Grimm Fairy Tales, Vol. 9

All of the issues in this volume are focused on the larger story arc relating to the inter-realms conflict, so there's no fairy tale in this one. There are hints and references of course, but I'm kinda missing the retelling of fairy tales now, since that was the original point of the series.

The realm conflict, while interesting, is actually full of gaping plot holes that make little sense. Such as how a duck could dive further than a human, or how a supposedly powerful and dangerous shapeshifting wizard was rather pathetic in his attempts to kill someone, or how Death says he doesn't have the power to get the key himself yet tells Sela that they don't have the power to hurt him but still sends her off to do his supposedly very deadly errands... But I guess they're not really trying very hard to make things believable, but just even to tell a tale. So, while they're somewhat entertaining, they're not high quality storytelling, especially when yet more of Sela's rather weird and sudden backstory gets revealed (apparently, she has this one true love, was actually pregnant, was in hiding, and actually gave birth after being captured, yet forgot all about it - how she even got away from such a predicament is unknown). The artwork, as usual, depends on the individual artist, but overall they're pretty good, except one or two issues I found to be poorer.