Late night on Saturday October 13, 2012, Zenescope Entertainment threw a party. The party was a celebration of the Grimm Fairy Tales Animated Series they successfully Kickstarter-ed back in the spring. The event was held at Times Scare, a year round haunted house and bar just down the street from the legendary Times Square. The party was open to the public if they purchased tickets from Zenescope, but it was all full of staff and friends of the comic book publisher and Titmouse Studios who did the animated series. Oh, and let’s not forget the fans in attendance all got a limited edition print and a Grimm Fairy Tales Animated Series one-shot comic with an exclusive cover.
The evening started at 10pm with an open bar, which was only suppose to last for an hour, but due to some delays I believe lasted for closer to 2 hours. We were there a little early, so when we first got into the bar it wasn’t too crowded. By the time 10 rolled around though it was wall to wall people. It was a great opportunity for the fans to interact with the people behind the Grimm Fairy Tales comic. I could run through the list of the creators that were there, but that seems a little silly. Overall everyone seemed to have a great time, and I’m fairly certain there was a second group in the bar for some kind of concert and book signing taking place in the next room over.
Now it was time for the Burlesque show to start, the girls put on a fun show, and the crowd seemed to really enjoy it. Only two problems really seemed to arise during it, one being the lack of a microphone. There was introductions between acts letting us know who the next performer was and things like that, unfortunately they had to yell just to be heard. And during one of the acts they had a singer who was completely drowned out by the music. That’s really no ones fault, just the venue lacking audio equipment. The other downfall was having a burlesque show after a 2 hour open bar. I know the whole idea is to be a little rowdy and what not, but some of the fans were getting out of hand. One guy climbed up three rows of seats into our row just to yell things at the stage. He then shoved out of the isle spilling most of my girlfriend / photographer Erica’s drink on her without so much as a word.
I know we weren’t the only ones a bit annoyed with how they were acting, at a few points Erica made it clear they should knock it off and was promptly encouraged by the woman in front of us who worked for Zenescope. You really can’t let a few drunk people ruin things though, and as the Burlesque show ended we got a slightly drunken speech from some of the guys behind the Animated Series. Joe Brusha, Ralph Tedesco, Jon Schnepp just gave a short introduction to the series and thanked everyone for helping make it a reality and for coming out to the party.
And now at long last the pilot episode of Grimm Fairy Tales The Animated Series was about to begin. I’m obviously not going to be spoiling anything here, but it opens up with some pretty awesome action and funny banter and transitions into a plot set more around the true Grimm Fairy Tales. The episode was fun to watch and if you’ve ever followed the comics you’ll know what’s going on. I’m a little worried for it though, there are a few scenes with some animated nudity that is going to be hard to sell to a network. Hopefully those scenes are primarily for the DVD and they’ll just be editing them down to be implied to give them a better chance of getting picked up into a fully series. Overall it was a pretty fun episode, so if you pledged for the kickstater just wait till you get your hands on this, you won’t be disappointed.