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By Jason Bourgeois
Welcome back! I've been busy traveling to conventions, which you can read all about right here at the Collector Times, and I'm in the mood to do something a little short - at least, that's the plan, which I'm sure will be tossed out the window once I get going - as well as doing something a little different, and take a break from the big, hectic events of the big companies.
While I was in Chicago for Wizard World, I swung by the Zenescope booth, a new small publisher whom I've been keeping my eye on, with the usual raft of licensed books, like the recently released Se7en limited series, and a Final Destination book, as well as their own original works, such as the topic of this month's column, Grimm Fairy Tales.
Some friends of mine have been recommending it to me for a while now, and since I was at the convention, they were there and they had the entire run of the book to that point, I decided to dive right in and give it a shot. Surprisingly, it's a rather decent series, for what it's setting out to do.
We're all familiar with the classic Grimm fairy tales. Rather dark stories, with twists, turns, and no need to shy away from murder, and rather horrific acts. They were written as parables, and similar to modern urban legends, in that they're somewhat far fetched morality tales, to try and teach things to children, and not afraid to scare them in the process to get the point across.
Somewhere along the way, mostly thanks to Disney, these stories got watered down, became far less dark, less bloody, and always strived for that happy ending, losing much of the bite and point the originals had before then.
This new comic series strives to bring back that dark tone, and succeeds quite well. The issues I've read are very faithful to the original tales, but also go in a completely different direction, giving them added twists to the conclusions, and making the stories a strange blend of fairy tales and the Twilight Zone, bringing back the classic tales for a new audience, but also existing as their own entities, as well.
In addition to just being straight retellings, the folks at Zenescope have added a whole new element and level to these stories. Each story has a wraparound segment, set in the present day, with characters in situations similar to, or reflecting those of the fairy tale in that issue, and continuing the Twilight Zone like twists into those stories, as the tales come into the real world in some method.
With each story being completely self contained, it's great to help people check in to see what they think of the book by picking up any random issue to see if they like it. They've also added a bridging mechanism between the issues, connecting them through a book of fairy tales passed along to each character, and containing the stories in the series, as well as a character that often turns up to deliver or pick up the book, someone who was affected by it some time ago, and now serves the book to help it spread it's own brand of morality and life lessons.
The only real problem I have, and it's a minor one really since they're just serving towards a specific audience, and that audience remains predominantly male, is that the art has a tendency to be obviously cheesecake more often than not, especially the covers. For example, for a recent issue, revisiting the Jack & the Beanstalk tale, the cover artist - Al Rio - still managed to stick a woman in revealing clothing on the cover, even though the story has never had much to do with women.
Like I said though, that's a minor problem, and will certainly draw people in. While it can be too much of gratuitous T&A, it is still very nicely drawn T&A. I can take a little titillation to catch people's attention if the product is otherwise good.
Zenescope's Grimm Fairy Tales is certainly that. It's not high quality work, and the first few issues are a little rough, but the book is a nice modern take on those stories, paying homage to the classics, and definitely worth the look, since no story is longer than an issue. They've also released a trade paperback of the first six issues, with a bonus story about the origins of the woman charged with taking care of the book.
Jason M. Bourgeois
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