Pinocchio (Zenescope – Tedesco / Seidman / Hoover / Brusha / Rodriguez / Ruffino)
Two powerful stories collide in one of the most powerful and gut-wrenching Grimm Fairy Tales collections to ever hit stands! A single father has only his young son left in this world. It is a bond that can never be shattered, but what if your son wasn’t really the boy you thought he was? Will a father’s love be enough to stop a viscous evil that stirs inside his son?
Meanwhile Gepetto attempts to rescue his wooden creation he calls a son. But something is not right with Pinocchio and it might be too late for Gepetto to save him. Can Gepetto’s blind love prove to be enough to save the wooden boy or will evil prevail and doom Gepetto once and for all?
This came out last Wednesday and slipped by me all week. My bad. This single collection brings together Grimm Fairy Tales #31 and #32 + the intro story told from the 2007 Annual. This collected edition has all of the uber-awesomeness you come to expect from Zenescope – but not the way you expect it.
The authors put together a coupled set of two intertwining tales that mirror each other, and the result is nothing short of fantastic story-telling. And with any twisted fairy tale from Zenescope, the assumption is that it will be creepy and well-told. But with Pinocchio the authors up the game by throwing in the whole “demented killer child piece”, which always adds a few more points onto the spooky-o-meter.
While the writing is more than solid, it is the art of this collection that will render the reader with that oh-so-yummy skin-crawling sensation that horror aficionados love. There are a few reasons why the visual piece to this book pierces more and seeps in a tad more than perhaps in other Zene-books. First off, this series lacks the usually present eye candy (i.e. half naked studs and curvy babes) that is seen in most Zene-books. Without that distraction, the reader never leaves the fearful boundaries set up by the plot. We get creeped out and then more creeped out and the outright freaked out without ever having the opportunity to right ourselves with some good old fashioned ogling. The second and more important factor that keeps the reader’s head in the game is the outrageously amazing mixed-media style of David Seidman. His style is all his own and following his visual path is very much like walking through a surrealistic, yet very detailed dream. His work is one of those rare cases where you actually do see the new details and nuances every time you re-read it. I put him in next to Charles Vess and Dave McKean in the category of artists, who future fanboys will look back and call the graphic visionaries of our day.
Bottom line is at $4.99 this collection from Zenescope is a no-brainer. Get it!
Grade: Easy A
This week I will be reviewing the Zene-adventures into Neverland and Wonderland, watch for them!
