Grimm Fairy Tales presents Realm War #6
Zenescope Entertainment
Written by: Joe Brusha
Art by: Sami Kivela
I have admittedly, been sleeping on Zenescope comics for quite some time. I’ve been interested, but my local comic shop doesn’t carry them, and I just never got around to reading them digitally. That was an error. A grave one on my part.
Let me first say that Grimm Fairy Tales Realm War #6 is the exact kind of thematic content that I am into. I absolutely love taking literary figures and pumping them into alternate story-lines. Grit it up and make these fairy tale figures involved in all-out Armageddon? Yeah… you got me!
The overall setup is pretty easy. The evil queen has come to earth and is bent on enslaving everyone and declaring herself the most fair of all. Classic fairy tale characters and some lesser known ones pick sides and it’s game on. Issue #6 finds the heroine Sela down a few soldiers from previous encounters, and in this issue several more are captured. Sela has to contend with her own inner struggle: Fight on or give in to despair?
Let me say that artist Sami Kivela knows how to do some action scenes. The fight scenes in this issue are incredibly intricate and detailed in their imitation of dynamic motion. There are a few problem panels; one where it looks like Sela’s sword is just attached to her arm because you cannot see any hand around the hilt. But that pales in comparison to the rest of the artwork. The art feels a little like the old black and white Eastman/Laird issues of TMNT, but with color. I will say that some may not care for the impracticality of some of the female models and costumes. This comic is definitely rated M.
What really ties this issue together is the final segment, in which Sela stumbles upon a group of survivors in the woods. The father, the kind of dad I can only pray I will ever be, has chosen to maintain faith that humanity will persevere. He takes risky actions for the sake of inspiring hope, and showing the enemy humanity’s lack of fear. He does this despite the risk it presents to his family. And in doing so, he inspires Sela to return and lead her team towards an eventual confrontation with the Evil Queen. A wonderful bit of human spirit exposition injected by writer/creator Joe Brusha into this fairy tale world that works so well in its contrast to the background story.
This issue is good stuff. It should be good for readers who are fans of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, event books (as Realm War is basically a big continuing event), and dark fairy tale fans. This ain’t your daddy’s Grimm Fairy Tales, but that is a good thing. A really good thing.