SHADOW OF THE QUEEN, Daniel T. Thomsen & Corinna Bechko

{WARNING: Some spoilery details for both this book and its original show.}

Ah, back at last! As I hope you’ve guessed, that was an unintentionally prolonged hiatus. To be fair, I was always planning to upload my reviews of Once Upon A Time’s two graphic novels this weekend, but that was before I realize that the midseason finale was going to be last week. Whoops.

And now I realize that despite both these books being less than 100 pages long, there’s enough to talk about for each to warrant its own review. So Shadow of the Queen, you’re up first! But I’ll discuss both these books a bit more.

I’m actually glad to have waited a week since the show’s last episode before winter break. I’m clear-headed enough now to articulate the good and the bad about ABC’s attempts to bring its fairytale-fantasy soap opera to the page. Well, there’s also the novel Reawaken: A Once Upon A Time Tale by Odette Beane (seriously with that pen name?). It’s an extensive recap of all the Storybrooke events of season one from Emma and Mary Margaret’s points of view. Not only does it sound like a dull regurgitation, but it also leaves out important plot elements. If someone wants to tell me it brings more insight into characters, I might be persuaded to take a look.

Shadow of the Queen and Out of the Past differ in that they bring new stories into the show’s canon. Their validity is supported by Daniel T. Thomsen and Kalinda Vasquez, even if these writers aren’t working on the show anymore—so I’m guessing since they haven’t head-written any episodes this past season. Sadly, where the writing here falls short correlates pretty strongly with the writing fails on the small screen.

In Shadow of the Queen, the creators opted for one story line divided into chapters, each chapter illustrated by a different artist. While I can see the benefit of giving each artist a 22-page section instead of having one draw an 88-page novel, the single story and the artists’ clashing styles can make the book jarring. Vasilis Lolos drew and colored the second chapter and his work is especially distinctive. The hyper-stylized colors set it apart from the more realistic palettes of the other chapters. Out of the Past also employs multiple artists, but they each work on a different story, so the varying styles are refreshing, while it’s just confusing in Shadow of the Queen.

All right, let’s get to the story itself. One strong point in Shadow’s favor is that it centers on the Huntsman. For those of you not in the know or who have only a foggy memory of season one, the Huntsman is first enlisted by Regina, the Evil Queen, to kill Snow White. When Snow demonstrates her goodness in the face of imminent death, the Huntsman lets her go, leading to the queen ripping out his heart and making him her unwilling slave. Since then, he’s had no choice but to do whatever cruel deed Regina makes him to do. The story opens with him going to a village that is on the brink of starvation thanks to a brutal winter. On the queen’s order, the Huntsman takes every last piece of silver the town possesses, allowing not even one woman to keep her family heirloom. It’s evident the Huntsman is pained to do this, and outside Regina’s direct influence he tries to negotiate a deal to get the silver without utterly depriving the people their only means of commerce. But Regina is adamant about getting all the silver. Why?

Turns out Regina is tired of having a slave with a conscience. Seriously, Regina, if he’s giving you so much trouble, either kill him or let him go. It’s not like she’s beneath eliminating henchmen when her temper demands it. But no, her plan is to use the Huntsman and the silver she’s accumulated to ally with the local werewolf pack—the same pack once headed by Red’s mother, Anita, before Red killed her to protect Snow White. Again, if you don’t know the show, just roll with this. Regina thinks the werewolves will be more effective at hunting Snow White than the Huntsman or her soldiers.

