I Hate Fairyland #20 // Review
Dorothy Gale has arrived. And she’s not alone. Peter Pan is with her. So is Alice (who hasn’t been to Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass in a while.) So is Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Red Riding Hood and a host of others. They are all there to help Gert save everything. It’s not going to be easy, though: there are some things that s he’s going to have to face alone in I Hate Fairyland #20. Writer Skottie Young and artist Brett Bean conclude a major story arc for the series with the aid of colorist Jean-François Beaulieu.
The Fairyland Wars heat-up as MegaHappy has arrived to mess things up for everyone. The mythical world is in real danger, which is why it’s nice that a few beloved characters from the real world have arrived to help-out LONG after their last excursion into the land of stories and such. MegaHappy has done the unthinkable and consumed every version of Gert from across the multiverse. There’s no fluffing way that Gert’s going to be able to to face THAT even with an army of beloved characters helping her out. Still: this IS Fairyland and theree IS always something unexpected around the corner.
Young paces the issue quite well considering there’s a HUGE stretch of pages that are meant to go completely over-the-top with cartoonish fairytale violence. YOung is managing quite a striking balance between whimsically maniacal excess and deep, nuanced inner drama as Gert is trying to come to terms with what she hates and what she doesn’t hate about herself and the world aroudn her. It’s all pretty remarkable and it’s all pretty interesting seeing it move swiftly around the page with such a striking dichotomy between strange drama and surreal comedy.
It’s a fascinating study in nuance amidst excess as everything makes a respectable mess on the page. One might not expect something quite this silly to be anywhere near this satisfying, but even those who might not have read every single issue of the series leading-into this one are going to feel some sort of an emotional impression coming off the page.
It’s all a bit of a blur as it all comes together in the heat of the moment and there IS something very rae about a series this silly that still manages much more in the way of character development than most “serious” mainstream series manage in a decade. Young clearly has something here and he’s had it going for quite some time.
