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Thursday 27 August 2015

Alice in Wonderland Review (Raven Gregory, Robert Gill)


Raven Gregory’s take on Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland is essentially a godawful mashup of softcore porn and metal stupidity. 

For no discernible reason, Alice’s grandparents send her down a rabbit hole where she ends up the prisoner of the evil Jabberwocky – I won’t bother saying “evil” anymore as every single character in this version of Wonderland is evil. Alice grows up, gets put into stripper clothes, and eventually escapes. She bumbles around meeting the famous characters – the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the Queen of Hearts, etc. – without actually developing one of her own. Also missing is a plot even though every character in Wonderland wants Alice – again, for no discernible reason. The book drags on until it ends stupidly. This was also my first and last Zenescope comic! 

As you might tell from the chest-acular Alice on the cover, this is a book aimed squarely at lewd dewds who luv bewbs – and ONLY bewbs because quality writing and art, and all that entails, is entirely absent from this trashy comic. This entire endeavour seems to be one opportunity after another of getting upskirt shots of Alice when we’re not getting gratuitous flashes of her cleavage. In fact, all the women in this book are underdressed with tiny waists and giant racks, ie. the Barbie look. 

Our protagonist is a personality flat-line, there is no story – the other characters? They’re all redundantly horrific versions of the originals. Cheshire Cat is a giant monster cat. Walrus is a giant man-eating walrus and the Carpenter is a serial killer. The Mad Hatter is a shape-changing sadist, the March Hare is on steroids – all to no effect. They’re all predictably and drearily sinister and dark. Boring. Nobody can die in Wonderland either so there’s no tension/stakes in anything that happens - all that threatening behaviour towards Alice for nothing. 

I suppose “spoilers” on the next part but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read this crap so who cares really?

Raven Gregory laughably pretends Alice the non-dimensional character has an arc when she inexplicably, and for no reason other than SOMETHING has to happen at the end, becomes a warrior queen of an army and fights the Queen of Hearts and her army. This transformation is so unconvincing and is yet another reason for Alice to appear in an even skimpier costume, tits out towards the reader (when she’s not sticking her bum in the reader’s face). So much objectification... 

The conclusion makes no sense and anyway you apparently had to read about half a dozen other tie-in titles (NOPE!) to understand the full porn, I mean story, of this version of Alice in Wonderland. Then the volume closes out with, what else?, a variant cover gallery showcasing Alice in various forms of lingerie. 

I suppose some of the layouts are imaginative – like when Gravity distorts the comic’s structure - but I didn’t like Robert Gill’s art on the whole. 

Wow! What a terrible, misogynistic, utterly stupid, horribly written book! Raven Gregory’s taken a massive dump on a literary classic. I’d be more outraged if it were popular but Zenescope is a very minor comics publisher for a reason. That and it’s hard to care much about something quite so pathetic.

Alice in Wonderland

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