Grimm Fairy Tales: Escape from Wonderland #2
Story By: Raven Gregory, Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco
Written By: Raven Gregory
Art By: Daniel Leister
Colors By: Nei Ruffino, Shefali Randeria
Lettering By: Crank!
Designed By: David Seidman
Edited By: Ralph Tedsco
Grimm Fairy Tales: Escape from Wonderland #2 is my first exposure to the Zenescope Grimm Fairy Tales series take on the world of Alice in Wonderland. The issue revolves around a character named Calie and her search for her daughter Violet in a very strange and dangerous variant of Wonderland. A much more doom and gloom take on the fabled land than featured in previous incarnations it most certainly adds an interestingly original flavor to the age old mythology of the iconic land of dreams.
As a first time reader of the series I found the story easy enough to follow once I got about mid way through the issue and quickly found myself becoming interested in seeing how it would play out. Before reading this issue I always thought the Grimm Fairy Tale books released by Zenescope would be little more than ultra sexualized takes on popular fairy tales a theme I have little interest in. Now that I have finished reading Escape from Wonderland #2 I find myself a bit intrigued and wanting to check out some of their other takes on various fairy tale worlds.
Yes these books are heavily sexualized with big-breasted scantly clad heroines and geared towards adolescence males but they offer more than some quick T&A. Much in the vein of the Heavy Metal series Escape from Wonderland is also a much more dark take on the fairy tales they mimic, adding in a layer of fantasy inspired horror that adds a high degree of new interest to the stories themselves. The writing it self surprisingly was well done and attention grabbing and ended up giving me flashbacks of classic 80s fantasy films such as Red Sonja and Conan the Barbarian.
I always love the art style found in Zenescope graphic novels, always such vivid and eye catching color palettes over top of beautifully stylized drawings that never fail to suck the reader further into the story. The artist’s take on the infamous Cheshire cat was really awesome and was the turning point for me wanting to look into the series further.
While these comics are heavily geared toward the male demographic I still think female readers will have fun with them as well. The female characters may be wearing little in the form of clothes but all come off as being strong and stand up ladies who would never dream of taking a ounce of guff from any male.
I had fun with this comic and look forward to checking out other issues of both Escape from Wonderland and other Grimm Fairy Tale books from the folks over at Zenescope.
