69
By RazzaTazz 25 Comments
It seems like I am writing too much on comic book numbering these days, as something mostly not really relevant to the comics themselves. A couple of months ago I went through a flourish of Grimm Fairy Tales issues then stopped when I went on a vacation, and now I am back to catching up to the series (and I am in fact caught up, just not caught up in reviews.) The series started off in my opinion quite strongly with a series of one shots dealing strongly with morality. The series has consistently moved away from that. I suppose with this concept the creators decided something should be done to provide more of a sense of continuity to the series, however, it seems to have done so by sacrificing what made it so good in the first place. And so gone is the morality tale, replaced by a not very engaging fantasy based story with some stunted dialogue. For this series though, the story is only half of the story. Grimm Fairy Tales is almost uniformly judged even before anyone has a concept of the interior by its cover. I am one of the ones that thinks exploitation of women is generally a bad thing, but in the case of this series, it always seemed to be a case of exploitative cover/strong representation of women inside. With the covers getting more exploitative though and the insides getting a lot worse for their depiction of women, issue 69 sets the low I would say for the series. While it was only on an alternate cover, it is definitely one with some connotations which go beyond what might be in the realm of pertinent to the series. Previously the cover artists have taken the liberty to draw the series heroines and villainesses in classic poses inspired by a wide range of pictures - pin-up, propaganda and even playing cards. Here though the only insinuation is that of sex, with series leads Sela and Belinda (almost) depicted in a sexual pose (known as 69) in the 69th issue on a special cover of which only 69 were released.
I suppose I am somewhat of a holdout on this series, I can't believe that for as good as it was to begin with that it can now be so mediocre. This is especially true as I have just read through the Wonderland trilogy which was pretty good throughout (reviews to follow when I have time). In the main series though, the juvenile attitude of the cover artists in my opinion can't be helping the series at this point, and with issue 75 ahead and with big changes promised, I hope that some of those changes are to go back to the beginning, as opposed to what just might be the end if they continue as it is.
26 Comments