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I Hate Fairyland: “Madly Ever After” (Image Comics, 2015; #1-5)

Some books take a genre and twist it, subverting into something new and different.

I Hate Fairyland takes the idea of kids questing in a magical place and brutally murders it, chopping it up into brightly colored bits and blood-soaked pieces, grinning like a maniac the whole time. (In a fun way!) And while that started as metaphor, it’s also an accurate description of Gert’s trail of carnage through Fairyland.

Gert was six years old when she landed in Fairyland. Now she’s thirty-three, in the body of a six-year-old. And she has gone mad after being stuck in Fairyland for twenty-seven years, searching for the key that will send her home. This is an excellent excuse for Skottie Young to draw the most outrageous scenes of neon-colored fantasy violence he can imagine. And he’s definitely up to the task.

The story itself is simple, but the art is what shines. Young’s art is stylish and twisted, and his designs are imaginative (and often delightfully pun-based). His frequent colorist-collaborator Jean-Francois Beaulieu colors art that could be dark and disturbing with vividness befitting a children’s book. (This book isn’t for kids.)

If you’re looking for a brightly-colored, twisted, fun book, I Hate Fairyland is here for you. I’m not going to claim that it’s deep or thought-provoking. But it knows exactly what it wants to be, and it succeeds in being that.

Collected in

  • I Hate Fairyland, Vol. 1: Madly Ever After (#1-5)

Credits

Writer and Artist: Skottie Young | Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu | Letterer/Designer: Nate Piekos of Blambot | Logo Designer | Rian Hughes

 

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