Grimm Fairy Tales Giant-Size 2013 This is the final part of the GFT
Unleashed mini series. I've been re-reading the GFT comic books for some weeks now. It's a series of hit-and-miss, but I did enjoy its reflection of classic fairy tales upon modern day societies. Unfortunately, as the series went on, it fell to the trappings of commercialization and became fixated with formulaic superhero tropes like multiverses, crisis crossovers, etc, etc. Wish this series could just go back to doing what it does best, relate the classic tales of Brother Grimm's in our modern world. The later stories from this series have been formulaic and stale.
On the other side of things, I enjoyed reading Zenescope's retelling of Wonderland. It paints a creepier and more sinister picture of Lewis Carroll's story, a trend I know a significant number of Alice fans felt insulted about because of Lewis' intended nature of his story, which was innocent and coming of age, not darkness and horror. Still, the
Grimm Fairy Tales: Wonderland series explored the madness of Lewis' world few have done so before, aside from American McGee.
The psychological horrors of the comic book spin-off provided me quite a good time. It explained away all the madness of our world (Jack the Ripper, Hitler, Ku Klux Klan, etc.) to be caused by the corruption seeping from Wonderland. While it makes for an oversimplification of the evils in real life, one that many might find to be tasteless, I just couldn't help but be fascinated by the depiction of Wonderland as a distorted place that could turn your mind inside out. I've always been attracted by evil and twisted stories, so I had journeyed deeper into the rabbit hole to discover all the wicked ways the once beautiful Wonderland could be distorted. There's just a seductive beauty to be found in such haunting imagery, one that I couldn't turn away from.
But all that will come to an end soon. See, when Zenescope included the multiverse element in the Grimm Fairy Tales series, Wonderland was actually part of that multiverse. The way they explained it was, Wonderland used to be like Lewis Carroll's original vision, full of beauty and wonder, a realm of dreams (I think Neverland was a realm of imagination, Myst a realm of magic, and Oz from
The Wizard of Oz a realm of miracles) before it became tainted by evil, by the Jabberwock. With the Wonderland series coming to a close (I think), with the return of the White Queen, I think that that taint is leaving soon and we'll see the version of Wonderland as Lewis intended it pretty soon. Shame. I liked the villains Wonderland produced like the bloodthirsty Cheshire Cat and the murderous Mad Hatter.
An interesting hobby I've taken up recently while reading these comics was to watch movies that have stories similar to the current GFT book I'm reading. I would watch a movie about Robin Hood if I'm reading about Robin Hood, a movie about Wonderland if I'm reading the Wonderland spin-off, and most recently, I'd watched
Blade while reading a GFT book about vampires. It probably seems like a lot of effort for naught, but it gave me a sort of an immersive experience when I watch a movie about the thing I'm reading. Felt kinda cool.