Alice In Wonderland #1
Raven Gregory is revisiting Wonderland and this time the focus is on Alice. We’ve seen Alice’s daughter Callie’s adventures in Wonderland and now it’s time to see just how it all started with her mother. We were given bits and pieces in the previous Wonderland run but this is the definitive how she ended up partly in the “real” world and partly in Wonderland. I was totally stoked to see this solicited in Previews and after reading the first issue I don’t want to wait a month for the next issue. This time around the illustrations are being done by Robert Gill with colours by Jason Embury. I have to say they do an excellent work here. While I personally think the Jabberwocky and the Chesire Cat could be scarier, what can I say I like scary, they both convey a sense of evil and unease. I do have a question as to how Alice got into the outfit she’s in when she grows up, how do her stocking lose the black stripes? I can see her having to modify the dress as she gets older but then anything in this realm is possible right. Oh well this outfit is a straight boys wet dream I’ll say that, oh and a drag queens delight to wear. So this whole thing starts off with Alice being sent into Wonderland via a hole in a tree. Too bad this time around the mirror isn’t being used but this works as well. See her grandparents are well forcing her to go so that the whole lineage thing is still very much in play. Though her father isn’t here and off the top of my head I can’t remember where he was when his daughter went into Wonderland. She’s a very young girl when she enters Wonderland and yes she meets the white rabbit first. Though very quickly she becomes the prisoner of the Jabberwocky. It is while she is with him, in the beginning, that a deal is struck. This is where the mirror comes into play. She would enter the real world again and promise to come back for she can she herself as she would be. Though once she tries going through the mirror the trick comes into play as her sanity must remain with him. So basically she’s left with out her sanity and I guess that is how she ends up the way she is in Return to Wonderland. Once she’s reached adulthood, around eighteen I’d say, the rabbit comes back and frees her from the Jabberwocky. Only they come to meet the Cheshire Cat who very quickly wants her to be his prey. She does manage to elude him thanks to the living tree but he has her scent and will never give up his pursuit of her. We end the issue with a character who we last as being just a carcass. She is on the beach outside the diner and comes face to face with the Walrus. Okay again I am completely enamored with this world they have created. The fun is still here, Gregory’s writing is impeccable, easy to read and excellently paced. This isn’t your mother’s Wonderland and for that I am eternally grateful.
