A blog of my running thoughts while reading. *Warning: Spoilers*
Um… ok… so when they said ‘here’s the story behind the Black Mercy’ what they really meant was ‘here’s Mongol’s story, where we’ll briefly mention the Black Mercy, but not actually tell you anything about it’. Lovely. See, I actually would have been interested in the story behind the Black Mercy. Where did it come from? How did Mongol get ahold of it? See, there has to be a story there!
This was an interesting tale. We got both a kid who became a vampire (and even then still didn’t understand the whole thing) and a kid who’s a slayer and understood, but just wanted to be normal. The level of disconnect the vampire kid had about what vampires are all about was kind of scary. It was extremely interesting to see the other side, though.
You know how I’ve been saying parts of this are totally from Disney and not Carroll? Well, the Queen of Hearts was all Disney – almost word for word! She looked like a Japanese court lady, but her actions and dialog were completely that of Disney’s Queen of Hearts. The King of Hearts even looked just like Disney’s King of Hearts! It was very annoying.
More weird changes. For some unknown reason the Duchess had no head and her Cook had no face. The baby, whom Alice did not steal, was a pig to begin with and didn’t undergo any changes at all. A lot of this felt far more Disney-inspired than Carroll-inspired, which is disappointing. The Hatter and the March Hare were just kind of boring. This is a seriously lacking version of this story!
I’m really not sure what to make of this. It’s like Espinosa has deliberately stripped out all of Alice’s spunk and personality! She didn’t feel sorry for Bill and actually hasn’t seemed to wonder at the strange things she’s seeing much at all. She didn’t try to prevent Bill from coming down the chimney, just sneezed in response to the soot he dislodged, which sent him flying. She did try to defend herself from the attacks by the White Rabbit and Pat, though, so that’s something.
This is very odd. I’m not sure that I like Alice very much in this one. She’s all whiny and easily manipulated and totally manga-ish. Espinosa used the Disney-created Doorknob character, who removed any need for Alice to figure anything out for herself, and even gave him some of her clever lines from the book! So far I’m less than thrilled with this one. Hopefully it will get better.
What was the point of Darion’s sacrifice if in saving his father’s soul, his own was lost, thus returning the sword to the side of evil? And why did the narrative follow the red order when we didn’t really get an ending to their part of the story? It’s just weird. I guess that I just didn’t really feel like this was well plotted out or well done in general.
And now most of the cast is dead and the hero is evil and lives in a sword. Right. I have no idea where this story is going and am less sure why I should care than I was when I started. Oh, and I hate how orcs are motherless but have fathers they are proud of and sexless but even the ones who have female features are male. It reeks of “men are people but women are women”.
So much repetition! Ok, so why did they spend all that time telling us how awesome Alexandros was only to have his bratty and easily manipulated son stab him in the second issue? And, I’m sorry, but I don’t have a lot of faith in Alexandros’ strength and all when all it took was some obvious and pathetic lies to turn him evil. This is far from brilliantly written (although it could be much worse).
This comic is so very wordy! And that would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that it is so mostly because it repeats everything five times, until you’re sick of hearing it! And why are all the characters but one male, and the one girl gets told “hush, daughter”? There are female paladins in the game! Lots of them, in fact! So why isn’t that really represented here?