How does this go? About as well as you’d expect. The Huntsman tries to tell Regina this plan won’t work—the werewolves can’t be trusted, which he bases on his experience with them. Ah, so the Huntsman, who was raised by wolves after his parents abandoned him in the forest, has a history with werewolves! But we don’t actually know their history. The story never fully divulges the extent of the relationship. The pack’s new leader, Adair, had some brotherly relationship with him at one point, but the Huntsman did something that Adair considered betrayal, and in retaliation he turned the rest of the pack against the Huntsman. Personally, I think knowing more about the Huntsman’s past with the pack would have been far more interesting and make the story feel truly Huntsman-centric. Instead, two pages are devoted to explaining Regina’s reasons for hating Snow White—something fans already know, and something non-fans don’t need to know for the sake of the story. The show itself waited till near the end of the first season to explain what Snow White did to earn Regina’s wrath. And come on, no matter the reason or incarnation, that the Evil Queen hates and wants Snow White dead is a given. Better to explore backstory that’s relevant to what’s happening to our protagonist, the Huntsman.

Regina persuades the werewolves to at least hear out her deal at the wrong end of some levitating silver arrows. I give the writers credit for establishing that Adair has only recently become the pack leader thanks to Red’s killing of Anita, so he's a bit inexperienced and the pack is still hankering for some payback against Red. But don’t they also know that Red did it to save Snow, the same person Regina wants them to kill? Maybe it’s just as well this doesn’t come up so that Adair can negotiate for free roaming across the forest and the kingdom’s silver mines, that way no humans can hunt them. Taking control of the mines will, of course, involve more people hurt or dead, all so Regina can achieve her desire to kill Snow White. Much as I’d like to say this deal is a ridiculous bit of writing, it’s sadly in-character for Regina, who was willing to order the slaughter of another village when no one was willing to turn in Snow.

Rather than wait to hand over the mines to the pack after catching the fugitive princess, Regina accompanies the werewolves to get the mines first, the Huntsman and his heart in tow. On the way, Red in wolf form attacks Regina while going for the box carrying the Huntsman’s heart. She knocks it away from the queen, which gives the Huntsman an opening to flee with it. He also holds back the werewolves, who realize Red’s there and try to attack her. Red, not knowing what’s in the box (don’t know why since it opened when Regina dropped it), takes it from the Huntsman. She presumes it’s valuable and can be traded to acquire food for the town the werewolves are planning to invade. The Huntsman tracks down Red and explains his dilemma as Regina’s puppet. They realize their common association with Snow and agree to help her elude the werewolves.

This is where the story gets silly. Up until now, aside from missing backstory on the Huntsman and the pack and Regina’s willingness to fulfill her end of the bargain first, the story has been relatively solid. As tends to be a problem with Once’s writing, though, the characters turn to a magical MacGuffin to solve their problem. When Red and the Huntsman find Snow, who knows of Regina’s plan and hopes turning herself in will stop the queen (if you thought that was ever an option, why are you only now going through with it?), the Huntsman says they can use a totem near a lake called Onondaga to stop the werewolves. How? The totem “lets one learn what it’s like to live as another creature for a time,” and they hope enacting the totem will turn the werewolves into normal wolves, thus giving our heroes a chance to fight them.

First, a bit of trivia: Onondaga is the name of a Native American nation that became part of the Iroquois Confederacy. There is in fact a lake called Onondaga in upstate New York that’s considered sacred to the nation, but not for any therianthropic qualities. The tribe’s culture does foster an intimacy and respect for nature, as do many Native American cultures. However, this totem as described in the story doesn’t appear to have any roots in real Onondaga traditions. It sounds more like a plot device out of Brother Bear, which portrays the Inuit culture, not that of the Onondaga. If I’m wrong about this, please send me info on the topic.

Second, this strategy makes little to no sense. The Huntsman establishes that the totem can be used only once by any individual, so they’re banking their survival on something that gives them only one shot to get right. Next, the totem is supposed to turn the werewolves into normal wolves. How so? The Huntsman explains to Regina that the werewolves are neither human nor animal, so why would the totem make them default to either part of their nature? Lastly, if the totem does work like this on the pack, why is turning them into normal wolves a good thing? They’re still wolves. Wolves are dangerous. If anything, the heroes should be hoping this totem turns the wolves into normal humans, thereby depriving them of their supernatural strength and, you know, sharp teeth. 

