Warning: contains preview images for Alice Ever After #1!
Readers familiar with the classic Alice in Wonderland story will be in for a shock this April when Boom! Studios releases Alice Ever After. The new five-issue miniseries is written by Dan Panosian, with art by Panosian and Giorgio Spalletta and colored by Fabiana Mascolo. The comic promises readers a bold new look at this classic fairy tale.
First published in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has grown to become a classic of children’s literature, and has inspired many adaptations, including animated and live-action versions from Disney. The novel, and its sequel Through the Looking Glass, have also provided inspirations for several comic book stories and characters, with the Batman villain Mad Hatter primary among them. Alan Moore presented readers with a vision of a grown-up Alice in Lost Girls. The story, with its dreamlike logic and hallucinatory visuals, lends itself particularly well to the visual medium, and its influence stretches across different media, such as music, as well. As with many classic novels, the story has be reinterpreted in various contexts and times, and now Boom! Studios is presenting readers a dark take on the story, focusing on an adult Alice.
In a press release on Boom! Studios’ website, the publisher revealed more information on the book, including preview art and character designs, shared below. Alice, now an adult and living in Victorian London, is struggling: with her family, with her lover and with a drug addiction. Wonderland was her escape as a child and she will give anything to get back to Wonderland, even if it means a seedy odyssey through London’s underground. But if Alice is not careful, she will find herself committed to an asylum. The press release promised that classic Wonderland characters will return in stunning new forms, as seen in Panosian’s character designs.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland continues to resonate with readers, with each generation finding something new in the story, and Alice Ever After is mining the story’s dark elements to brilliant effect. While the story has been adapted to children’s films, it is still nevertheless a dark one, with imagery that is downright horrifying. Panosian’s character sketches, while not being out of place in a traditional Alice in Wonderland story, still disturb and unsettle the reader. Panosian and Spatella are also leaning into another dark aspect of the original story: drug abuse. Alice accessed Wonderland through eating mushrooms, and now she is addicted, because the mushrooms take her to Wonderland—the only escape the adult Alice has from her miserable, bleak existence.
Since its first publication over 150 years ago, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has delighted generations, but underneath the bright colors and trippy visuals is a dark story, and Boom! Studios ' new Alice Ever After promises to explore that territory.
Source: Boom! Studios