Grimm Spotlight: Cinderella vs. Zombies

Grimm Spotlight: Cinderella vs. Zombies

Zenescope Entertainment 2021

Written by Dave Franchini

Illustrated by Jordi Tarragona

Coloured by Jorge Cortes

Lettered by Taylor Esposito of Ghost Glyph Studios

Cinderella has taken on the apocalypse(and died), taken on her own mind(and lost), and even taken on Christmas(kind of won?) but this time she takes on a whole new threat…deciding what to eat…oh and zombies!

When a crazed, obsessive lunatic accidentally brings on the zombie apocalypse(yes, one of those) somehow and for some reason our only hope is…Cindy?

It takes a special kind of crazy to write this kind of crazy that’s for sure. You have to hand it to Cindy though she’s so past delusion and into that realm of psychotic where she’s highly functioning and yet her break from reality serves her well. It allows her to take care of business in as ruthless and efficient a way as humanly possible. Plus I absolutely love the fact that she’s so off her rocker that she has a hard time thinking beyond her own needs which in turn end up helping an entire city thus making her an inadvertent heroine, which is almost as fun as seeing her mess up so utterly and completely that she destroys as much as she saves. It is hard to tell with her which is better and which is worse but in total she’s a hot mess and too much fun to watch.

I am enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a great job in bringing Cindy to life. Her ever changing and I mean EVER CHANGING personality shines in this one-shot adventure. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story we’re caught up in this insane adventure.

I am enjoying how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story emerge and grow. The layers open up new avenues to be explored and they bring us this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely well rendered.

The interiors here are as clean and crisp as I’d normally like to see, they come across as more cartoon-like and the zombie more caricature than fearsome. It’s a little disappointing but it is what it is. The linework is solid and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the detail work we see is really rather nice to see. Backgrounds are being utilised a lot more than I was expecting to see and I really like this as they enhance and expand the moments. They also work well within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective show a solid eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work really shows a good strong eye for how colour works.

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Well Cincy never really does disappoint does she? She’s bat-shite crazy and being this level of unpredictable always means that it will be a fun, interesting ride whenever she is involved and whether that’s popping up in another character's adventure or another one of her own I look forward to seeing what shenanigans she gets up to next.