Review by Win Wiacek

This handsome hardcover combines the first two volumes of Skottie Young’s irrepressable I Hate Fairyland. We’ve all grown up loving the idea of fairyland, but what if you wished to visit and experience all the joys, but could only return hom once you found a hidden key?

Although Gertrude’s body hasn’t aged in the 27 years she’s remained in Fairyland, her mind certainly has, and she now resents Queen Cloudia’s generosity, the magical talking bug acting as her guide and the magic map of all known lands. She’s met happy shiny people, fairies, elves, giants, talking animals and animated trees, rocks, stars, suns and moons and just loved them all. Once. Now she despairs of her task and just wants it all to end, except as an Official Guest of Fairyland Gert can’t die either. Instead she expresses her monumental frustration in acts of staggering violence and brutal excess as she continues hunting for that fluffer-hugging key. With no other choice, Gert and dissolute bug Larrigon Wentsworth III toil ever onward in search of the way home, enduring horrific – but non-fatal – injuries and taking out their spleen (and often other peoples’) on whoever gets in her way.

After all this time, however, even Queen Cloudia has had enough. Sadly, she can’t do anything about it whilst Gert is an Official Guest of Fairyland: a privilege that cannot be revoked.

A well conceived plan originally presented in Madly Ever After fails, and for the second half, originally Fluff My Life, Gert’s position has greatly changed.

Consistently inventive, this sublimely outrageous treat offers hilariously over-the-top cartoon violence and the most imaginative and inspired use of faux-profanity ever seen in comics. It’s an unmissable wake-up call for everybody whose kids want to be little princesses and proves once and for all that sweet little girls (and probably comics artists) are evil to the core if you push them too far.