Grimm Fairy Tales #107
Zenescope Entertainment
Written by: Pat Shand
Art by: Andrea Meloni
Color by: Erick Arciniega
I fall a little bit more in love with the Grimm Fairy Tales world more and more each time I read a new issue. My local comic book shop (God rest its soul) did not carry Zenescope books, so now that I have shifted to all digital, it is invigorating to take on some of the things I never had access to before. I read Realm War last month, and Grimm Fairy Tales #107 is my first book in that series.
While this is a warm tasty morsel, there are some take-aways. It is not super high level art. And it reads and feels a lot like Avengers Academy, New Mutants, or any of the X-Books where the student body and faculty are the main characters. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. I gobble that stuff up. And there is enough of an alternative spin to Grimm Fairy Tales that I do not consider any feeling of derivation to be a full-on bad thing. And, let me say, I am adding GFT’s main character, Sela, to my top list of all time bad-ass comic book heroines.
In issue #107, a spec ops splinter group from the former Hibocorps and the Realm Knights initiative has formed to try and help the Highborns that they used to hunt. On the trail of a particularly powerful muta…uhh, I mean Highborn, the team arrives on a hidden island and quickly finds themselves out of their depth. Back at Arcane Acre, the students are healing relationships in the wake of the expulsion of one of their own. It’s good stuff, and has enough elements to keep both fantasy fans, adventure book aficionados, and super-hero book people entertained.
On art, I need to give props to Erick Arciniega. He does some great eye-popping colors on fire, explosions, and rocket streams. Panel work and layouts from Andrea Meloni are well enough varied, if not entirely groundbreaking. Some of the full page splashes do not really work well, but, man, that last one is out of this world. Although it will remind you a bit of a certain other super-hero who has Higone mad and supremely powerful.
This is a book that gets a certain amount of cache based simply on the setup. A book like this can get some good mileage by simply not screwing up a great idea. One significant nod I will give the writing team of Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco, and Pat Shand is that these guys know how to do depict social media in a comic well. It is not overly contrived and feels genuine. The current creative team on DC’s Batgirl could learn a lot from the GFT team. Grimm Fairy Tales #107 follows through on a great premise and offers up some pretty decent craft along the way. This series is one to keep an eye on. Slow and steady often wins the race, and the formula for just such a run is clearly and evidently in place here.