I Hate Fairyland #49 // Review
Gert is trying to engage the enthusiasm of Larry the Fly. It’s not going to be easy. Larry isn’t really all that interested in anything she has to say. He IS at a bar and she DID scare-off a rather nice-looking butterfly who was totally into him. Nevertheless, she’s really excited and she needs to talk to someone in I Hate Fairyland #49. Writer Skottie Young and artist Derek Laufman continue a fun and irreverent fairy tale comedy spoof. Color comes to the page courtesy of Jean-Francois Beaulieu. Gert’s getting a job. What’s the worst that could happen?
Evidently Gert was walking around minding her own business when she saw a fairy godmother die. She decided to take the fairy’s wand...and promptly discovered that she had potentially taken-up the mantle of fairy godmother herself. Gert he is going to have to go through training first, though. And that's not going to be easy. After all, one gets a tremendous amount of power as fairy godmother. And so there's going to be a lot of on the job training that's going to have to happen if she's going to be able to do what she needs to do.
Young has little difficulty, pulling the narrative in a lot of weird directions that don't necessarily feel expected. However, by this point in this series Gert it is expected to be very unexpected. So the weirdness that goes on and the darkness that sues is pretty predictable. That doesn't mean that it's not fun. After all, any single issue of this series is a very quick read. So it doesn't really have the opportunity to get dull. To his credit, young seems to know exactly how long Gert can be on the page without wearing out her welcome. As a result, there isn't really a whole lot of dialogue or depth to the narration. It's just fun.
Laufman does a pretty fantastic job of bringing it all to the page in a way that feels suitably comic while also delivering some sense of drama. It's a weird combination of cuteness and horror. But it's cute horror so it's perfectly fine. Adolph fits together quite well as it has over the course of the run of the series thus far. It might be starting to feel a bit repetitious, but that doesn't make it any less fun.
And it's not like Young doesn't manage something really interesting in the final pages of the issue. It still does manage to come out of nowhere. And it's kind of fun to see that kind of action hit the page. The unexpected is always a lot of fun when it's explored with the right energy. Young and company seemed to be bending the narrative MMA, but couldn't give it a little bit more life for a few more issues. It will remain to be seen whether or not it actually does, though. The 50th issue in the series seems going to be kind of crucial in determining the overall impression of the series.
