CHESHIRE, LORD CHESHIRE, AND THE FOREST OF GRINNING TEETH

CHESHIRE, LORD CHESHIRE, AND THE FOREST OF GRINNING TEETH Spoilers for Grimm Fairy Tales Presents Wonderland #32, up to the part I'm reading now. I just got far enough into Wonderland #32 to find out about the Forest of Grinning Teeth, the multiple Cheshire cats, Cheshire being summoned, and the very large Cheshire he was talking to. I wanted to put all of that together, along with Lord Cheshire and the whole cat-and-mouse thing I'm just getting into. Because there's a lot more going on here than just the Cheshire we've been following. At this point, Calie is the White Queen, and Dark Cheshire is trying to make up for the things he did before. He's serving somebody who wants to change Wonderland after everything that place put her family through. That's already a strange place for him to be, considering his own part in its violence. But now he has to go back and face his own kind, and they have plenty to say about where he's been and what he's done. The Forest of Grinning Teeth is full of Cheshires. All different sizes, different faces, different bodies. Some look almost like smaller, twisted cats. Others are much larger, with these huge teeth and strange proportions. There are faces and eyes all through the trees. You're looking at an entire gathering of them, surrounding the one you've been following. They recognize him. They call him their brother. But that welcome gets ugly almost immediately. They can tell he's been to Earth. They talk about the blood on him and the fact that he's been through the looking glass. As far as they're concerned, that isn't their world, and they shouldn't be there. Then they start calling him tainted, a murderer, a traitor. The whole group turns on him while he's trying to make it clear that he came because he was summoned. That part adds a lot to Cheshire. We're used to seeing him as this dangerous creature out in the world, dealing with everybody else. Now we're seeing the people he comes from, and he has to answer to them. There are expectations attached to being one of them. He can't just show up and assume everything he's done outside that forest is going to be ignored. Then there's Lord Cheshire. This dude is enormous. Dark Cheshire looks tiny standing in front of him. Even before you get into the conversation, the difference in size makes it pretty clear who has the authority in that place. He's the one who can call Cheshire back, demand answers, and pass judgment. Their conversation also gets into who Cheshire serves. Dark Cheshire says he serves the White Queen and has debts to settle. Lord Cheshire pushes back on that. He even claims the White Queen serves them, which is a pretty big thing for him to say. I'm keeping that as his claim at this point, because I'm still reading through it. But it shows how he sees his own position and how little he thinks of Cheshire putting his loyalty elsewhere. And Cheshire doesn't pretend he was innocent before. When they bring up the madness and horror associated with the others he served, he admits that he stood with them. He knows there is something to answer for. He's trying to do something different now, but the things he did are still following him home. That's where the cat-and-mouse part comes in. It's the sentence Lord Cheshire gives him. He's judged guilty and forced into a game of cat-and-mouse. So the Cheshire who has spent so much time being dangerous to other people is suddenly the one being told to run. He's being put in the mouse's position, in a forest full of his own kind. That makes the name a lot nastier than it sounds. This is how they're choosing to punish him. And knowing how dangerous even one Cheshire can be makes that situation pretty easy to understand without needing to know how it ends. I'm stopping there because that's the part I'm getting into now. I wanted to cover the forest, the fact that there are all these other Cheshires, Lord Cheshire himself, and how the summons leads into this game. There's a whole side of Cheshire's world being opened up here, and I want to keep track of it as I read instead of jumping ahead and spoiling where it goes.