As the Dream Eater takes more and more victims, what will happen to the denizens of Wonderland and those touched by its tainted presence? What will the escaped Cheshire Cat do to Violet Liddle? Find out after the jump.
DREAM EATER SAGA: WONDERLAND ONE-SHOT
Story: Raven Gregory, Joe Brusha, and Ralph Tedesco
Writer: Raven Gregory
Artist: Novo Malgapo and Marco Cosentino
Colorist: Vinicius Andrade
Letterer:Jim Campbell
Cover A: Keu Cha
Cover B: Tommy Patterson and Milen Parvanov
Editor: Ralph Tedesco
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Price: $3.99
Previously in The Dream Eater Saga: The Dream Eater has been released to stop the Dark One from taking over, gaining ultimate power, essentially doing something bad. Of course, it does this by eating anyone that is not an Earth native. Only two people have dealt with it and actually survived of their own wits, and now we are going to see how it deals with the Wonderlanders.
KITTY GOT LOOSE
17 years ago Calie Liddle managed to kill the Jabberwock, the “evil” ruler of Wonderland. As part of that adventure she trapped the Cheshire Cat in a cave and he’s been trying to get out since then. Guess what makes today different. Cat got out and he wants him some revenge.
Calie has raised Violet without letting her know of any of the crazy and horrible things that happened to her. Of course, Calie is barely holding on to her sanity and has an internal argument going the entire time about how best to protect her daughter, but allows Violet to go to school.
This turns out to be a bad plan as the Cheshire Cat is able to track her down there and starts annihilating the school in search for her. Violet calls her mom (via cell phone, no magic here) but in doing so attracts the attention of the Cat.
The Cat takes her out front as bait for Calie but runs into a bit of a problem, the Dream Eater. The Dream Eater takes him out easily, of course that’s basically what he’s been doing since he was released, and then allows Violet to go as while she smells of the Wonderland taint, she is not of the Four Realms. Shortly afterward, he restores the entire school and all the damage the Cheshire Cat did back to normal, stating how humans shouldn’t be affected by this mess.
WEIRD KITTY
So, while the rest of the series has been rather solid for artwork, this one actually drops the ball a bit. Most of it looked rather good, except for the Cheshire Cat, who was never quite the same critter. The Cat was very inconsistent in its composition and appearance and it pulled me out of the book almost every time. If this was intentional, then it should have been more subtle so as to be off putting instead of obvious, as it stands it drops the overall quality of the book by quite a bit. Individually, the Cat usually looked good, but as a whole work, blah.
BOTTOM LINE: UNNECESSARY
The story is mediocre and only really relevant to the Wonderland characters. The artwork was actively bad. Even with that I would still consider this a 2, but because it was supposed to be a big part of the Dream Eater Saga and it dealt with that for all of maybe three pages, it drops us down to a 1 and that’s being considerate. The only relevance we get is another power of the Dream Eater, restoring people adversely affected by the Four Realms. So yeah, barely 1 in 5 stars.
