The Snow Queen (Hans Christian Anderson’s…)

    (Comic Library International, 2004)
™ and © Comic Library International

A demon named Blight created a magic mirror that distorted the image of whoever was reflected in it. When Blight and his fellow demons attempted to use it against the angels of heaven, the mirror shattered from the stress and the shards fell to earth. Most of the glass splinters mixed with ice and snow and began to form the face of a beautiful woman. She became the Snow Queen and when she opened her eyes, Blight became her slave. He was charged with the recovery of all the glass shards or be doomed to spend his life in ice and snow. One of the splinters flew into the eye of a boy named Kay and became lodged in his heart. His demeanor changed that day and he became cruel and harsh to his best friend, Gerda. That night he was spirited away by the Snow Queen with no clues about his disappearance. The adults of his village assumed he had fallen into the river and been swept away by the swift current. Only Gerda holds any hope that he still lives and her faith leads her on a long and magical quest to save her friend from the spectral goddess.

There are many diverse elements to this story and its episodic narrative lends itself to a myriad of settings. The religious overtones of angels and demons are combined with the mystical notions of an ice queen. On her quest to find Kay, Gerda also encounters ghosts, witches, talking flowers and talking reindeer.

The Snow Queen is a fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen who lived in Denmark in the mid–19th century. He wrote many famous fairy tales such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” This adaptation was scripted by Mitchell Perkins and illustrated by George Broderick, Jr.

— George Haberberger
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