I Hate Fairyland, Volume One: Madly Ever After

 I can't wait until my son is old enough to read this.....

 We were in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and I was trying to convince myself not to spend forty bucks on Marvel's INFINITY WATCH collection (I later picked it up for twenty bucks online!), when my son Mikey, who just turned seven, brought me a copy of I HATE FAIRYLAND, VOLUME ONE: MADLY EVER AFTER and asked me to buy it for him. Ever the thrifty dad, I told him that I had a digital review copy already, and I would read it to him when we got home. Boy, am I glad that I gave this a quick look-see first....

 I'm very familiar with Skottie Young's art, thanks to his innumerable variant baby-themed covers for Marvel, but I had no idea that he could actually write, something most artists are incapable of (See DC's output over the last few years.). I HATE FAIRYLAND is gorgeously illustrated and lushly colored, but it's also written with a hilariously subversive tongue-in-cheek. The story starts off with eight-year-old Gertrude wishing she could visit Fairyland, and before you know it, she's whisked off to Fairyland for a magical quest that should take about one day to complete....

 Flash-forward twenty-eight years, and Gertrude has yet to complete her quest and find the key that will enable her to go back home. On the plus side, Gertrude hasn't aged a single day physically...She's still an adorable, green-haired little moppet. The downside of that equation...? Gertrude has aged mentally, and she's become a mad, sadistic, murderous brute who has been carving a path of destruction across the enchanted land as she searches for her key.

 Young delivers a funny, twisted fairy-tale, made even more surreal by the juxtaposition of the adorable art and the often macabre subject matter. The twist ending alone is worth the price of admission, and assured that I'll be back for Volume Two.

 Needless to say, this is probably not fit for a seven-year-old boy. Maybe. My first inclination is to read this to my son, but I've learned the hard way that my first inclination is not always the best one, so I'll pick up a hard copy of this, and hang onto it for a few years.....

 Image Comics provided a review copy.