Review of Grimm Fairy Tales 10th Anniversary Special #1 Snow White

Grimm Fairy Tales 10th Anniversary Special #1 Snow White

This aint your mom’s Disney Snow White! So here’s the deal, I’ve dove headfirst into a lot of Zenescope Entertainment’s titles these days. They are doing 6 special 10th Anniversary one shots. Here’s my spoiler free review of the Snow White one shot.

So here’s the description from Zenescope as to what this story entails:

“The first of six special 2015 Zenescope 10th Anniversary One-Shots is here.The story of Snow White is told in Zenescope’s horror-filled re-imagining of a classic! As Sela Mathers aka “Snow White” meets the seven dwarves, a child’s fairy tale quickly becomes a nightmare!“

After reading that I was like hmmm.. not so sure about this. I’m not really into Horror anything. But I figured it’s Zenescope Entertainment, and I’ve given everything that I’ve read from them so far a shot. Plus if anyone has ever heard TOONCAST CLASSIC EP 29 SNOW WHITE, you’ll know I’m so not a fan of the Disney version, because of its glaring plotholes. So I was very open-minded going into this. And outside of the Disney XD series The 7D, I’ve always said the dwarves would turn EVIL!!! Sure here they are mind controlled, but they are still evil!!! So this is my first exposure to the Snow White characters within Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales. They advertise these as 10th anniversary one shots, yet at the beginning and ending to this comic I felt there was more to come. Just as well, I also felt there should have been something to read before this. WHAT AM I MISSING HERE??? So the creative team on this as you can see above is Lou Iovino on writing, Manuel Preitano on artwork, and Vivane Tybusch on colors. Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco worked on the story as well. Because I’m so NEW to Zenescope as a publisher, these creators are all new to me. This means I really can’t compare them to other writers I’ve read before… OBVIOUSLY. It also means that I’m expanding my horizons.

Writing: 

So Lou Iovino the man can write. As this is my first experience reading his style. I have to say everything was very refreshing. Even though I already stated above that I wouldn’t be able to compare the Zenescope writers to others, that doesn’t mean I can’t compare stories. This really felt to me like a New 52 Gail Simone Batgirl issue. I mean you have Snow White and Belinda… who could easily be Babs and Dinah aka Batgirl and Black Canary. Then there’s Snow’s daughter who reminds me in look only of Alysia from Gail’s run on BG. But other than that Lou really writes this horrific tale of stealing stories well. There are a few things in the writing, as I stated above that somewhat confused me. The number one thing was the lady that Sela goes to see….who the hell is she? If these are supposed to be one shot stories you’d think Iovino would have a beginning, middle, and ending. Not a cliffhanger or something saying, “BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE….” when there might not be anymore. At least not within this limited series of 6 comics. So back to Lou’s writing. I enjoyed how he set this up, we meet the heroes and villain and then all hell breaks loose. Yet another thing that wasn’t explained well for me though, was WHY does this Binder wanna get into Myst? I don’t even think there was a “I WANT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD” line in here. I did very much enjoy the characterization though of everyone. In the story we find out that because Sela aka Snow White is the Guardian of the book… she can feel when things happen to it. Or she can sense when it’s being used for evil. That was an interesting twist.

Art:

Manuel Preitano on artwork, and Vivane Tybusch on the colors do a damn fine job here. Everything pops from the magical effects, to the background and character colors. The lines are clean, and facial expressions are super expressive, without being overpowering. Look at the image below where the seven dwarfs have Snow White held down…. these demon dawrves look amazing! Although Snow White looks like she has Wonder Woman boots on.  I only grabbed a few images for the review here, but if you read through the issue. You’ll see what I mean about the character designs popping off the page.

Final Thoughts:

OK so this issue left me with more questions than answers. I’m hoping to catch up with these characters and creators in the future.  You can get Grimm Fairy Tales 10th Anniversary Special #1 Snow White from Comixology digitally or any of your local comic shops!