2/9

2/9 Tales from Wonderland: The Mad Hatter II goes backward to the man who wore the hat before Drake. The title can be misleading if you read that II as a character number. This is another origin story, and its subject is the earlier Hatter. He calls himself John. His relationship with Lily briefly makes Wonderland look like a place where another life might be possible. Then the Queen of Hearts intervenes, and the story reveals the past he escaped from: he was Jack the Ripper. That gives his transformation an especially ugly twist. He already brought murder into this story, even before the Queen's cruelty helped produce the skin-wearing Hatter. The apparent chance to become somebody else collapses into another form of violence. Queen of Hearts vs. Mad Hatter follows his revenge against the Queen and her servants. That conflict belongs to this earlier history. It should not be folded into Johnny's family feud simply because the killer is wearing a familiar hat.