I Hate Fairyland Volume 1: Madly Ever After
The I Hate Fairyland series, Book 1 - 5
Skottie Young
Image Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor
Themes: Faeries and Kin, Portal Adventures, Wishes
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Description
When six-year-old Gertrude wished to visit a magical world, she never expected it to come true! Here, after a rather rough landing, she's promised a
magical adventure as she searches for the key that will let her return home.
That was almost thirty years ago.
The jaded, cynical, increasingly unstable Gert may still look like a cute, curly-haired little girl on the outside, but inside she's aged every day. She
and her corrupted bug-man guide still search for the lost key, relying far more on axes and curses than riddles and rainbows. As she cuts a bloody swath
through Fairyland, the Queen searches for a way to stop her - even if she is forbidden to directly harm a hair on Gert's head.
Review
Another entry in the growing field of fairyland adventure twists, I Hate Fairyland has some fun (if crude) moments and lines, but never rises above its basic premise to become much more. Gert's understandably jaded, but her violence borders on psychopathic, and I really couldn't care about her... or about anyone else. The fairy queen isn't much better; it's been clear for years that something went wrong with the quest, or with the girl, yet she evidently didn't bother to interfere long before things reached their current state - and seems to blame Gert for her own corruption. The gore quickly becomes mere background dressing, losing its shock value within a few pages. It's not terrible, but it comes across rather flat, with not much more to it than the initial gimmick and no promise of anything changing enough to bother delving into Volume 2.