Alejandro's Reviews > Alice Ever After

A too dark tale about Alice!


This softcover TPB edition collects “Alice Ever After” #1-5.


Creative Team:

Writer: Dan Panosian

Illustrators:

Dan Panosian (Wonderland scenes)

Giorgio Spalletta with Cyril Glerum (London scenes)

Colors: Fabiana Mascolo

Lettering: Jeff Eckleberry


CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

I found out about this comic book miniseries too late, so instead of getting it in single issues, I got the TPB edition but luckily I was able to get the issue #1 with variant art by J. Scott Campbell.

This graphic novel is a sequel to the events of the original book where Alice is already a grown-up woman in her twenties (I believe). She is addicted to drugs (some pills and liquid heroine) that she employs to go back to Wonderland, and once she is back to a very dark and grimm reality you can find that several “real life” characters have their Wonderland counterparts. That’s not that inspired since this is like taking Wizard of Oz and the sequel film Back to Oz merging those mentioned elements to the story of Alice in Wonderland, even you can think about Bridge to Terabithia since here Wonderland isn’t real and the story have a very sad ending.

Alice is addicted to drugs but you’ll find out that she isn’t guitly by herself for her condition since there is a very dark family secret that Alice was unlucky to find out and now she is suffering because of that.

All that said, I enjoyed the development since it was quite creative how all those new elements were used to tell this extension of the story of Alice, however I didn’t like at all how the story ends (no, I won’t spoil it, but be warned).

Maybe the ending isn’t that sad taking in account the inner desires of Alice, but if the graphic novel would have a different closure, certainly I’d give it 5 stars without thinking, but since it wasn’t the case, I thought that the fairest thing to do was taking out a star, even I was considering to give it only 3 stars, but at the end I decided not to punish it that much since only the ending was what I didn't enjoy, the rest of the story is quite an interesting experience.

I want to mention (that I think it can be considered as part of my problems with the ending) that I don’t like that taking in account that the story have a lot of villains, not single one pays for their crimes, and I don’t find that fair, maybe real life isn’t fair but this isn’t a real life story, this is a book (actually a comic book) therefore I would like to see the criminals to be accountable for their sins and the victims to find justice.

Still, the comic book is quite well written and wonderfully illustrated, so if you’re fan of Wonderland stuff, you might find worthy to take a look to this graphic novel.