Gert is having a little bit of difficulty understanding quite exactly what the deal is with the invitation. She knows what an invitation is. Clearly she’s been invited somewhere. Precisely what the invitation is and precisely WHY she’s being invited there is a bit of a concern for her and she’s about to have a few of her questions answered in I Hate Fairyland #16. Writer Skottie Young and artist Brett Bean continue their weirdly offbeat comedy fantasy with colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu. Having settled-down from the chaos of previous issues, the weirdness continues with more of a manageable level of craziness.

Gert is being greeted by a rather large crowd of citizens of Fairyland. There’s something weird about their faces. They’re all looking at her with their mouths doing a weird turn-up thing. It’s explained to her that what they’re doing is...smiling. It’s not a pleasant sort of a situation for Gert. It’s probably going to be perfectly okay, but clearly there’s something that’s at least partially suspect about the whole situation. Evidently the crowd of people who have assembled think of Gery as some sort of hero. It’s at least a bit disconcerting, but Gertt should be able to handle being a hero. How hard could it be?

Young’s pacing for the issue is more or less perfect. Gert is moved from one place to the next, allowing a new villain to move into view, roll into a conflict and then roll away to establish the next conflict. The overall composition of the issue is really, really sharp on a conceptual level. There’s just enough time in each scene to allow for a narrative the is both funny and sinister at the same time. Young manages to ride a very fine line between action and comedy that manages to fuse the two together quite well.

Bean’s playfully whimsical exaggerations of motion and emotion move the action along quite well as intentions progress in tension. There’s big emotion playing across the page that is captured with the greatest of comic intensity. It all feels more or less perfectly poised from beginning to end as it all cascades across the page. Bealieu’s colors amp-up the intensity of everything to a pleasantly ridiculous degree. It’s quite intense on quite a few levels that all seem to be moving more or less in the right direction.

Gert’s overall journey through her second series has been a great dea of fun. It would be all too easy for any writer to simply get lost in and amidst the weird amplification of everything and simply ignore all concept of character development and continuity. Fairyland IS pretty surreal and it would be entirely possible for that sort of thing to happen. It’s nice to see Young and Bean echoing through the moment with a firmly-defined sense of progression for a titlethat’s just now wrapping-up its 9th year. It hasn’t always been all that coherent, but it’s always been fun on some level.

Grade: A