‘Grimm Fairy Tales’ 2015 Halloween Special Comic Review

I’ve always been a fan of modern fairy tale adaptations; in fact there are very few that I dislike. The Grimm Fairy Tales 2015 Halloween Special stands out though, in that it doesn’t overtly adapt any one specific story (that I could tell anyway). It does, however, keep to the whole spooky, quasi-mystical fantasy tone that many associate with any story bearing the name Grimm, and that’s plenty enough to pique my interest.

The story starts with three cloaked figures in a forest attempting to summon some dark force. They’re not as ominous as most cloaked figures go. Given their over-excitement when the sacrificial rite actually works, I got the impression they were on their second or third attempt to summon a yet-unnamed “he” to attack or curse the story’s protagonist, Dr. Sela Mathers.

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The comic then transitions over to Dr. Mathers herself, who is having a rather meta moment, narrating her own drive down a lonely highway on an archetypal dark and stormy night. We learn that she is on her way to Saint Theodora College, where she’s slated to give a guest lecture. She’s arrived a day or so early and is planning to spend the night on campus until her lecture the following Monday.

Dr. Mathers is greeted by a Kimmay Johnson from the Student Activities Board, who brings Sela inside a large, cathedral-like building where they are joined by a few more students, Sela’s old friend Hudson McCammon, and a couple of the college’s top brass. Pleasantries are had, and the group adjourns to a formal dining hall for dinner. The post dinner conversation shifts over to some questions for Dr. Mathers about her specialties, fairy tales and horror.

As Dr. Mathers compares the similarities between fairy tale and horror archetypes, Hudson and one of the students, Mark, withdraw to the adjacent kitchen to fetch the coffee cart. As Sela continues to explain the moral imperatives common to both fairy tales and horror stories, an unknown figure sneaks up on Hudson with a cleaver.

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The story tended to follow a pretty predictable chain of events reminiscent of the kind you’d see in a horror/mystery movie. It gets a little meta at times, what with Sela being an expert on this sort of thing, and many of the usual pitfalls that stories of this ilk fall into are purposefully subverted. “Let’s stick together and not split up,” for example. I found this to be both good and bad: good in that the characters aren’t making the same old stupid mistakes, but bad in that their awareness of the situation bordered on unrealistic. Though, I get the feeling that I may not have been taken out of the story quite as much by this if I were regularly following Sela’s adventures prior to this one.

The artwork is done in a mostly realistic style as far as character proportions go, with the exception of Sela’s “girls,” shall we say, which appeared to be a size typically only found in comic books, depending on the angle. Everybody else looked pretty normal, though. The entire comic was digitally colored, and the style allowed for the more supernatural elements to blend with everything else naturally. Overall the artwork was well-suited for the story.

Like most dark adaptations of fairy tales, Grimm Fairy Tales is not suited for younger readers or anyone expecting a happily every after, but it was far from the goriest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d recommend the Grimm Fairy Tales Halloween Special for fans of dark fantasy and fairy tales or even anyone who likes a good supernatural action story.

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