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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A DARK TWIST ON AN OLD CHILDREN'S TALE, November 26, 2007
When Desperado decided to part ways with their partnership with Image Comics earlier this year it was certainly a risky venture. Desperado had been publishing for over two years under the Image banner but would they be able to thrive without the Image safety net? I think that question still remains to be seen but Desperado is certainly on the right course with titles like Hatter M: The Looking Glass Wars.
The hardcover book reprints issues 1 - 4 of the series and if you haven't checked out this title, it's a very dark and bloody revisionist take on the Alice in Wonderland story by Lewis Carroll. In Beddor's version, it is Alice or Alyss as she is known in the book, who relates her story to Carroll and not the other way around. Wonderland is not the place of whimsical creatures but a world rife with war between the Red and Black factions. Alyss is the daughter of Queen Genevieve, the Queen of Hearts. The Queen's sister, Redd, stages a bloody coup with the aid of the Cheshire Cat who is now a savage, predatory beast. Hatter Madigan is the Queen's loyal bodyguard, the Top Cut of the Wonderland Millenary. Madigan, with blades that pop out of his blades and arms makes Wolverine look like he has a set of butter knives. But his deadliest weapon is his hat, which becomes a cyclone of razor-sharp death when hurled. The queen orders Madigan to take Alyss and leave Wonderland. They escape through the Pool of Tears to our world but become separated. Now, Hatter M is on a quest to find little Alyss. His trek takes him through Victorian-Era Europe where he encounters friend and foe, including a sinister group known as the Baanskratar that steals children and drains off their imaginations. The trail of Alyss leads to this horrific cartel...
Hatter M builds its Victorian horror originality cleverly upon the building blocks of a muck-lived children's story. Carroll's Wonderland was already a bit demented in the first place with a beheading-happy queen, the insane tea party participants, and floating cat heads but Beddor has ratcheted up Carroll's tale about a hundred-fold, and things don't get any less bizarre when they move from Wonderland to our world. At first it may seem as if Ben Templesmith's art was a strange choice for this take on the children's story...quite the contrary. Templesmith's lavish abstractions fit perfectly with the direction Beddor has taken the tale. Templesmith's gothic color palette is the perfect contrast to say the Disney animated film version. Hatter M is fantastic book and totally out of the box compared to so much of the ordinary that clogs the shelves in comic stores today. A breath of fresh air!
REVIEWED BY TIM JANSON
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46 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Depraved, for mature readers only, October 6, 2008
This review is from: Hatter M, Vol. 1: The Looking Glass Wars (Hatter M Looking Glass Wars) (Paperback)
I don't write reviews often and I am inclined to leave my own opinions out, but I have appreciated parent reviews sometimes that have warned me of something I may not have expected from a book or product, and decided to share my thoughts to that end with respect to this book. My son, who reads well beyond his years (12) and who is highly imaginative and intelligent, requested this book after reading and immensely enjoying The Looking Glass Wars and Seeing Redd. However, he found this peripheral to the central series, and extremely disturbing. It actually frightened him and he found it difficult to sleep --- very surprising in light of all the other material he has read, appreciated, and understood. So, I gave this small book my attention, and indeed, while the art (it's a comic/graphic novel style) is unusual, interesting, and not poor quality depending on your own comic art style preferences, (looks like the artist made extensive study of corpses to prepare for this project) the substance is in fact rather ghastly, with violent themes, images of torture, and bizarre and disturbing happenings of the largely gratuitous sort, and overall the content is rather simply depraved more than meaningfully or usefully provocative. It bothered my son so that he no longer has any interest in reading any more of the original central series, whereas before this he was hopeful for the next installment. So, parents beware, and readers who loved The Looking Glass Wars and Seeing Redd beware too, because this may not be what you think, it may be a significant disappointment, and you ought to have a look in hand before you buy it for yourself or your kid.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Story Review (Info on plot, characters, content, etc.), November 8, 2007
A Kid's Review
This is one of the best comic books I have ver read. It will especially appeal to those who read Alice and Wonderland but prefer a darker read. On this subject I also reccomend the looking glass wars, and seeing red. These tie-in graphic novels fill readers in on what happened those thirteen years while Hatter searched the globe for Princess Alyss of Wonderland and also tells those who have not experianced the LGW novels what is happpening. (I still reccomend reading LGW first, however.) And though Hatter is traveling earth, where nowadays most events are boring when read in a comicbook, the story is anything but boring. Frank still finds plenty of ways to make it interesting. Wether its fighting zombies, battling creepy monkeys, leaping out of an unrolled carpet and out the windoiw in the middle of a courtroom, chasing imagination-eaters and fighting thugs, Beddor always finds ways to put our blade-toting hero into impossible situations. And the illustrations are awesome. Dark, moody, sketchy, and strange, they give the comicbook a bizarre feel to it, of which I quite enjoyed. Sometimes, they are a bit blurry, however, and may take a little getting used to for those who enjoyed the Spiderman comics, or any other comicbook not labeled Ben Templesmith.
One other thing: if you are a parent, and you are wondering if these books are appropraite for your child, read on. There is a lot of dark images, e.g. shady characters, rotting undead, snarling monkeys, but the comics are very short, so I tend to forget about those sort of thing quickly. There is also a considerable amout of violence. I would reccomend it 12+ or maybe a 10 or 11 year old if he is very mature.
Anyway, its awesome. A must-read. Buy it.
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