Escape From Wonderland #5 (of 6) (Zenescope – Gregory / Spay / Ruffino)
Calie realizes that the choice she made has brought back her entire family. The world she left two years ago is back in place and everything is finally okay; in fact everything is finally great! The nightmare is over and a girl’s life is back on track. Did it all even happen? Was it a dream? Unravel the mystery as the conclusion to the epic series approaches, the surprises will pile up and leave you jaw-dropped. It’s time to learn the truth!
The Red Queen and some of the other evil demented forces of Wonderland have come through the looking glass and have a strangle hold on the world. Murder, chaos and terror are the menu of the day. At the beginning of the issue, only Calie stands in the way of the Jabberwocky’s forces as they finally try to conquer the our “real world”. In these 24 pages of story she finds allies she never dreamt of.
This penultimate issue to the Wonderland Trilogy is a prime example of the superb mix of horror and adventure that has put Zenescope (and writer Raven Gregory) at the head of the pack for creating independent comics in the PG-13+ category.
Escape from Wonderland #5 starts to close up sub-plots from the entire trilogy (whatever happen to Calie’s boyfriend?) and connects all three series along with the one-shots and brings Calie first circle to the decision that her great-grandfather Charles Dodgson made.
While I felt that the art of selected pages and frames from this issue weren’t quite up to the normal Zene-standard of a an exquisite scare-fest (in particular the first few pages), the visual component of the issues still soars over the majority of what passes for horror comics these days. And if the reader is only casually reading, they will miss some of the humor that is integrated into the frames like a killer alligator made our of books -(tribute to Neverland?) and I want a poster of the puck shot taking out the killer tentacle.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers for the Wonder-fans out there, but I can say that Raven Gregory does more than a great job of bringing closure to Calie’s tale and the Jabberwocky’s plot to bring eternal madness to the real world. Issue #6 is on my birthday list!
Issue Grade: Big A
