Disney's Twisted Tales: Part of Your World Graphic Novel

A Twisted Tale turns to the world of graphic novels and they picked one of the best to begin with. This is the story of Queen Ariel of Atlantica, set five years after the events of the movie, only in this version, Ursula won. 

This is one of my favorite books in the series and this adaptation did it epic justice. Mostly. The art is splendid. The gist of the story is there. My main disappointment is that Jona the seagull barely had a role, and they eliminated Argent and Vareet entirely. 

I hope to see them tackle more from A Twisted Tale in this style. I know they're doing Valentino's Villain series as graphic novels, but I got enough of that in the books, so I haven't bought any. Especially because one is Cruella and I HATE that book. 

If you're a Little Mermaid fan, I recommend picking this up. Ariel and the Curse of the Sea Witches is another good one. I never reviewed it, but it's set after the movie. All of these prove that I really only dislike Ariel as a character within the confines of her own movie. Every other thing I've read that takes place before or after or in a twisted version, I've really liked her. 

Disney's Twisted Tales: Peter Pan

It's been over a year since I read my last one of these. I remember reading the Frozen one down in Florida on vacation in 2021. I got distracted with finishing off the Valentino villain series and we know how that one went. So now it's back to A Twisted Tale. Gah, these are mostly so much better. 

Aside from Disney Fairies, I'm not a huge Pan fan. I remember starting this one also on vacation and only getting a few chapters in. It does start out slow, but then it gets good. Really good. 

The premise is a bit confusing at first, because it seems like the Darlings went to Never Land, but really, it's all just Wendy's stories. They've never been. She's never met Peter. She doesn't know Tink exists. But Wendy tells such good Peter Pan tales that he drags Tink down to London to hang out outside the nursery window and listen in. On one trip, Nana grabs his shadow and for four years, the Darlings do have a physical sign that Never Land exists. However, only Wendy cares. Michael is a typical young boy. John is precocious, highly intelligent, and a bit snobbish. 

The book opens with Wendy not being thrilled with her current life. She's 16 now. The boys are in school but she didn't go. She doesn't fit in with other people her age. She's thoroughly too distracted with Never Land. She writes stories about it in a notebook. Her parents try to distract her by giving her a small dog. She's not thrilled. (And honestly, a bit of an asshole about it. It's not the dog's fault she isn't a wolf.) After they find her notebook of stories, her parents overreact and decide to send her to Ireland, where she'll be a nanny for 5 young boys. I'm not sure why this reaction to her writing is so outlandish. She could be an author, for fuck's sake. (This point is eventually driven home by Michael much later on, but Wendy sadly never writes her stories in novel form from what I can tell.) 

So Wendy brazenly decides to yell into the ether that she has Peter Pan's shadow. And she packs a bag and wanders to the Thames in the middle of the night, as if this is going to work. Yet it does work, because here comes Hook on the Jolly Roger. Wendy trades the shadow for a trip to Never Land and back home again. She spends some time aboard the ship, but Hook's actual plan unfolds soon. He said he'd take her to Never Land but didn't say anything about letting her go ashore. He plans for her to be the ship's "mother." With the help of a dissatisfied pirate named Zane, Wendy escapes the ship.

Once on shore, she finds this special place she created in her stories, as well as a young wolf named Luna, who's apparently her BFF in her tales. She realizes things she wrote about actually came to exist in Never Land. 

Then she's off to find the Lost Boys to get their help in the eventual battle against Hook. He's planning to use Peter's shadow as part of some big plan to finally take him and Never Land out at the same time. The Lost Boys are good characters. One is a girl, who tells her secret when Wendy is there. 

Wendy journeys off with Tink to find Peter. So much happens. I'm not trying to summarize, but they have a LOT of adventures. The mermaid chapters were really enjoyable. Tink initially hated Wendy. When Peter was searching for his shadow, Tink kept discouraging him from checking London out of jealousy. So she's partially at fault for him being separated from it, as is Wendy for the current situation. Watching their relationship change and grow over the course of the book is really the best part of the whole thing. This isn't Disney Fairies Tink. This is definitely fleeting emotions, changeable Tink. But she's done so well. 

On the cover, that's Wendy's shadow, not some random silhouette illustration. She's also a character, as is Peter's shadow. 

We also do meet some other fairies. One is a female who was pretty rude, but the male, Thorn, is awesome and Wendy develops a crush on him that's cute. 

I won't say anything else for fear of spoiling too much, but if you are a fan of the dark Disney stuff, definitely check this one out. It's up there with the Mulan and Aladdin ones.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Conceal, Don't Feel

I'm not a big Frozen fan, but there are definitely elements in the story that could have made for a good twisted version. 

However, what we got is so watered-down and weak that it's just as kid-friendly as the movie. Not what the twisted tales line should be about. 

