A missing girl. A femme fatale. A dark family secret. What starts as an unofficial investigation into his neighbor’s disappearance drags Sgt. Wu deep into a world of Wesen intrigue. In the vein of classic film noir tales, Wu unravels a case that could not only cost him his job, but his life.
There has been somewhat of a resurgence in the past few years in the interest in fairy tales, including two relatively successful television shows, Grimm and Once Upon a Time. The problem with a comic book version of these television stories is fairly obvious though. The stories of Grimm are still rooted somewhat in the television world as opposed to the comic world. Thus while people who enjoy television more might be stuck with Grimm or Once Upon a Time, comic fans have a lot more variety. Between Grimm Fairy Tales from Zenescope (which has a lot of bad, but also some good) and Fables and Fairest from Vertigo, there is a lot of choice for fairy tales in comics.
Having never seen the series, this lack of originality in a fairy tale world is where this story falters. While in a sense it is a perfectly serviceable collection of two stories based in this world, this world is relatively lackluster compared to that of the other publishers. In trying to bite off a piece of the fairy tale pie, the people behind the scenes at Dynamite seem to have gone for the wrong piece. It is a shame that Dynamite also has the series Da
msels, but doesn’t put it out very often. It had a fairly fresh take on fairy tales and would have been a lot better to throw their collective efforts behind. This collection on the other hand lacks a lot of originality and in many parts feels like the two concepts of cop show and fairy tale world are simply shoehorned together with a noticeable divide among the reality and the fantasy.
Fans of the show might disagree with me and argue that the stories successfully capture the essence of the original source, but as a first time reader of the series and being introduced to the setting for the first time as well, it would seem as though the end result is not ideal. It might be that Dynamite sees a future here, trying to siphon off fans of the show, but from a first reading, they might better choose a different show or different world. Fairy tale comic fans know better and probably won’t keep Grimm alive for long.
Story: Marc Gaffen and Kyle McVey Art: Daniel Govar
Story: 6.3 Art: 6.0 Overall: 6.3 Recommendation: Pass
Dynamite Entertainment provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
