Review by Win Wiacek

Skottie Young’s hilarious reworking of fairy tale promises and lies continues Gert’s prolonged attempts to escape Fairyland. He explained her presence there in Madly Ever After, with which this is combined in hardcover as I Hate Fairyland Book One.

Simply put, Gert was trapped almost thirty years previously by Queen Cloudia who 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 real. Eventually even Queen Cloudia had enough but could do nothing whilst Gert maintained her Official Guest of Fairyland status, which is a privilege that can not be revoked.

Just when a truly amazing idea was hatched… it got even worse.

Due to circumstances beyond anybody’s control Cloudia’s rule ended and Gert was stuck ruling the saccharine-sweet hellhole she so despised.

As we resume cartoon communication Queen Gertrude has been in charge quite long enough. Even wanton slaughter in her personal gladiatorial games and random acts of magic-fuelled drive-by exterminations cannot offset the unending tedium of the paperwork necessary to run the Realm. ‘Gert of Thrones’ is desperately looking for a way out of the endless responsibilities of rule. And then, for the first time in decades, fate falls her way and Gert is offered a way out.

Gert returns to her former anti-social ways unaware that destiny is shaping a really big metaphysical cowpat for her to step in. It begins sometime in the real world she so wants to rejoin where a little kid in a dragon costume finds himself in dire need of a pitstop. Tragically for Duncan and Fairyland, that rush to the outhouse results in a little unwanted trans-dimensional tourism. Gert meanwhile has put out feelers (and many other strange critters) to locate a way back to Earth. The most likely method involves the urine of mighty flying saurians, but as that is the rarest thing in the Realm, it’s pretty fortunate that Duncan still frantically trying to unzip his costume materialises just then and learns the downside of ‘How to Drain your Dragon’.

Desperate enough to consult a soothsayer, Gert later learns of a possible escape route but glazes over the bit where the future-reader says Duncan will be the greatest monster the Realm ever saw. Eager for release – any form of release – the ex-queen finds herself fighting a chilling army of videogame foes in the oddly electronic ‘Tower of Battle’ and handed the drubbing of her unending life. The victorious games-master gives her high heave-ho but keeps little Duncan.

Subsequent problems involve Gert entering her own infinitely capacious magical Hat of Holding in search of an item to pay off her debts and a tale of salutary warning as Gert and Larry enter a mystic manse. They’re confronted by a choice of two portals, one leading to her heart’s desire and the other to an outcome of horrific consequences.

You’d think she might listen to her shattered and battered future-self, suddenly come back from a apocalyptically hell-shocked dystopian tomorrow with a message of warning and explicit instructions. You would? Then you really haven’t grasped the gist of this savagely surreal saga, have you?

And yet… somehow… To Be Continued in Good Girl.