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Review: Grimm Fairy Tales #8

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

Gargoyles; the city’s protection that stand as eternal guardians against the evil spirits that inhabit the world.  But what if, through the use of magic the protectors turned enforcers? Who can escape their baleful watch, their all-seeing eyes?

Philly, the city of where brotherly love seems to be on the wane is in the midst of a minor murder spree.  It seems that some low-end hoodlums have taken their final steps as they fall from grace in spectacular fashion. Sensing that things are not quite right, Shang enlists the help of Skye Mathers, the Guardian of the Nexus to investigate and before you can say “you will catch your death of cold in that outfit”, Skye is waist deep in crooked cops, crooked monsters and just plain crooks.  Still, its nothing that Skye and her magic sword can’t vanquish, leading to a satisfying ending.

From a story by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco, writer Ralph Tedesco spends a lot of time laying the foundations for the story in such a well thought out and structured way, you kind of forget that the book is about Skye.  Still once she appears, things get a tad strange.  As I understand it, Skye is in college, albeit magic college, so where does she get the chops to act out all ” Lois Lane”?  In addition, no one asks to see a press pass!  Still Skye, has her magic and her sword to help her out. The strength of the writing is actually the creation of the secondary characters which leads me into one of the problems I find with the book, which I come back to later.

The art is provided by Julius Abrera which has its good parts and bad parts.  First the good; very much like the story the best part of the art is reserved for the gangsters and the rest of the cast of characters.  The first few pages carry a certain tension that at times can be missing from this book.  The bad; I don’t think that anybody in Zenescope has any really consistent idea of how old or even how Skye is supposed to look.  She goes from teenager, to young woman before looking to be in her late 20’s toward the middle of the third act.  It’s shame that this keeps happening on this book.  Colorist, Jorge Cortes does a great job with the darkness inherent in this story.

So the problems; I have already alluded to the inconsistent character design or look for Skye who is after all, the heroine of the series.  The main problem is that this book is basically “monster of the month”.  The book really could do with an arc to give Skye some actual weight in her responsibilities in taking up her mothers mantle.  Until then, this book will always seem a tad light.

Writing -3.5 Stars
Art – 3.5 Stars
Colors – 4 Stars

 

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Written by, Joe Brusha & Ralph Tedesco
Art by; Julius Abrera
Colors by; Jorge Cortes
Published by; Zenescope Entertainment

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes
I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network
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