In this book, when they're kids, Elsa messes up the troll's spell. Her powers are locked away and Anna is spelled to be unable to be near her sister. The closer she is physically to Elsa, the faster she freezes. The screwy spell also makes the entire kingdom forget Anna exists, save her parents and the nice couple who are given Anna to raise. (The woman in the couple is the girls' mother's BFF.) So Elsa grows up in a lonely, solitary, studious life, while Anna lives in a small town in the mountains, being the happy, friendly, creative daughter of the town bakers.  

Time passes and Elsa's powers reveal themselves. Her parents leave for their doomed journey. Anna realizes that Freya, the friend of her mom's who visits every couple months, is actually the queen. She and Kristoff journey to Arendelle to help Elsa, because Anna feels she's in danger. Elsa, who has been courted by Hans for a year, flees a few moments before her coronation, after finding a letter from her parents that reveals she has a sister named Anna who's alive and living elsewhere. Hans goes after Elsa. Anna still saves her sister from him. The sisters are reunited and the cursed spell is broken. There's more here that I'm skipping, but the book is basically only the slightest twist on the movie and everything ends up the same. It wasn't awful but it was far from good.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Part of Your World

Continuing on with Twisted Disney, we come to The Little Mermaid. 

I had really mixed feelings about this one at first, because why would Ursula stay in disguise as Vanessa and be content with manipulating humans when she could just rule Atlantica? I was further dismayed to see them using the canon from the 3rd Little Mermaid movie when it came to her sisters. 

This drives me insane. The original movie CLEARLY spells out the age order of the sisters. IT IS LITERALLY IN A SONG. 

Aquata. 

Andrina. 

Arista.

Attina. 

Adella.

Alana.

Ariel. 

That is the correct order. I will accept nothing otherwise. The old chapter book series sticks by that. 

I was bitterly disappointed that the author didn't use the rather blank slates of the sisters to create characters for them, but she wrote them off as forcing Ariel to rule as punishment for the death of Triton while they spent their time on frivolity. It's hinted later that this frivolity is how their grieve their mother, but as Ariel points out, that was over a hundred years ago.  

Yeah, I have no idea how mermaids age. Ariel was 16, yet her mother died 100+ years ago, so one mer year is many, many human years. It's been 5 or 6 years since Ursula defeated Triton, so figure Ariel is 21 or 22, but actually well over 100. 

Anyway, Scuttle is still alive and does some spying on Vanessa. He realizes she's still got King Triton alive in polyp form, so he quickly gets the news to Ariel, who as I mentioned is Queen of the Seas. Ariel is still mute but communicates in sign language, using an old signed form of the mer language. 

Ariel goes to the castle to try to find her father, able to become human thanks to the power of the trident. And yes, there's some bitterness that her father could have made her human all along. 

So thus begins the adventure. Ariel is aided on land by Scuttle, but as he's quite old, it's mostly his great grandgull Jona that's helping. Ariel ends up stealing the nautilus necklace while Vanessa is bathing and gets her voice back pretty early on, but this also alerts Vanessa that Ariel is there and it frees Eric from the spell she's had on him (and the entire town) for years. Eric and Ariel team up and rekindle old feelings while working together to find King Triton and stop Vanessa, who's amusing herself by trying to cause a bunch of wars. 

And...get this...Ursula's big final plan is to cast a spell that summons the Elder Gods, who will give her power on land, as she has none. (Likewise, the trident doesn't work on land.) It even uses a twisted Lovecraftian language. 

Yep. Ursula's gonna summon Cthulhu. Classic.

I started out disliking this, but ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Attina in the role of the oldest sister shows up the most of the other 6 and is the only one to really get a personality. She's snarky and sounds a bit silly compared to the well-read Attina that's my favorite, but she ended up being a decent character. I still swap her with Aquata in my head though. As it should be. All the old favorites are there: Sebastian, Scuttle, Flounder, Carlotta the maid, Grimsby, Max. And they're joined by Jona, a badass older woman tattoo artist named Argent, and Vareet, Vanessa's young servant girl. It's a pretty fun ride and all the questions you have at the beginning do get answered by the end.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Reflection

I let myself fall behind on these again. I'm honestly not sure why it took me three attempts to finally finish this book. This is a good series, but I'm constantly pulled away from it by other things. 

But I'm taking a break from historical reading, so it's a good time to work through my backlog of Twisted Disney. 

Reflection is obviously based on Mulan. I would say this one was far less dark than the previous three installments. It's my favorite so far though. 

Basically, Li Shang is injured protecting Mulan from Shan Yu after she fires the cannon that causes the avalanche. Shang's father visits as a ghost and tells "Ping" he can help save Shang by travelling to Diyu, the underworld. 

So aided by the Li family guardian, a stone lion named ShiShi, Mulan is off on a perilous journey through the underworld. ShiShi is an entertaining character who provides some moments of levity, though not like Cri-Kee or Mushu. He's a better fit for the story because Mulan's actual guardians would have been a bit too comic. ShiShi has range. 

The story follows Mulan, Shang and ShiShi as they battle demons, ghosts and an enchantress, who are all out to stop them from making it out of Diyu before sunrise. It's a great adventure tale with a lot of introspective moments and character development. There are some parallels to the movie, but they're minimal. Though Shang does still say "You fight good." Excellent. 

