Grimm Fairy Tales--Alice in Zombieland // Review
Alice is blinded by the light. She’s been sent on a field trip to Switzerland. All the sun makes her long for the rainy clouds of her home in England. She notices a vulture there in the wilderness, which is a bit odd. She’s a bit too lost to notice the fact that it’s wearing glasses. Or maybe she notices it, but she doesn’t think it’s strange. She’s going to a rather strange place this month in Grimm Fairy Tales--Alice in Zombieland. Writer Alec Worley takes an adult version Lewis Caroll’s beloved protagonist into a realm of nightmare with artist Allan Otero and colorist Juan Manuel Rodriguez.
Alice is, of course, lost. Her father paid a fortune for her to attend this field trip and now she is quite alone in the strange and wonderful world of...Switzerland. To make matters worse, there’s a rather large Cheshire Sabertooth Tiger that would like to ear her. (Quite rude.) Thankfully, there’s another girl there...an American who seems to be on good terms with the tiger. She calls herself Violet. So maybe Alice IS lost, but she definitely HAS made a friend and that’s a good omen, isn’t it?
Worley pounds the whimsical subtlety and madness out of many of Caroll’s concepts...mashing them-up with B horror concepts in a way that seems oddly satisfying while somehow managing to miss the whole point of Caroll’s genius. It’s okay, though, The basic groundwork of Through the Looking Glass and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland are both so very, very malleable that they can be satisfactorily adapted into a variety of different formats and genres. It’s just not terribly appealing seeing them mixed with a zombie horror sort of feeling. That’s all. The older version of Alice that Worley is working with IS actually very, very cool, though. She’s a very capable protagonist...a version of Alice who never went on Caroll’s adventures and therefore is a bit more well-grounded.
Otero works with the basic imagery of the story quite well. There’s a teenaged Alice and her similarly aged daughter from another timeline. They both look like totally capable action heroes for the purposes of the comic boo. Otero’s version of the Queen of Hearts feels like a perfectly rendered mutation of the character for indie superhero comics. It all feels more or less perfect on the page even if the horror doesn’t come across with the right kind of impact to feel like a compelling contrast to the heroes’ heroism.
Theoretically, Worley and company COULD have come-up with something a lot more interesting in adapting the subtle horror of Caroll’s madness in creating something of a deeper satire on current culture with the zombie-Wonderland mash-up. As it is, Worley is largely focussing page and panel on a couple of beautiful, badass dark fantasy heroines who make an appealing presence on the page for the duration of the comic book. It’s fun. It’s just not meeting its potential.
Grade: C+
