Written by: Scottie Young
Art by: Scottie Young & Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Publisher: Image
*SPOILER WARNING sort of. Because this is a comedy comic, talking about the plot means talking about some jokes.*
I’ll be honest, after reading issue #9 of I Hate Fairyland, I didn’t want to review it. See, like the comic’s own running gags, I’ve had my own where I rate every issue a 9.5. Now to be sure, all of the previous issues save maybe #8 deserved those scores, but this one…this one does not. I cannot in good faith continue my joke.
Gentlemen, we have our first dud.
The core problem to this issue, and to the last one really, is kind of a strange one. We have this comic with an end goal: Gertrude wants to leave Fairyland, yet these last two issues haven’t dealt with that goal at all. It’s as if Gert forgot the thing driving her forward for the last thirty years. There’s no progression here; there’s no overarching story. It’s just Gertrude being Gertrude, and without a villain or purpose or…well, anything, that doesn’t cut it.
Look at the first five issues. We had Claudia as a driving antagonist trying her best to kill Gertrude, we had Happy show up and act as a major threat, and then we had Gertrude track down one of the Seven Evil Dooms for a power upgrade. Gertrude was always Gertrude in those issues, but she had people trying to kill her and things to do.
Now though, now she isn’t doing much of anything.
You know how anime has filler episodes because the show catches up to the manga? This feels like that. It’s filler. Nothing new happens, some people die and some swear words are said, but it’s all quite rote. I thought we were going to go some place interesting with Duncan, but he was forgotten as soon as he was introduced. Shame too, because that would have really turned this story on its head.
Far be it from me to expect more from a comic book that thinks flammable piss is funny (it is), but I really do expect more from this. This is not a journey that can drag on forever, and as fun as Fairyland is, it doesn’t work as a monster-a-month style of story. “Haha, Gertrude is mean and says mean things” is only going to be funny for so long.
Now, with that monster vomit of negativity out of the way, the issue itself isn’t all bad. It is still funny, and the violence and artwork are all as top-notch as ever. I enjoyed myself, and I laughed a good bit. I don’t mind that I’ll be buying it and adding it to my growing stack of IHF comics.
But damn, I do not want this to be the direction this comic goes in. A five-issue arc? Fine. Let’s take some breathing room and just fluff about, but without agency, this comic loses a great deal of what makes it great.
