I Hate Fairyland #19 // Review
Feet isn’t doing very well. Happened is tearing across Fairlybad and destroying everything in her path.There isn’t much that Gert can do to save her fiends. She tried to contact someone with some experience in a similar place, but she’s rejected Gert. Things are looking pretty bleak in I Hate Fairyland #19. Writer Skottie Young sets things in motion for the series’ next climax in an issue brought to page and panel by artist Brett Bean and colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu. It’s a badass tribute to some beloved characters from fairytales and children’s stories of the past as the villainous Happy charges across the page.
Dorothy Gale didn’t want to help Gert. She found herself a very nice lifestyle that seemed perfectly at peace with everything. She didn’t wanna go into the hell of being into another magical or enchanted realm. She’s been through all of that. However, it’s not like she was ever going to turn down a request for help from anyone. However, if she’s going to help, save an entire room, she’s going to need some help herself. And this is a good thing as she has quite a few friends, who have quite a bit of experience in fairytales.
Young could’ve easily treated this like another”get the team together” chapter in an action and adventure serial. Instead, he uses this particular issue to go on at great length, showing the brutality of the combat. There are four straight pages without dialogue, and lots of cartoony bloodshed. Early on much of it is a more soulful and thought out dramatic moment between Dorothy and her partner. There is kind of a weird balance between those aspects of the story. Slow and soulful thoughts of what Dorothy might be like as an adult mix in with over the top combat brutality. It seems strange, but for so many reasons it does work.
Bean’s rubbery, cartoonish style does not lend itself real well to soulful interpersonal drama, but that doesn’t stop the first scene from working on a number of different levels. The craziness of the action on the battlefield in fairyland feels every bit as dramatic as it needs to feel in order to really hit the page in a impressive fashion. Beaulieu’s colors feel suitably amplified in an issue that does a particularly clever job of going just far enough over the line to make an impression without going so far that it becomes a lot of amorphous silliness. Above all, the visuals manage to maintain a rather tight connection to the drama being presented.
The style DOES get in the way of some of the deeper emotional impact that could be had as Dorothy considers the situation. The overall premise of all of the different characters all these years later is going to be a bit of a challenge with the artwork. All of the different characters from children’s books and fairytales that are now going to be helping Gert would seem a lot more appealing if they were drawn to the page in a way that was a bit darker without being silly. That being said, the our team has always managed to find a way to tweak the reality of what’s being presented on the page and just the right way.
