Story by Joe Brusha, Linda Ly, & Raven Gregory
Art by Judit Tondora & Antonio Bifulco
Zenoscope’s newest book under the Grimm Fairy Tales brand takes a dark, high-fantasy look at the characters from Peter Pan, beginning with everyone’s favorite fairy, Tinkerbelle. Her story is one of betrayal, framed for the murder of the fairy realm’s princess and facing judgment from the queen.
Throughout the story the writing is amateurish, full of one-dimensional characters and a blundering, shallow plot that never finds a real resolution. Belle spends the entire book bemoaning her circumstances as she is bluntly manipulated by a group of fellow fairies, whose motives are never explained or even hinted at. All I was able to glean from this story is that a group of petty fairies decide that ignorance and affluence are reason enough for blackmail and murder.
A perfect complement to the insipid scripting is the artwork, provided by two artists so wildly different in style that their partnership on this book is somewhat senseless. Judit Tondora’s painted artwork is passable if a bit immature, reminiscent of early ‘90’s Magic: The Gathering artwork. Antonio Bifulco’s art, on the other hand, is unforgivably sketchy, at times so much as to look incomplete. Many of his pages look as though they simply included his roughs as finished artwork.
As a package, Tales From Neverland is simply awful. The book reads like vaguely erotic fan-fiction, aided by blatantly eroticized cover artwork and ridiculous character designs (is every fairy a cosplaying pornstar?). If you’re desperately itching for good alternate Neverland stories, go re-watch Hook.
