Realm War 4

Confident in her victory, the Dark Queen sends her army of Blood Knights to attack New York City. Unbeknownst to her, Venus and Pan continue plotting with Hercules, who is under Venus’s spell. And the remainder of the Horde deals a lethal blow to Sela’s plan when Robyn fatally wounds Vaughan. What hope of recovery does Sela have?

I’m guessing the Robyn Hood series is in its own separate realm at the moment because she certainly isn’t shooting up all of the good guys in it.  Robyn has definitely gone to the dark side in this one and she’s not afraid to thin the crowd in the name of the Dark Queen.  Meanwhile, the Dark One has taken a backseat to the Queen’s plans and he’s none too happy about it.  Having been one of the most feared villains in the Grimm Universe, now reduced down to nothing more than an afterthought, the Dark One finds himself regretting resurrecting the Queen from the dead.  Things have gotten out of hand now, what with Robyn’s turn, New York under attack and the Queen holed up in Las Vegas, Sela is at a loss, unless she can unlock the secrets that Vaughan had passed down to her.

So, for being a “Realm War”, I don’t really see this series having any real repercussions in any of the other series in the Grimm Universe.  Like with the big two companies, when you have a big cross-over event like this, there’s always tie-in issues from other series that feed into the main event story as well as show how the event is effecting the characters in their own books.  I still have yet to find evidence of that with this series (unless I’ve just been ignorant of the other Zenescope books).  I collect both the Robyn Hood and Wonderland series and it’s as if this Realm War doesn’t even exist.  How is Robyn doing her own thing fighting demons with Marian, while offing the Realm Knights in the Realm War?  And also, why aren’t seeing stragglers from Neverland, or Wonderland taking sides in this war, what’s Calie and Wendy doing?  I guess I don’t really have a problem with the issue itself (the artwork by Sami Kivela is quite nice by the way), but the way the series is being handled overall.  When you setup a big event like this, it helps to have all of your other series on the same page to help the story flourish.

Issue 4 of Realm War brings us the darker side of Robyn Hood, how she would have ended up if she had accepted her fate during her final strike against Cal King. A much more cold and uncaring person indeed with no real way of turning Robyn back to her former self. The issue is a must-have for anyone collecting the series as we gain more insight as to what’s going on behind the scenes. Hopefully future installments will tie in better with the rest of the Grimm Universe, but at this point, that may not be happening anytime soon. Still a good read for fans of Grimm Fairy Tales. For more info on where to find this issue, visit the Zenescope website, or the Zenescope Facebook page.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.