Disney's Twisted Tales: As Old As Time

I FINALLY finished this book. It came out almost three years ago! I have picked it up, put it down, and restarted it at least three times since then. But I just bought the last one, twisted Snow White, for a low price, so I'm determined to finally catch up on all of these, before the next one comes out on October 1st. Or at least make a concerted effort to get through them. I have three more to do after all.

So for those unfamiliar with twisted tales, the author plays with a concept relating to the Disney movie we all know, and then skews it darker. Both the Aladdin and Sleeping Beauty volumes were quite dark, and this one continues that tradition.

The beginning goes back and forth between past and present, relating the story of how Maurice, Belle's father, and Rosalind, the Enchantress, meet and fall in love. You meet their friends Levi, Alaric and Frederic, all important to the story. In the present, Belle is dealing with Gaston's assholishness and going through what we know from the movie: exchanging herself for her father as prisoner of the Beast.

The past story turns darker as the supernatural people like Rosalind are hunted down or flee the country. The king and queen have turned against them and are harsh, cruel, prejudiced people. The king and queen who are Beast's parents.

I don't want to spoil too much, but you can guess what Rosalind does, and then the story switches entirely to the present, where Belle accidentally destroys the rose, then works with Beast to unravel the mystery of their past. The end is a huge confrontation and the final ending is tentatively happy, not full-on happy, but with a promise of happiness. It's good and I'm glad I finally finished it!

Disney's Twisted Tales: Once Upon a Dream

I bought this book in April, but it's been languishing since then. I read a few chapters, then got distracted. While Maleficent is one of my favorite Disney villains, the story of Sleeping Beauty is not one I find particularly interesting unless it's being retold on an adult level. The movie is dull. Aurora is pretty dull, although strangely, I tend to like her dolls. I don't know why. The whole storyline's kinda fucked up in many ways.

Well, this book actually addresses the level of fucked up a lot of the storylines in Disney's version are.

I'm not going to say too much for fear of spoilers, but the basic premise is that Phillip kills Maleficent and gets to Aurora, only to kiss her and...fall asleep. The spell can only be broken by one person: Aurora herself. And her quest to pull this off is a pretty good read, although it's mostly just her and Phillip. I favor Braswell's Twisted Aladdin over this because the array of characters is better there. The story is quite layered and Aurora is a sincerely messed up young woman. There's one point where she literally battles a physical incarnation of her own depression.

If you love Disney and fairy tales and can handle them being taken to a pretty dark level, check this book out.

Disney's Twisted Tales: A Whole New World

Liz Braswell's A Twisted Tale series takes the Disney movies we know and love and gives them a "what if?" that results in a much darker storyline. These books are for older Disney fans. I mean, yeah, Disney has some twisted stuff to begin with, but kids really don't need the amped up dark Aladdin where multiple movie characters don't make it. Wait 'til they're a bit older. Or it'd be okay for more mature kids. I dunno. Use your best judgment. But I'm 37 and I read a lot of horror and some of the scenes in this were still jarring.

A Whole New World's back cover asks "What If Aladdin Had Never Found the Lamp?" However, that's a bit misleading. He does still find the lamp. The problem is that he doesn't keep it. The real theme here is "What If Jafar Possessed the Lamp?"

Well, you can figure out the answer to that. Bad shit happens.

Aladdin is the most unchanged character in this book. Genie is much different, in a sad, more realistic way. Jasmine has much darker tones, which I actually like. Abu is not comic relief. Instead, he and Carpet just aren't in it much. Neither is Genie for that matter. He still has some funny lines, but he's barely onscreen and he's got several serious moments. Rajah has more tigery moments. Nobody feels really out of character though. They fit with the different setting of the novel.

I've had this since it came out way back in September, but I only just picked it up again today. It was a bit hard to get into, because the first several chapters mostly retell the movie we know. But after seeing the gorgeous cover for the third book in the series, where Belle's mom is the enchantress that curses Beast, I decided I needed to get back into this series. I finished that last Dear Canada book I reviewed and dug right into this. And I've only put it down briefly since I picked it back up again.

Braswell's writing is quite good and I enjoyed the new characters she added. The main two are fellow thieves from Aladdin's younger days: Duban and Morgiana. Both are characters from One Thousand and One Nights. Duban had his own tale and this new Duban isn't much like him, aside from being intelligent. Morgiana was the quick-witted slave from Ali Baba, and she is just as quick-witted here. I love this Morgiana. Other characters also borrow their names from the original tales.

I don't want to say too much about this, because I quite enjoyed it and I recommend people read it, so I don't want to spoil anything. I like letting people watch the story unfold on their own. But be warned, this is darker Disney than we're used to. It's not A Song of Ice and Fire-level, but characters we know and love from the movie do not make it all the way through the book.

I'll be started the second in the series later tonight. "What If Sleeping Beauty Never Woke Up?"