Review by Win Wiacek

We grow up with fairytales all around us. They’re part of the fabric of our lives. Some people generally outgrow them whilst others take them to heart and make them an intrinsic aspect of their lives… Have you met Skottie Young?

He has feet firmly planted in both camps and is well able to alternatively embrace the enchantment of imagination and give it a hilariously cynical mean-spirited drubbing at the same time.

Once upon a time little Gertrude wished she could visit the wonderful world of magic and joyous laughter,and her wish was inexplicably granted. She met happy shiny people, fairies, elves, giants, talking animals and animated trees, rocks, stars, suns and moons and just loved them all.

Resplendent Queen Cloudia made her an Official Guest of Fairyland and invited her to play a game. When she wanted to go back to her own world the six-year-old simply had to find a magic key and open the door to the realm of reality. The fabulous Fairy Queen even gave Gertrude a quaintly talking bug as guide and helpmeet plus a magic map of all the Known Lands.

That was twenty-seven years ago and although Gert’s body has not aged a day her mind certainly has. It’s also become pretty pissed-off at the interminable insufferable task of finding the key and just wants it all to end.

As an Official Guest of Fairyland Gert can’t die and has taken to expressing 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, 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.

And then someone has a really amazing idea. Why not invite another sweet little girl to Fairyland and offer her the same deal? When she finds the key, wins the game and goes back, Gert will lose her Official Guest of Fairyland status and they can be rid of her at last.

Of course that all goes swimmingly, just like Cloudia hoped and everybody but Gert lives happily ever after.

No, it really, really doesn’t work out like that.

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.

Madly Ever After is combined with Volume 2: Fluff My Life in the hardcover I Hate Fairyland Book One.