I Hate Fairyland continues to be an awesome bit of storytelling from Skottie Young. It’s so awesome, there’s nothing wrong with it. Every page has something purely delightful in it–whether or not it’s the issue’s narrator realizing he’s in for a lot of trouble given the protagonist is Gertrude or Gertrude getting hammered and hitting on a frog prince. By making Fairyland all sorts of annoying and awful on its own, even without Gertrude’s kidnapping figuring in, Young has set up the comic to just be wish fulfillment for the reader. Here’s this lame saccharine fairytale situation, just wait for Gertrude to come along and chop it up.

Literally.

While she’s hammered. And she looks like she’s eight.

However, the comic is so successful, there’s really not a lot to talk about. Young works B and C plots–Gertrude’s (unknown to her) nemesis and said nemesis’s more visible agents–perfectly. The villains have a measure of self-awareness, which the background players don’t get to have; Young’s humor works on multiple levels.

And the art is gorgeous.

Once again, I love I Hate Fairyland. There’s nothing not to love about it.

I love I Hate Fairyland. I love it. Skottie Young loves it too, which is good, since he’s writing and illustrating it. If he didn’t love it, I don’t think I’d love it.

Young’s got a particular style–accessible to children but with a lot of detail, not much attention to anatomy. Expressive anatomical representations. But not in the Liefeldian sense. Very tall people, very short people. He could use this style on gritty fairy tales, but instead he still fills Fairyland with wonderment and magic.

And a protagonist who hates Fairyland. And she’s wonderful. She’s one of the only humans (so far) and she got trapped in Fairyland as a kid. Twenty years later, she’s still a kid on the outside, but on the inside, she’s robbing casinos and eating mushroom people. Because, why not? Fairyland sucks after all (and she can’t get home).

There’s no way to tell what kind of story Young has in mind for the comic–one could argue, at the beginning, it’s about the lost girl (Gert) getting home, but not once Young skips ahead twenty years. Then it’s just about her getting into trouble and making trouble of her own.

Beautiful art, hilarious riffs on generic fairy tale standards. Young’s going for the humor in the writing and the magic in the art–though, really, Gert falling into Fairyland and breaking her face on the landing–she’s fine, promise–sets the mood for the rest of the comic.

It’s excellent.