(courtesy Image Comics)
SNAPSHOT
Death by a thousand Gerts! King Cloudeus is determined to finish what his sister Queen Cloudia never could: kick Gert out of Fairyland FOR GOOD! And the only way to do that is have every Gert who ever lived battle each other to the death. Who said there’s only so many Gerts to go around?! They clearly haven’t read this comic. OG Gert returns to find the last key to escape, but is it too late, and will she become a Lifetime Citizen of Fairyland? (courtesy Image Comics)
If there’s one thing I love it’s warm and cosy story where everyone gets what they need, all of life’s injustices are stared down by muscularly meaningful expressions of humanity and love, friendship and family, and happy endings are all but guaranteed.
Yes, it’s all very “awww” heavy and sigh-worthy and I apologise for none of it; however, instead this sunshine-saturated peaches & cream perfect world-loving soul of mine, there is also a deep and sustained love of things going batsh*t quirky and crazy, a love of the subversive and the unorthodox which adores the presence of the immaculately lovely apple cart but which also takes great delight in upsetting it as spectacularly and hilariously as possible.
Finding the two competing loves in one narrative vehicle is always a challenge and frankly the two do not easily go together, in whole or in part; but in Skottie Young’s I Hate Fairyland series, it finds perhaps its most perfect exposition with the happily bucolic delights of the fairytale world upended massively and with great gusto by one character who is most certainly out for a happy ending but one that is bloodily, messily and sociopathically her own.
Gertrude aka Gertie has been trapped in Fairyland since she was a little child, unable to find the key to the door that would take her home, and while you might think, and yes, my first paragraph self would hope this to be true, that she’s been full of glitter and bonhomie and love for all creatures by now, she is in fact a twisted, angry killing machine who splits bodies open first before asking questions, if she vengefully bothers to even open her mouth.
She is an absolute nightmare for everyone around here, including Larry, her fly guide and the various rulers of Fairyland, the new monarch of which is King Cloudeus, brother of Queen Cloudia, who is convinced he has what it takes to kick the horror that is Gertie out of Fairyland FOR GOOD.
(courtesy Image Comics)
How will he accomplish what no one has managed to do before, all of them the recipients of a blood-soaked body count courtesy of a very angry now-woman who sees no magic or bliss in the hell she views as Fairyland.
In Last Gert Standing by Scottie Young and Brett Bean, the sixth collection of Gertie’s murderously mirthful tales, all of the Gertrudes who have ever lived have to battle each other to the death; it seems like a foolproof plan but clearly King Cloudeus has never read this hilariously gory and subversively funny series nor does he fully understand that getting ride of Gertie is never, NEVER, going to be that easy.
In fact, all of his best-laid plans very quickly go awry as Gertie refuses to play by the script, with her attention solely focused on conning someone else out of their key while they battle Werepoodles, viciously murderous and hilariously diverse version of themselves, and a mass of very angry witches and wizards.
Sporting gloriously colourful and hugely imaginative artwork, where all the usual residents of Fairylands are present and accounted for but not even remotely as you expect or imagine them to be, and some sensationally expansive and gloriously clever world-building, Last Gert Standing is a fantastically, silly and brilliantly realised “cock clucker” (there is no swearing but OMG there is much swearing adjacent-ness and it’s an absolute hoot!) of a story where all of the cosy and warm elements of fairytales are present and accounted for, but in a more twistedly traditonal way than Disneyesque, and we have a protagonist and antagonist in one who is not going to take all the machinations against her lying down.
She is her own worst enemy however and much of the fun of Last Gert Standing, and indeed the series overall, is that things never quite work out for her, or anyone else really, a nihilistically hilarious tale which never ceases to amuse, delight and scandalise and sabotage the very idea of a happy-ever-after ending which you suspect is never, ever going to arrive.
And if it does, not even remotely in the way those of us who love cosy, warm and tidy stories love … and that, in the case of Last Gert Standing, is a very good thing indeed.
I Hate Fairyland vol. 6: Last Gert Standing is out now from Image Comics.
(courtesy Image Comics)