Beyond Wonderland #1
Written and Drawn by Raven Gregory and Dan Leister
Published by Zenescope Entertainment
(pictured above) Variant cover by J. Scott Campbell
On Shelves Now

Reading books from smaller publishers usually ends up with me not wanting to write a review. They’re usually full of heart and the promise of talent but you can tell that the reason the writer and artist belong at the smaller publisher is just that they haven’t arrived yet and you just don’t feel like shattering them in a review. But when I saw the above-pictured variant cover to the book, I knew I’d want to check it out. (In fact, the day I saw that cover, I made it the desktop background on my computer, where it remains to this day.)

I really like the entire Alice in Wonderland mythos across mediums, so I was certainly curious about how this book would approach it and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Set in New York City, this is a very creepy comic about a girl who “used to be called Calie Liddle” (notice Calie an anagram for Alice?) and is now called Lacy. (Lots of “a”‘s “l”s and “c”s in her name regardless.) She’s back from Wonderland and working as a waitress in a sleazy roadside looking diner. Not because she needs the money, but because she needs to keep her mind off of all the crazy shit she saw in Wonderland. She’s pregnant and being followed by a guy who looks like a Todd McFarlane version of the Mad Hatter and her boyfriend is about to leave her. Then the Cheshire Cat shows up, looking more Jabberwocky than Cheshire Cat, and seems to tear some poor girl limb from limb. Then what I imagined the actual Jabberwocky to be shows up in a startling and frightening dream sequence of Lacy’s.

The comic is much more complicated than that, but I was surprised by it’s quality, good art, reasonable colors and excellent writing. It’s obvious that the story has been somewhere I want to see and is going somewhere I want it to take me. I’ll certainly be checking out the first part of the series, “Return to Wonderland” as well as waiting for the next parts of the series. This is certainly one to check out.

If I can track down copies of them, I’ll be more than happy to report back to you and let you know how I feel about all of it, but I would say that this is definitely something you should jump on to and see where it goes because it looks like we’re in for one hell of a ride.