Grimm Fairy Tales: Realm Knights

Good story. Really liked the bad guy and he's motives. Action packed and intense towards the end and a good conclusion to this story👍

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This volume collects the four issues in Zenescope's Realm Knights mini-series, (and a one-shot prequel). The Realm Knights is a team of heroes brought together to fight supernatural threats against Earth. The hook is that the team is composed of characters drawn from all over the Grimm Universe. I was interested in this because I particularly like Sela Mathers, Robyn Hood, (sometimes), and Red Riding Hood. We also get Van Helsing, Neptune, and Captain Hook.Here's the promo quote from writer Patrick Shand: "It's a great mix of fantasy, action, horror and humor. It's a blast to take these characters out of their separate titles and allow them to come together against common threats while also trying to get along with one other. For Grimm Fairy Tales fans, the elements will be familiar but also feel fresh and different." So, the question is whether the Volume lives up to that promise.First off, the publisher has made a special effort to make this Volume accessible to newer readers. Rather than just lumping everyone together right away with a lot of dialogue about people and events that a newcomer wouldn't recognize, the author has added an identity/history box to each character as he or she appears. So, it is very easy to follow who each character is and to place him or her in the Grimm Universe.Next, the writer does a good job of balancing the drama, (each Knight has some kind of gripe against some other Knight), and keeps the kvetching light and amusing rather than all soapy and angsty. It's written to be banter with an edge rather than whinging and pettiness.Now for the story. As Robyn notes at the outset, the plot is basically a MacGuffin Hunt. The Highborns, (traditional Grimm badguys and basically the old Olympian Gods), were in possession of various weapons of power that were recovered by the U.S. Government. Now, Cronus, (the Titan, father of the Olympian Gods, who was consigned by them to Tartarus), is seeking out and retaking those items. The Realm Knights are assigned to stop him.First up is a trip to the Underworld to recover a scythe. We meet up with Hades, see his father and son reunion with Cronus, and from there the adventure takes off in earnest. As an aside, it is interesting that Hades is portrayed as a wise-cracking playboy, which is a refreshing change in bad guy terms.No spoilers here; the rest of the plot unwinds at a nice pace with some twists and turns and surprises. There is nothing really galvanizing or exceptional, but the whole adventure is well crafted and satisfying. There is a real effort to include humor and to provide light moments between action sequences and while I like that some might find the overall effect too casual. And, even though we have bad bad guys and a worldwide threat this Volume does not have the unnerving violence and darkness of, say, the Wonderland stories.The drawing is generally good, although clarity and expressiveness can vary from panel to panel. The "big" scenes are especially well illustrated. (The bonus section includes all of the covers and alternates from the one-shot and all of the included issues, and is worth perusing.)The upshot seems to be that we get an engaging posse of heroes, a well written story, an entertaining vibe, a few chuckles and a generally satisfying adventure. So, if you like any of the included Grimm heroes there is a good chance you will like this effort.Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

The Realm Knights are a group of fairytale heroes from the Grimm universe who are brought together to protect the world from events that could destroy it. To make a comparison, they are the Avengers or Justice League of the Zenescope world and because of that, they are almost all attractive women in varying degrees of revealing costumes. The book starts with some backstory on the gods of the old world, the Titans and the Olympians; setting up how powerful they were so that when we see the antagonist of the story we are suitably impressed. They manage to assemble the team in a believable but speedy manner, which is very different to some of the ongoing comics I have read recently that take a full six issue arc just to get everyone together. Once everyone has been broken out of jail or recruited from hell off they go in search of Cronus’s scythe to prevent him from completing the set and having the power to rule the world.This book gets credit for the hilarious way in which it makes the female heroes costumes more revealing. At one point Red falls into hell, the sum total of the results are that she appears almost completely unharmed, but her costume has been torn all the way around so that rather than wearing a one piece jump suit she is now in leggings and a tattered boob tube. It is completely to be expected from this series and while on the one hand I am not complaining about it, it does stretch the bounds of realism quite extensively. Then again if George Lucas can get away with a similar thing in Attack of the Clones, I can definitely forgive it in a title like this.This book does not do anything ‘new’ and there are a lot of events that happen because a Deus exmachina says it has to. Robyn even calls it on panel that they are being created as a ‘MacGuffin hunting unit’ and this pretty much sums up the general starting point for the series. However it does become more than this and while the MacGuffins never actually go away (they in fact multiply nearer the end) they do not define the series. A lot of the Wonderland books have these random magical affecting artefacts and while you think they are the point of the story, always at the last moment you realise that they were a means to an end, rather than the end itself and this book does not disappoint on this account either.Over all this book feels like a bit of a success. Admittedly I am a sucker for a bit of pseudo Greek mythology and while I think about it, I am also rather partial to the female protagonists as well. Therefore this book is aimed squarely at my demographic and it does not disappoint. For good measure it also throws in the one shot Realm Knights issue as a bonus at the end of the comic with a slightly different team and a less dramatic story but it is a nice addition that gives more history to the group; it also puts Cinderella in a miniskirt which can never be a bad thing.