I Hate Fairyland #43 // Review
Desserts rest at the end of the meal. Appetizers are the harbinger of the meal to come. There’s a war raging. Gert is enlisted to serve on the frontlines of that war in I Hate Fairyland #43. Writer Skottie Young takes-on spooky treatment of the war drama genre in another trip through a wacky surrealistic amplification of genre fiction with artist Derek Laufman. It’s a fun, little exercise. A one shot joke that has the silliest of possible punchlines. Nevertheless, it’s a lot of fun. And once again, young and.Laufman Show precisely the kind of charm wit, and craziness that has granted this series is the kind of success it’s had over the years.
Gert hasn’t just been called in to serve. She’s been called in to lead. Is it a dangerous transmission. There is a group of prisoners of war behind enemy lines. She’s going to have to lead in elite team to go in and try to rescue them. It’s not going to be easy. Appetizers generally have advantages over desserts when it comes to war. And there’s no telling what’s going to happen. However, there’s no question that.Gert is one of the most powerful figures in all of a fairy land. Still, it’s not going to be easy for her either.
A good portion of Young’s story lies in a series of jokes about appetizers and desserts. There lovingly crammed into a war drama. On nuts and bolts level the war drama feels very well defined. And it works really well as a one shot sort of a thing. There is a whole lot of depth to it. There has been a long history of war in comic books, and there have been a lot of different ideas. Explored. With all of the cheap humor there really isn’t much room for any complexity that might come out of a more sophisticated satire. This is, after all, fine. Gert in Fairyland she doesn’t really need any more complexity.
Of course, this complexity of everything would seem pretty weak or not for the fact that Laufman is doing such a good job of bringing the cartoons of the violence to the page. It’s actually pretty gruesome. And there is a moments of sheer terror on the page. The fact that they’re delivered in silly, cartoony fashion in involving appetizers and desserts that have been anthropomorphized is just a detail. And it’s a pretty funny detail. The contrast between the hell of a very graphic war and the visual cartoonist of a trip through fairyland is one of the big appeals of the issue.
And, indeed, it is one of the big appeals of the series as a whole. That contrast between darkness and silliness and really abrasive comedy. One would imagine that that would get tiresome eventually. However, young and company seem to be doing a really good job of keeping it interesting nonetheless. Just kind of fun that they’re able to continue on with it. I think portion of what keeps the series so appealing is Waiting for it to filter and lose its appeal. Because there’s no way that this sort of thing can maintain its momentum indefinitely. But young seems to be doing a really good job of keeping the ball moving.