And what exactly do the heroes plan to do when this happens? Murder the whole lot? That seems to be the idea when Snow responds with, “Wait, you’re going to do this to your own kind to save me?” And Red’s like, “Well, once someone sides with Regina, that should give us carte blanche to murder them, right?” Granted, she’s got some bad feelings with them after the ordeal with Anita, but she seems to regret the necessity of killing her mother and running away. Nevertheless, the plan is grim and pretty weak in dealing with the problem. Even if they did succeed in killing off the wolves (a whole pack against three people?), they’d still have to face a no less powerful Regina.

Believe it or not, that’s not the most absurd part of this scenario. I won’t completely spoil it, but I will say that not only does the plan not play out as they hoped, but what does happen makes even less sense. The Huntsman tries to preamble the insanity that follows with the whole “ancient magic is untamed and risky” line, but it only succeeds in making their plan look even stupider.

Now let’s get to what really irks me about this story. No, not the Huntsman sacrificing himself to save Snow, Red and the pack from Regina’s murder spree by returning his heart to her—but why Regina bothers accepting his bargain goes unexplained. There’s some lampshading over how she could just take his heart and kill all the werewolves anyway, yet she takes his deal. I think the writers are trying to imply here, and in a couple other moments throughout the story, that Regina has an attachment to the Huntsman. The nature of that attachment is left undisclosed and underexplored. Does she like him as a toy and has grown reluctant about dispatching him like the rest of her henchmen? For what reason? Maybe the fact he sexually services her (directly suggested in the show) has something to do with it. If that’s supposed to make Regina somehow more sympathetic . . . sorry, I can’t even complete that sentence. It’s too sickening.

Also, who the hell thought it was a good idea to state in the book’s blurb that Regina might’ve “stolen his heart in more ways than one?” Ewwwwwww.

Getting back to the story, the other big bone I need to pick is the forced implied love story between the Huntsman and Red. That’s right—the writers are trying to ship them. It’s not even hidden between the lines. Two times Snow tells Red that she “know[s] what True Love looks like” and that they will make sure “your Huntsman remembers who his heart truly belongs to.” There’s also a scene where, as they try to come up with a plan B after the failed Use-Magic-Trinket-to-Solve-Problem approach, the Huntsman tells Red that the Queen can be very persuasive, “but so can you, Red. You’re worth a hundred of her.” Nice thing to say, but how do you know this? You just met her. They shared maybe one wolf joke, and suddenly these two are supposed to be True Love? I get that, after one encounter, Snow and Charming were already falling for each other, and it’s a fairy tale show and yada yada. I could get behind a Red/Huntsman love story if it were set up properly. 

Here’s the problem: the show does not support it. Not once is there any indication that Red and the Huntsman have a history, nor do we see that kind of attraction between a cursed Ruby and Graham as we do between David and Mary Margaret, despite David being married according to his fake memories.

“The curse and Regina’s control over his heart could’ve interfered,” you might say, but neither things stopped Graham from falling for Emma. Yeah, remember that? None of the characters do, apparently. Graham’s death has gone largely ignored since Regina’s redemption arc began. It makes any attempts to stamp True Love™ on the Huntsman and Red delusional. It’s a cute idea that could work in an alternate universe, but not in published material that's part of the show’s canon. Sorry, Thomsen and Bechko. That’s what fanfiction is for.

Much like the show it’s based on, Shadow of the Queen has plenty of potential but falls down on execution. The characters rely on a magical answer in a way that doesn’t come across as logical or intrinsic to the setting. I’m glad that plan fails so that what ultimately drives that story’s momentum is character choices. That much I can applaud. But if the point was to better understand the relationship between Regina and the Huntsman and establish a new relationship between the Huntsman and Red that fits with the rest of canon, it wildly misses the mark.

Tune in next week for Out of the Past!

Rating: 2.5/5