the heroes and brings one of the human agents (Wisnowski, who will be a very important recurring character later) into focus. There are strong implications that the agency (yes, we have a new Evil Agency candidate afoot) funding the Realm Knights was also behind the previous decades of cover-ups and the assassination squad that took out Patricia Braddock. This agency now has everyone but the necromancer (the Volac-alike who was also there, and is now dead) in their custody for...possible WWII German death camp purposes, because even when it's not in One Piece, the World Government is awful.

If the Avengers parallel wasn't obvious enough already (a red, white, and blue heroine, a god with a hammer, a college graduate with an inner rage monster, a quippy archer, an injured man with a prosthetic energy blaster, and their bald leader thwarting villains in New York on behalf of a secret government agency with a hidden dark side to be revealed in the next phase), the issue also makes direct panel references to the movie and its marketing (everyone pointing their weapons at Cindy before her capture, and the Realm Knights eating lunch in the last panel, particularly), which, imitation, flattery, and all that. Unoriginality is a valid criticism here, but it didn't break my brain as much as Shang's parting exchange with Robyn. The government was supposed to pardon her for the King murders if she helped stop the Cindy attack (which she does here), yet there's an Editor's Note saying Shang sent her to see her stepfather in New Jersey (where Wanted begins, and she's still...well, it's in the title, isn't it?). I suppose bureaucracy is to blame, and we still have a whole-ass event and several lesser sequel events to get through between Wanted and Legend, but it's a mess, and my train of thought is a shorter bus than usual right now.

That's all I have for you this week, but Stay Tuned for more Werewolves next time, and the Millennium Era of Goj-Year-ra fighting its Final Wars while I binge To Your Eternity and work on my big milestone project.

Speaking of weeks, you folks have blessed me with over a week straight of thousand-plus-view days, so thank you, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read so I don't have to steal a Qatari bribe-jet from the UN, 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.