Princess Ugg #2 Review

Written and Illustrated by: Ted Naifeh

Colored and Lettered by: Warren Wucinich

Publisher: Oni Press

Oni’s newest female lead comic, Princess Ugg, continued this week with more of the same gorgeous art that was seen in the first issue. As Princess Ülga continues her princess education, she is met with more backlash from fellow princesses and etiquette teachers.

Princess Ülga is an interesting character. Throughout the issue, she tends to go her own way and plays off the condescending comments others are making towards her as if she doesn’t care. She’s absolutely ripped, taking the “strong female character trope” and making it literal, but even her “lumpy” body becomes another reason for the other princesses to ostracize her. The only area in which she excels at is history, but she doesn’t know how to write with a quill, or spell, it seems, and earns the nickname “Princess Ugg” when she accidentally scrawls it at the top of her paper.

This issue was a little bit repetitive, and it mostly shows all of the ways that Ülga is different from the other princesses and can’t do anything right. By the end of the issue, she is demoralized enough to want to return home, and the slight cliffhanger at the end will hopefully lead to a little bit more action for our princess.

Oni Press and Ted Naifeh are not new to writing and publishing female characters, but the way they are handling Princess Ülga feels a little too Princess Diaries: she’s not the princess type, but the teachers will do everything they can to shove her into that box. It’s pretty clear that even if Ülga never masters the etiquette, she will end up earning the respect of the other princesses by saving their lives at a time when they are in danger later on in the story.

The problem with this comic is that, while it claims to be about a strong female, it does so by creating Ülga as an “other” and painting the other princesses as vain and shallow, so we’re supposed to like Ülga and not the people who torment her. It plays too much into a lot of the same old stereotypes and tropes that have been used in media that’s created for women for years and years (see Mean Girls).

It’s still early in the comic, so there’s plenty of time for Naifeh to beef up the female side characters so they aren’t so boring, but women need there to be more comics where the female characters aren’t just stereotyped and pitted against each other. There is no “right” kind of female character, just like there isn’t a “right” kind of female, and adding a little more depth to everyone in the story could make this a much better female driven comic.