Grimm Fairy Tales: Jasco One-Shot #1: Fight to the Death

The new Grimm Fairy Tales Jasco One-Shot is ultimately a mixed bag, crafting a wonderfully fun concept to bring the heroes (and otherwise) of different universes together for a coliseum style fight. However, the artwork pulls from the seriousness of the story with a bit too much of a cartoon flair.

I don’t typically rave about covers because of the nature of the industry, but this one-shot cover does deserve some recognition. The full image is quite a stunning depiction of the current Zenescope roster and is sure to excite fans looking to dive into the book. The drastic change in the interior pages style isn’t enough to pull me away from the story, but it is noticeable rather quickly. Even the lettering, which is mostly quite solid, has problematic moments such as Malec’s balloons. The story is well plotted and the Legacy character is interesting enough. It had the potential to be much better than just okay and the cover speaks to that!

My main complaint can ultimately be boiled down to the design choices in both the world and the Legacy character. Their costume made up of every shade of blue combining high tech with a gladiator look is just a miss. Different color combinations and a more brutal design would have gone a long way to punctuate the dire circumstances at hand and his coming evolution at the end of the story.

Who wouldn’t want to see Sela, Robyn, Belle, Van Helsing, Mystere and Gretel all in a book together though? This book has a spot in my collection just because of that, and the story does what it can to show off their abilities. The chaos of the situation leads to their personalities becoming a bit muddled, but overall the inclusion of so many different characters is just a lot of fun.

This issue won’t leave you floored, but it does enough to leave you wondering what comes next. It’s an awesome story that just needs to be developed and fleshed out a bit further. With such a demanding cliffhanger, it sure seems that we are destined to revisit Legacy’s plans in the future, let’s just hope the visuals pack more of a punch when we do.