Review by Ian Keogh
Through circumstances detailed in the opening volume, Toby is King of the Pixies, a title more embarrassing and troublesome than it is useful. The pixies live in the back end of Toby’s garden, and are largely represented by the mischievous Toadflax, the cowardly Mouldwarp and their leader Gatherwool. Under other circumstances Toby having magical pixies compelled to carry out his orders might be seen as great, but that doesn’t take into account incompetence and deafness ensuring most spells don’t turn out as planned. Pixie Pandemonium is another fifteen chapters of magical mayhem.
James Turner mines a formula of something theoretically helpful, such as the time cape, always somehow causing more trouble than it was intended to prevent or rectify in the first place, but it’s well conceived. Other problems this time include vegetables coming to life, Toby’s crush on the exchange student and the school play. However, in true funny comic tradition, almost everything is reset by the start of a new episode no matter how badly the previous one ended. In Best Frenemies much was made of the teasing Steph discovering Toby’s secret, but despite featuring in the introductory page, she’s barely seen, with Toby’s mate Mo being all the human supporting cast needed.
As drawn by Andres Schuster, the pixies are random shapes with features, which serves the needs of the strip better than might be assumed. The back of the book activity pages give youngsters the chance to create their own designs.
Moreso than previous volumes there are chapters focussing on the pixies alone, which are generally weaker for Turner running together a lot of silly ideas, rather than progressing some form of plot. They serve a purpose in generating giggles, but not as many as the other strips. The best strips are when Turner veers away from variations on what he’s previously supplied and lets his imagination fly. In one he tackles the logic problem of a single person having to deliver a chicken, a bag of grain and a fox to an island with a boat only big enough to transport one item at a time. Turner complicates the original problem by including a second boat identical to the first in every respect other than it will eat the rower, and then further difficulties. It all degenerates wonderfully.
Pixie Pandemonium ends with the pixie version of Christmas, Blimpmas, which as presented is hardly an appealing time, but something the pixies feel it’s important for Toby to appreciate. Turner and Schuster’s version of A Christmas Carol involves a ghostly Mo, and as is so often the case, the pixies manage to sabotage their good intentions.
Toby and the Pixies is anarchic, silly and funny, but never quite matching the best of other David Fickling collections.
